No not the “shiver me timbers” Jack Sparrow sort. I mean the serious issue of games and music piracy online,
Games piracy is a big issue for games developers, with hundreds of sites for sharing cracked games, thousands of people cracking games and Millions of people downloading the latest hits for free, it’s not surprising that sometimes the pirated game becomes more widespread that versions that are paid for.
This happened to the recent release of Games develper tycoon. But the creater of Games dev tycoon, Patrick Klug of Greenheart games, took an interesting course of action. Knowing that the game would be pirated, he leaked a pirated copy of the game.
This might sound crazy, but the version he leaked taught people a lesson.
He added some lines of code that made people with pirated copies always fail, due to Piracy.
The ultimate poetic justice.
Of course, the help forums were full of complaints from gamers that, “I can’t make any money because of all these pirate copies of the game.” to which the developer could respond, “Now you know how I feel!”
The Serious Problem of Piracy and Christians
But there is a serious moral point here. A worker is worth their wage. (taken very out of context here I know but “do not steal” might be a more directly relevant verse)
When I lived in Ukraine, you could walk down the street and before the film was in the cinema you’d see rows of stalls selling copies of the film on DVD. Here in Spain when I mention the idea of using a service like Spotify or Netflix, I am almost always met with a response, “But why not download the torrent?”
But it’s not limited to foreigners and non-Christians. When I was a teenager I used to copy music. I used the justification that they were my brothers CDs and there was no point buying another copy, or that when I borrowed a CD from my friend I’d delete it from my computer afterwards…but somehow they stayed in my computers memory.
In the end I basically stole music and deprived the artists and companies of money for their products. Piracy can seem like an innocent crime as its those “evil” big corporations who set stupid prices (more to come further down) and with the artificial distancing from the crime that the internet causes it can help people to justify doing things they would never normally do.
I felt sorry for this developer who had spent hard time, money and hard work to create a game that 90% of the copies are pirated. Fortunately the story isn’t over. This has actually been some of the best press an indie developer could get and it will certainly encourage more people to buy the game.
Tackling Piracy?
There is a sensible debate to be had regarding the best way to tackle piracy and personally I find Amanda Palmer’s TED talk to be very inspiring in this respect (see bellow) but just because someone is following a bad economy/marketing model doesn’t justify piracy.
[ted id=1682]
Thoughts?
Paul Clifford (@PaulAlanClif) says
Both Jesus and the Apostle Paul (who was probably quoting Jesus) said that a worker is worth his wages, so it must be very important.
Also, look at Romans 13. Remember this was written by a man who would later be killed by the Romans and who was the victim of persecution. He says we should follow the laws or be rightly subject to punishment by the government officials.
I’ve been around too many Christians and churches who justified piracty and breaking copyright laws. That’s not who we’re called to be. Let’s treat artists as we’d like to be treated.
Paul
Chris Wilson says
I completely agree Paul and yet so many Christians don’t seem to see it as stealing. I feel it’s a real issue.
Jonathan says
Such a good find on TED. And such a real world example of our duty as Christians to not steal and to pay for the things we want, even if there are means to download it freely and torrent or jailbreak. I went through a phase of jailbroken phone and got into the pirated apps, though I usually paid for the apps after a few uses and finding that the game was worth it. But it wasn’t always. I have since been budgeting better for even iphone apps and games and setting aside money for them. Planning better by using something like Appshopper. My wife and I have a large DVD base and lend them out often, in hopes that it prevents people from downloading, especially the teens we work with. I honestly feel like paying for the things you want, especially in entertainment makes me think more about is it worth it, this has kept me from buying movies or games that I know I won’t connect with or play much or watch more than once and instead renting, netflix-ing, etc. Again thanks for the find.