2018-01-14 11:52:41

Hello...
I have a question which I don't think can be answered, but I was wondering, why do people crack games. I saw a tweet where someone asked a beta tester of A Hero's Call for a crack, and that's why I decided to start this topic. To people who ask for cracks of things, why don't you ask someone to buy it for you if you absolutely can't. Cracking games or asking for cracks is the equivalent of saying, "fuck the developer, I don't care about them whatsoever," and that's wrong. The game isn't even that expensive, it's 20 bucks. I used to be a cracker myself, but I have learned from my mistakes. If I think something is worth paying for and I feel that the developer needs support, I will support them, *cough* (hollywood edge is not 1 of them because their sounds are not worth $10000.) Having said that, even if I don't support a dev, I absolutely will not go around posting cracks of their software or sounds or whatever they're doing. So, if anyone wants A Hero's Call but don't have the money to buy it, at least ask someone for it. The worst thing they could say is no, but cracking things will destroy your reputation.

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2018-01-14 12:15:54

Here's what I've observed.


1. Not enough money, or getting money for it would mean waiting for a new release that everyone is already enjoying, which is exasorbated by currency exchange rate and many blind people living on social security.
2. Your a kid and your parents won't let you because they think games are pointless, or they won't allow you to use their card do to mistrust of online banking.
3. Because all the common payment methods are unavailable in your country.
4. Not enough info on the game out their E.G. lack of demo, sparse audio, to drop the kind of money that the dev is asking for without knowing more first. Often turns into forgetting to pay for it later when you do have money...


It's almost never bad intent, in fact often these people appreciate the games just as much if not more than everyone else. and making friends with someone from a country that doesn't have an exchange rate just as bad as your own, often with a poor grasp of English and or social skills hindering you isn't easy, especially if it's obvious your just trying to get something out of them...

2018-01-14 13:04:51

Again, it comes down to the fact that you can easily ask someone to buy the game for you.

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2018-01-14 13:19:51

I'll tell you what though. I will be doing an interview with Out Of Sight Games for the radio show assuming they're still feeling up to it. Once my paycheck from my other job comes in and with Joseph and Ian's permission, I will purchase 5 accounts and give them out to the first 5 people who post and can't afford the game. That way OOS get money, and the people get to play the game. I can make no guarantees, but I'll try.

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2018-01-14 14:55:17

I used cracks many times before and sadly to be honest, most audio games are just overpriced compared to what they can offer.

Examples? there are a lot so don't want to put the long list here. Actually it is starting to change. For example, I've got Super egghunt plus from Liam because it's not really expensive (well, infact there are video games like this and they are free or really cheap) And super egghunt plus is not giving you a lot of content.
I actually like what Liam is dowing with his games IE. adding achievements and other things and I will support him as much as I can.

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2018-01-14 15:36:15

Hi. i wont play AHC but cant pay for it. who can gift me that?

new Russian company "xgames"! This company makes the Russian games and translates it into English! Require programmers! if you want to join, please contact us by email "[email protected]

2018-01-14 15:55:07

Defender in #2 nailed it. I was in the camp of having parents who didn't trust online card payments not too long ago myself. Ironically, wanting a crack for an audiogame was how I formed my very first big international friendship which spawned into many others a few years later. And to go full circle I later ended up buying many games, audio or mainstream, for some of those friends I made.

Anyway, that's probably the #1 reason why audio games get cracked. Children not being able to convince their parents to buy something, or not being able to afford it. Or simply being unable to buy it at all. As much as you might think Paypal is ubiquitous, there are parts of the world where noone uses it. Japan prefers local bank transfers, which is why it took so long for people to be able to buy Dreamy Train. China is an even more extreme example, I think the most popular system over there right now for online payments is something built-into the weChat app. I once looked into getting a full version of ZDSR (a Chinese screen reader) because it's fast, and not that expensive (about $80). Except there's literarly no way to buy it On-line and they expect you to either mail them a check, or call the company and make a Chinese bank transfer. I believe India is in a similar boat, where most banks only issue cards that work for local payments and again they have their own payment processing systems that are normally enough.

<Insert passage from "The Book Of Chrome" here>

2018-01-14 17:04:54

From my experience as a software developer working on a popular DRM system until I lost my vision.

Most crackers do it simply for the challenge of seeing if they can do it. Reverse engineering is by no means an easy tasks regardless of what tools you might have available to help you, it takes a lot of knowledge and skill to be even half way successful at it.

The people who go around looking for cracked programs are another matter entirely. For whatever reasons that seem good to them, they've decided that they don't care a whit about the developer and simply want their product at no cost to them, in other words, they've decided to steal it.

Before 2002, I used to be one of those people, none of my software was paid for. Then in 2002, I don't recall what happened or why I changed, but I started going through all of my software and considering, am I willing to pay for this program or not? If I was, it went on my list of programs to buy, if I decided no, it was removed and deleted. Then over the next year or two, as I could afford to I bought every program on the to buy list.

Now a days, the only programs I have that I haven't paid for are either free or a trial version.

2018-01-14 17:15:24

Hi,
I know there have already been four Posts in this thread since the Thing with the five accounts was posted, but if it works out, can I have one of them?

Greetings and happy gaming
Julian

Greetings and happy gaming, Julian

If you say you never lie, you're a liar.
Oh, and #freeGCW

2018-01-14 17:20:15

As much as I am obviously anti-cracking I will point out a few things that are absolutely true.
1. We-chat is worse than Amazon's monopolizing tactics as wechat is where you do everything, and it tracks your every move *chatting is just a secondary feature at this point* as you make your online transactions, doctors appointments, movie tickets, and transportation trips, through Wechat. Moral of the story, it's anything but Paypal. Now can you use a vpn? I'd encourage and advocate it. But not everyone is comfortable with that, or is in a country where such practices are actually illegal. Immoral, absolutely not if used with good intentions, but what the hell, the laws don't always align with that.
2. Garrett, you've got the right idea, but aren't getting it as far as doing that internationally. Look at a lot of posts you see on this forum, obviously no offense meant, but I could imagine it would be hard for them to, on some random person they may not know all that well, ask them to buy the game for you.
3. There's Trialpay, but like Paypal I'm not sure if it is allowed everywhere. Hey, what countries don't accept bitcoin? I wouldn't mind an out of sight games bitcoin address? Lol!
4. Garrett, Hollywood Edge does not fall under the same category, at least in terms of audiogames's no cracks policy. Now does that mean we can go passing it round on here, absolutely not, for obvious legal reasons. But it's not for the same reasons that cracking games is not allowed on here. It's simply about supporting developers, not stealing from them. Legal trouble is only a small part of that, indeed you can leave the tooth-and-nail lawsuits for the corporations that have the major financial backing for that practice. That does lead me to say though, if you don't wanna buy Hollywood Edge, just don't use the damn thing. I would say NS singlehandedly outdid Hollywood Edge, granted he didn't or maybe couldn't do all the sound categories Hollywood Edge has to offer, but in the ones he did they were pretty damn impressive. And even so, there are sound libraries, that included, and other sites like audioblocks that offer sounds far superior. Anyway, back on topic.
5. I remember when Cory aka CAE Jones addressed this issue quite nicely when d l e was released, saying that he would entertain other contribution within reason that wasn't financial, in other words if you couldn't pay then do something else like testing/writing a documentation, etc, obviously not writing a review though. Perhaps developers could maybe get into the practice of affiliation, indeed one of the reasons we kept the honorable mention of a h c on our own punchback news site is because it can't hurt, it just leads to more potential customers. That is, unofficially, us providing an affiliate link. Or that's how it would be done. A lot of companies are going down that road for customers to score a little extra by affiliating more customers through referral. Perhaps that could be a more common practice here for those who need a little financial help to buy games.

2018-01-14 17:20:37

in some countries, dollars are to expensive and people can't buy the game, some countries         banned paypal and other problems, 

well, who would buy a  game worth $20 for free for someone else? no one! saying it is easy but doing it isn't

2018-01-14 17:27:58

@AlirezaNosrati, might I also point out that the asking may also be the hard part. People probably still know quite well that people wouldn't buy a $20 game or any game just out of the blue, or probably wouldn't reasonably expect them to! Summoning the urge to ask someone you don't know could be harder for them, as it may easily come off as a bit of an unreasonable request.

2018-01-14 17:36:52

There could also be the question of ego, some people would rather use a cracked game than admit to anyone that they can't afford to buy it.

2018-01-14 18:48:06

Let's stop making excuses, folks.

If you ask to crack a game, or to get someone else to do it for you, then you can bloody well ask for them to buy the game instead. After all, someone has had to crack the game in the first place. Instead of asking for money, you're asking for someone else to either break the law, or cut you in on it. This is morally bankrupt.

Cracking is wrong, it's illegal, and it's counterproductive for developers. Don't do it. Don't ask others to do it. I am firmly of the opinion that if you're a known cracker, or if you're going around asking for cracks, you should be out of here in a hurry. I don't care if your country doesn't support paypal. I don't care if you aren't sure of the game's value. You do not need the game in order to survive, and as stated before, if you really want it but can't afford it/can't pay for it for whatever reason, then there is no shame in asking. Asking for someone to be kind to you, or trying to cash in on a giveaway...there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Just don't pester.

Let's stop trying to pretend that there are any good reasons for cracking. There aren't. All the excuses that have thus far been peddled in this thread are just that. Excuses. Cut to the chase. It's not allowed. It's bad for the community. Stop cracking, and stop encouraging it, and stop trying to sell us on reasons why it's understandable.

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2018-01-14 19:46:32

@11 That's simply not true, I, for one bought 5 copies of the game, one for myself, and gave the other 4 to other people.

@14 the world isn't so black and white as all that

I also used to torrent and crack all the time. I don't do it anymore, that isn't to say I never will again though, I don't really have a problem with it per se, but I do buy all my stuff now, and if I can't afford it, I save up, and if I can't save up that much, then I just don't get it.

The issue with audio games is that the developers are one man bands. There aren't that many situations where you have audio game developers who work together on the same game like you do with mainstream developers where you have level designers, sound designers, coders, scripters, testers, graphic artists, etc. So you really are taking it out of their pocket.

The reason I didn't feel bad about torrenting larger studios and stuff of that nature is because they literally make millions off of large titles. Is it right, no, stealing is wrong, and stealing software is of the same vein as stealing someone's car, their stereo, TV what have you, but I was able to justify it.

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2018-01-14 20:06:01 (edited by jack 2018-01-14 20:10:48)

And let me point out that the situation in other countries with online banking is more severe than one might think, so much so that cracks are legal in some developing countries. That does not in any way make them right, just pointing out that some countries are pitifully behind in the race as far as getting with the times. No hard feelings. After all, what's there to do about it? We laugh at the first-world economy which has its issues, but when stacked up against others, it could be worse. So while I will agree with Jayde's comments, I do have to partially disagree, as if people are actually! in that kind of situation, they are to be called out obviously if they blatantly ask for cracks like that, but they aren't entirely at fault here. This may be the most multinational forum on the net, so you never know what one's situation may be. I wouldn't mind a dark-web/underground bitcoin/other cryptocurrency to circumvent pyapal restrictions. that is legal after all.

2018-01-14 20:43:59

Few things:


1. Revers engineering is actually legal in some areas (Russia springs to mind) as long as you follow that country's laws, in Russia it is, if I got my sources right from the OpenIV mod team, legal as long as you don't break the Russian laws.

2. Ah, the 'lost sale' fallacy. You can't prove somebody who used a cracked game would ever buy it to start with, so to say a crack is a lost sale is a sheer fallacy

3. The situation around the world is....well.....not exactly conducive to buying audiogames. I mean, governments even don't allow online banking in some parts of the world,  and you can't fork out the equivalent of $500 for a game (yes that's a thing, there's exchange rates that make a $10 audiogame into a big big ordeal)

So before everyone from the western world gets on their high horse and screams cracks are bad, at least try to understand why some people use them.

Also in the abandonware scene, cracks are used to make games run, games whose companies are no longer around, and/or no longer care about the games in question. Lastly, a big AA publisher had to rack their own game to remove their own protection.

When Ubisoft released Rainbow 6 Vegas 2, they patched the digital edition and that llooked for a CD. Of course, they had no CD with it being digital so legitimate customers were locked out of their game. So Ubi tried and tried and tried and couldn't defeat their own copy protection. So what did they do? They had to find a crack for their own game, and....actually, included it in the patch. They didn't even bother to remove the release group info at all. Strangely, Ubisoft changed their DRM after that incident. I can't imagine why

@Orco:

I'll chime in on the for the challenge part. Part of it also is there's the competitiveness with certain groups, and the whole 'look how easy X is to crack' argument, and the whole pirated/cracked games run better than legit games side of things. I've experienced that myself with pirated games in the past, if I didn't have to wait for a CD to spin up or an internet connection to be made I could play faster. Also there are certain games with DRM that break systems. StarForce was notorious for it and in fact some publishers actually directed customers to use the crack to get around the DRM once it became clear how damaging StarForce was: Read....actually, physically damaging CD drives and screwing up Windows installs. So there's that part of it too.

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

2018-01-14 20:53:40

All valid points *cough cough* code factory. Abandonware games are a whole different argument altogether. If a developer clearly abandons a game, then without a doubt there's nothing stopping you from wanting to play it. We've had some pretty pain-in-the-ass drm to deal with for audiogames, but only one of them has ever gotten that bad and that was private detective school. Some people crack games because of how intrusive the drm is. Usually, the good folks will still buy the game then rig it, tantamount to those itunes drm removal tools that would actually look for the license key inside Itunes's repository to make sure you were stripping your purchased songs only and you didn't pirate them. For audiogames though that argument is only half valid as compared to other games, our drm isn't half bad. I'll also point out that Starforce had a pretty shady history as a company, so it's no accident that it had so many crippling issues.

2018-01-14 21:31:10

Yes SF did and then some....when you get known as something close to malware for protecting games.....that's a shady reputation.
One other case IO want to bring up is one I remembered while reading your reply. Back in the mid/late 2000s/early 2010s, I can't remember exactly which year and the forum with the release topic is loooooooong gone (thanks internet), the former auto racing series CART/CCWS contacted a team to make a game based on an existing engine. Now, normally you'd need a legit copy of the base game to play this, but when ChampCarChallenge came out as a standalone licensed CART game.....with a few missing features, it shipped for free with a cracked executable. In discussing this  on the old RSCNet forum....it transpired CART/CCWS (same series, different name) legal had got in touch and stated from the series point of view they wanted a cracked game to get people to play it, because it was built on the engine of a game that wasn't sold because that license (the F1 license) expired, so EA couldn't legally sell the base game any more. Hence why CART/CCWS went for a cracked version of the base game and as it was a licensed product, I can't recall that happening since...but it's another point to add that at least in CART's case......they actually were behind it.

Also from CART. I miss that series...but that's another story. Back in 1997 they had their first officially licensed game. It was bad but that's not the point. I know a guy who was a mechanic on one of the teams that year and I witnessed this myself. CART had the license for their series in hand. Microsoft publised the official CART game and wanted to protect it. CART was slowly entering a downward spiral at that point, though it'd take more years to die out....so what did CART do? They began for several race weekends giving away free CDs with the full game for free and cracked, on the CD with merchanside for a few weekends in 1997 to promote their game. You had to go buy a certain amount of merch, IIRC it was $50 or more but with the prices stuff was that was easy to do if you went souvenier hunting like people did back then......so you still paid for the cost of the official game, just in merchandise costs to CART. Which is genius....and yes, the mechanic friend of mine said the whole PacWest team got free copies, free, ahem, edited copies to take home and play.

One more odd case......is that MiG Alley, a flight sim that got made free/liberated ware....had to be cracked to remove the DRM BUT the company officially only released the source code, so you had to build and compile it yourself, then came the ready to run versions with instructions on how to remove the DRM written by a former developer.

Next interesting one: HardWar, a semi-obscure 1990s flight/shooter/story game had the odd situation of being cracked and having the cracks patched then recracked for each update. How, why? Well, the original devs went under so the community took over. Then years later one of the original devs began making patches with the community, the community weren't happy about DRM being in so the guy who made the patches....had to crack his own DRM to make the game actually run on newer systems, it was designed for Win98 and that era.

So there's some more interesting cases of why people use cracked games. Side note: I love CART's approach to their game with throwing the crack

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

2018-01-14 21:42:57

Lots of interesting discussion here. I'm glad to see people acknowledging the complexity of the issue, including the fact that there's a difference between asking, "Why do people crack games?" and "Why do people play copies of commercial games they did not buy?"

I will say that while some valid points have been made about why people, particularly those from certain countries, may have more reasons to want to acquire a pirated copy of the game (yes, I'm not going to mince words—this is piracy), I'll admit that as a developer, it's hard to see past the simple fact that a lot of cracking requests are utterly unjustified. It's one thing if it is literally impossible for you to purchase a game, or to provide someone else with funds to purchase a game for you. But even in that situation, it seems that most people's first recourse is to say, "Can someone crack the game for me?" rather than saying, "Would someone be willing to purchase the game for me?" Yeah, that's an awkward and humiliating request—but it's also far more honoring to the time and effort sacrificed by the various people who worked on the game. Why is it easier to ask someone to steal from a developer for you than it is to ask them to buy something from a developer for you? These are things I wonder. Obviously I'm biased, as a developer who feels the sting more personally than someone removed from the situation.

And I do want to go on the record publicly and say how cool it has been to see people's generosity inspired by AHC—whether that's people giving away copies on streams or radio giveaways, or just spontaneous purchases for friends or acquaintances who otherwise can't get a copy. This really does happen, and it's so inspiring to see.

2018-01-14 21:51:35

Well.
2 points here.
First a historic one.
Back when I was a teen ager till I was at least 20-25 years before opensource came up, pirating and cracking were the norm.
You are pushed to use certain software, in my day that was windows and office and a few other things.
Those things cost quite a lot.
If you can get them funded or part of work fine, but there were not the student options there are now.
And so you cracked everything from games, to well pritty much everything.
From mp3s to well whatever.
It was the fighting the system and the big corperate bastards, I think that was my justification for doing it.
It meant I could use software I would usually not work, most of my cracks were off ftp servers, things like adobe acrobat full, winzip, nero burning rom, , etc, etc, etc.
I never went into it like friend did when I was in student flatting, dvds, movies and tv series never interested me like that.
So why did I mostly bail out?
1. opensource came along.
And a lot more freeware.
I didn't need k1000 when I upgraded to win7 I had to concidder what I would get.
And I had a bit of cash, abbyy fine reader was what I ended up buying for scanners, malware in things like dvdvideosoft stuff got me into my applian software though to be honest I use it not as much as I thought I would some of it is still quite visual, a thing they don't seem to fully acknowledge.
winzip became 7zip.
Nero, well I didn't care for 7 or 8 it was cheap enough to buy but cdbxp for writing and goldwave for extracting.
Vlc and winamp which by now I had a list of plugins for including chip music things like that.
The other thing was the antipiracy law.
Ok so it was fun being a pirate, and fighting the system, but to be honest while even reveering those hackers I knew that got in and did stuff for a laugh but in 2002-03 that changed.
A few of what were my friends some hackers started getting serious, causing dammage that didn't sit with me that well.
Being a pirate is fine and all, but I only did it to survive, or to help my friends, it was never take the bastards down so I become the chief bastard nothing like that.
It was true in the past I had grabbed more than I wanted or needed because it was around just doing all of it.
K1000 was really nice, braille, ocr, scanning nice till my scanner broke.
If I ever got the funds and cash though I'd still buy it.
Things like getright actually stopped you getting it same with flashfxp, which I ended up buying except I hardly need a download manager these days and ftp servers I used to use are long gone.
Fact is unlike a few people I knew I was not really a serious pirate by any means I was a standard user trying to survive any way he could.
Bar my screen reader I have about 4 or 5 comercial programs not counting the os to my name.
They don't include games.
To the games, bar a few titles like bavisoft and sadly the abandoned code factory titles, 10-35 bucks is reasonable for a game heck in mainstream games especially consoles while a few are that price, most mainstreams are double that at least and maybe over 100 bucks in some cases.
So our games for what they are are not that bad to be honest.
On the asking front it can be the most difficult thing, asking or accepting it, I was once told by someone well that he could buy a game, but I felt embarrased accepting the offer.
So it probably works both ways.
But back to the past, what I was doing is not worth fines or jail, and to be honest while I did it to survive I wouldn't sell it to make cash for my own proffit I condem those that do though a few of my friends and those I knew from flatting actually did.
The idea of being a pirate is to fight the system, and take them down.
But unless you really want revenge you have a life to.
If you are noticed you have 2 issues.
1.  what is the point fighting the system if you are noticed, 1 punch and you are wasted.
2.  if you get hit, its unlikely you can go back to your normal ish life if you wanted to.
Unless ofcause you are that skilled at it then maybe you become part of the system or get a nitche somewhere in a new life but usually you get a mark against your actual life, and that means your life is basically over, you are known.
I know people that did it to get noticed but you don't have a life no job prospects, nothing you may as well die, its not worth it especially if you were small.
I stopped naturally.
I still dabble here and there from time to time but nothing really big, certainly nothing to take em down.
Maybe if a demo of a program is to short, or I have a reason to review something I may just do that but will intend to buy it.
Sadly even this has stopped.
The main reason that it has though is because there are a lot more that seem to have a chip on their sholdour.
Keygens and cracking software is full of malware, I only ever went for serials for the last 3 years up to 2006-7 and am completely stopped now.
Even joke lists I was on I have pulled out of.
There is to much ransomware around, from time to time I will use a vpn on another box not mine and a torrent program to get things like some books maybe but thats it really.
There is a certain thrill in breaking other peoples stuff but its only till you are past your teens unless you want revenge and thats just petty and stupid.
Or if you make cash off of it then maybe or if that is your life.
For me, being marked as having done something bad aint that great of an idea.
For one thing you can never get a job, its marked against you, and you can never go on holiday.
Becides, you are noticed, and even those that had it good got to big and now look at em.
kim.com was an example.
He did it big, thought he could probably beat the system, made cash.
Maybe he could have pulled back but he got noticed.
There was a brief struggle and now we don't hear about him anymore.
The thing about all of this is being hidden.
If you are noticed, then unless you have a reason, its not fun.
Best case scenario you are noticed, and you realise that maybe you went to far, you stop, and you get on with life or you don't or well you are noticed and thats the end of your current life branch in which case well.
For me it naturally ended, I enjoyed being a small time pirate, it was nice fighting the system.
But I have a life of sorts, and with the free andopensource as well as low cost stuff, and then things like bandcamp, and up to a point ms store, and low costing stuff about, I can't see me going back to that life.
Even if I did I'd need a really good reason to do that.
Back in 1995-2001 you just went for it, no security for me, you just got your ftp client, and torrent program and went for it.
Now its just to dangerous for someone like me.
To many breaches, to many threats, to much ransomware and to much to lose.
Generally the big monsters out there aint interest in a consumer its all about the banks and big businesses that will make a real killing.
That being said, if they get interested in you you may as well chuck it all in.
The same goes with the big guys on the other side, not just the hackers, they kind of are well if they want you they will almost certainly kill you, your friends, family and maybe everything else.

On the subject of pirating software if it was abandoned and no more I guess that would be ok but abandoned without support hmmmph.
That is why that on the next windows install I may throw away my inoetics synths, the company that sold them doesn't anymore.
So chances are I won't be getting much support for them if they screw and they never met my needs.
I have the old realspeak solo loaded which is 32 bit but when I have the cash again for something really big I plan to either buy the acapella infovox4 or the vocaliser/eloquence deal from atguys.
That or ivona I am not sure.
Now to the modern stuff.
In china everyone seems to pirate even my friends that do business.
Especially if software is expensive, ofcause you can't be updated and you can't ever be secure but ifyour software is 3-5 grand to buy it legally then it still runs.
You use wechat and talk to a someone or a bot, pay them a price, then you get what you want.
My friends don't know how it is gotten but it is.
A lot of stuff happens over there that wouldn't happen here.
And you need backups, you always are assured of getting something and have to reformat quite a lot but for people that use expensive software then they probably have a good enough reason to justify to at least recieve.
The final clincher with my own pirating was that my job prospects went boom.
A lot of my previous stuff I ever needed stopped being needed.
I don't need a scanner all the time, jaws, office and a few critical programs.
Now its a book reader, music player, a few games mostly thats what I use now.

2018-01-14 22:22:57

There are a lot of hypocritical orgs over in China who will have plenty of double standards. There was this one about this app-store rife with pirated ios apps, that didn't need a jailbreak. The point they were trying to make was to stop people from jailbreaking their devices in China, by offering the pirated apps out in the open without a jailbreak. Now what kind of irony is that? Even if jailbreaking was illegal in China, which it really isn't, why fight an illegal act with another, more illegal act? Or let's pull back a bit and instead ask why fight an act that is much more ethical, with an unethical act? Honestly, back when I used to jailbreak, hell back when it was still around, I'd do it because I wanted control over the damn device I purchased! Not because I wanted every pirate app store I could find. If it were between jailbreaking and pirating, you think people would wise up and pick the former, as it does no harm to others. But what can you do, some people have some twisted logic. Honestly I think it would be easier to ask someone to buy something than to ask for a crack. I just wouldn't do that because, while I wouldn't be an ass about asking someone to buy something for me, I find it far less humiliating to ask someone to buy something because the developer is still getting their money.

2018-01-14 22:51:25

I'm old enough to remember Neverlock in the 80s. I'm also old enough to remember  having to input code wheel solutions (yep paper code wheels that got torn or lost), I'm old enough to remember LensLock, which wasn't perfect, I even remember hardware copy protection in some cases.....none of it ended well. Having to break out the manual for a game every time was a chore and if you paid your $60 and lost the manual....you were out of luck. I'm old enough to remember BBSes being a thing, and downloading Neverlock and other cracking software. I'm also old enough to recall actual companies, business firms paying thousands of dollars and then being told they'd have to pay thousands again for a new workstation, so they cracked the software to save money, and yes it's not a game but 30 years ago $4-5000 was a lot of money for a copany to shell out. On that note..I also want to point out that even in developed nations...not everyone is super super rich or has rich parents. Plus, here's my personal beef with hypocrisy....

You get people whining they can't afford an audiogame but they have an iPhone and this and that, or they pay $700 for something else. That's not the normal, that's the exception. There's a shitload of people on or below the poverty line, and yes in the US it's a racial and regional thing, but on the whole there's a lot of people who are not super rich and can afford everything, there's a ton of people living paycheck to paycheck and on food stamps for instance. So for those people, I get why they crack games, and pirate things. They want the new shiny thing to try it out or to keep up with their friends (peer pressure is a thing) but they can't afford it.

That's when I will say why do games cost the price they do? I'd argue, honestly, the prices across the board need to come down and come down now with the number of people in poverty growing.

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

2018-01-15 00:32:27

Back in the 80s, during the heyday of theApple 2, there was a game cracker that went by the name of Crackowitz. He cracked a lot of games and his cracks were of the highest quality.

But as the Apple 2 started to fade away, Crackowitz got caught and was prosecuted. While he didn't get any jail or prison time, he did get ten years probation, primarily because he was a minor. But during the probation he wasn't allowed to own or use any technology products except in the performance of his job and then he had to be supervised 100% of the time he was using the equipment. Because that required companies that hired him to pay two salaries to do the work of one person, he found it next to impossible to get work. Ultimately he faded out of the spot light and was never heard from again as Crackowitz. And considering how hard it was to find out his real name, I think he just faded away entirely.

I believe that that was one of the factors that eventually convinced me to quit my software pirating ways. I certainly didn't want to end up like he did, it was just not worth it.

2018-01-15 02:08:36 (edited by defender 2018-01-15 02:15:19)

I have no real issue with pirating commercial software unless it is easily within your financial grasp, if you want to have sleepless nights over it because it messes up your moral compass than fine, but so far as I'm concerned, the artists were paid long ago if it's been out for a while, and they often make shamefully low amounts of money for royalties if that's how their doing it, so many of the smarter ones will (try) for a publisher that will pay them up front, get onto one of those artist collective platforms that doesn't take much of your cut, or just start their own, independent label.
Even large music publishers are realizing the futility of trying to stop this, putting out their songs on youtube under their official channel name before others can, often not allowing reuploads so that everyone knows where to go and the small amount of money from the views gets funneled directly back to them, then they make most of their real money off of online merch and concert tickets.
And while I do understand that these companies need allot of cash to fund new projects, I also know how much their CEO's make, and all the extra stuff that gets put into oversees accounts, playing fast and loose with stocks, and cash grab schemes like premium subscriptions that don't really give you anything for your money.


Screwing over indi devs is not acceptable though, so I agree that we should try to foster a culture of paying for other people's games more, but that really only happens when it's a big title like Swamp or AHC, so if you wana play something that you've heard all about that's a few years old, your kinda out of luck.
Now, if your a nice person, and you know enough English, than yeah, your chances are pretty good, and what Jade said about spending the time asking for cracks on asking for someone to pay for it instead rings very true to me, even if the rest of his post was pretty hard headed IMO.


This still leaves a bunch of kids in countries like Iran, who tend to have bad attitudes because, and I've found this out by talking to a few of them, they are well aware that they have no future if they don't get out of the country, which is very hard to do, many people look down on them from day to day and see them as incapable of doing anything, to a much greater degree than most of the west even, and this is their only escape from that reality.
That's a very hard thing to live with as a kid, and I can easily see why it shapes them in bad ways, even if it doesn't (excuse) their behavior.
Your never really going to get those guys to stop cracking though, all you can hope is that they grow up some and start trying to take their bad situation in stride; some of my best online friends are people like that, and they are more willing than most to help pay for folks in the same boat, even with their small amount of money.