My Mushi Futari is not region free...

[casualcoder]

I don't think piracy is a black or white issue. There are a lot of factors involved including income disparity, but, more to the point as the previous poster mentioned, many of these games wouldn't even have gained exposure in the west if it wasnt for mame.

I don't mind saying that my first taste of japanese shmups was on mame when I found dodonpachi and Guwange. Later, I tried out espgaluda on a hacked ps2. Of course, now I'm a huge supporter of the very same company, so..

Same thing has happened with CDs. I remember when you had to take a chance on a band or album and when you bought it, usually there were 1 or 2 good tracks and the rest was filler. Now, with mp3s freely available, most bands realize they have to produce either amazing singles, or great full albums. Nobody has to waste there money on a hunch anymore. So, piracy isnt a total loss even for content producers.

[dannnnn]

I love the way people rationalize piracy.

That so-called "piracy" is how a lot of people got into shmups. Without the exposure that it brings, shmups would have died off just like 2D beat-em-ups.

Only in the West, and even if there were no Western players at all the genre would still be in the same state it is currently.

[endoKarb]

I love the way people rationalize piracy.

Piracy helps the developers more than it hurts them.

It's theft, and it's morally wrong. That is unarguable

Thinking that the few bucks from the odd western customer help more than having people who wouldn't pay for these game play them, talk about them and maybe convince other people to give them try too is just silly though.

Touhou would have never gotten so popular if wouldn't be so easy to download for free (along with all the retarded fandom).

Of course shmups are dead anyway, so it's not like it matters that much. They have low accessibility, an high price tag (especially when importing), they require expensive and clunky controllers that are bothersome to acquire and use, and they are still being designed with the outdated arcade environment in mind when everyone is playing on console nowadays.

[Nasirosuchus]

I love the way people rationalize piracy.

That so-called "piracy" is how a lot of people got into shmups. Without the exposure that it brings, shmups would have died off just like 2D beat-em-ups.

Only in the West, and even if there were no Western players at all the genre would still be in the same state it is currently.

No, it wouldn't because the genre would have less exposure.

[Nasirosuchus]

I love the way people rationalize piracy.

Piracy helps the developers more than it hurts them.

It's theft, and it's morally wrong. That is unarguable

Thinking that the few bucks from the odd western customer help more than having people who wouldn't pay for these game play them, talk about them and maybe convince other people to give them try too is just silly though.

Touhou would have never gotten so popular if wouldn't be so easy to download for free (along with all the retarded fandom).

Of course shmups are dead anyway, so it's not like it matters that much. They have low accessibility, an high price tag (especially when importing), they require expensive and clunky controllers that are bothersome to acquire and use, and they are still being designed with the outdated arcade environment in mind when everyone is playing on console nowadays.

It's not theft, it's copyright infringement. There's a big difference.

Morals and ethics are completely subjective. Your standards of what's right and wrong don't encompass the entire world.

[BIL]

That so-called "piracy" is how a lot of people got into shmups. Without the exposure that it brings, shmups would have died off just like 2D beat-em-ups.

When did Western pirates stop the genre from going the way of the beltscroller, exactly?

(I mean I like the ROMZ as much as anyone, if only for detecting shitty games and subsequently not buying them)

[KAI]

Heh, during the middle 90's I used to play shmups with fake coins. Your piracy is like child's play to me.

[BIL]

That's nothing bro. In the early 90s, me and my crew would come ashore every Friday night, hold up the pizza joint with machetes and force Papa Giuliano to put Raiden on freeplay. Then we'd loop it over and over for hours while he sobbed in the corner. Eventually though, he wised up and hid a sawed-off under the cash register. And that is how my buddy Rodney got his colostomy bag and I became an honest paying customer of the shmup industry. :/

[endoKarb]

It's not theft, it's copyright infringement. There's a big difference.

I don't think so. Taking something without paying is stealing. Isn't theft the right word?

Morals and ethics are completely subjective.

Like ass they are.

[KAI]

That's nothing bro. In the early 90s, me and my crew would come ashore every Friday night, hold up the pizza joint with machetes and force Papa Giuliano to put Raiden on freeplay.

From now on I'll call you Machete.

[Grumpius]

It's not theft, it's copyright infringement. There's a big difference.

I don't think so. Taking something without paying is stealing. Isn't theft the right word?

Nothing has been taken though, only a copy has been made. The original product is still with the owner hense why it's copyright infringement.

Anyway, the way I see it is that piracy has its ups and downs. Without piracy, new players would find STGs completely inaccessible in this modern economic climate where most people are afraid to take a chance on a genre they're unsure of. I mean, I'm 17 and if I wasn't playing emulators, I'd have never of known of R-Type or Gradius because arcades have been dead most my life. Now that I've experienced the genre a little, I've ordered Saidaioujou for my xbox and Ketsui for the ps3, thus giving back (well, to Cave at least).
On the other hand, there will always be people who abuse piracy, never paying their "debts" so to speak, some more justified than others due to finacial problems. it's the "someone else will buy it" mentality that kills a genre, just like how it killed the PSP when it got hacked.

[endoKarb]

Nothing has been taken though, only a copy has been made. The original product is still with the owner hense why it's copyright

It's not that big of a difference thought, is it? What has been taken is the expected profit from the game.

One side loses something (a customer) without gaining anything the other gain something (a game) without giving up anything. That's a form of theft in my book.

Anyway, this stuff has no importance whatsoever.

[emphatic]

What really has been taken is the time available to spend on non-pirated games. I don't have time to play the games I own, how the fuck can people have time to play pirated games?

[trap15]

Unemployment.

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

It's not theft, it's copyright infringement. There's a big difference.

I don't think so. Taking something without paying is stealing. Isn't theft the right word?

Morals and ethics are completely subjective.

Like ass they are.

They absolutely are in some circumstances, especially going country to country. In some countries bribes are a normal part of business. In some religions sex before marriage is a sin. Some countries like China, I'm sure most people couldn't care less about copyright infringement. I've walked around Rio where they sell pirated discs in parks with cops walking by.

[system11]

Morals and ethics are completely subjective. Your standards of what's right and wrong don't encompass the entire world.

There should still be a level of core honesty where you don't take someone's work for nothing just because you believe you're entitled to it. If I was a niche game developer and I published a game and everyone just pirated it, I'd never write a single game again, and I'd probably post a nice big 'fuck you on behalf of myself and my family' to the relevant community.

[Nasirosuchus]

That so-called "piracy" is how a lot of people got into shmups. Without the exposure that it brings, shmups would have died off just like 2D beat-em-ups.

When did Western pirates stop the genre from going the way of the beltscroller, exactly?

(I mean I like the ROMZ as much as anyone, if only for detecting shitty games and subsequently not buying them)

By giving them exposure that they wouldn't have had otherwise. Cave would probably still be around, but smaller companies and independent developers probably wouldn't have bothered with shmups because no one would know about them much less give a single damn about them.

Exposure also forces them to make better games. If the game is terrible, then it will be well-known and the game won't sell. If it's good, then that will get out and the game will see better sales.

[Nasirosuchus]

Nothing has been taken though, only a copy has been made. The original product is still with the owner hense why it's copyright

It's not that big of a difference thought, is it? What has been taken is the expected profit from the game.

One side loses something (a customer) without gaining anything the other gain something (a game) without giving up anything. That's a form of theft in my book.

Anyway, this stuff has no importance whatsoever.

Yes, there is a big difference. You're basing this on a false assumption that every download equals a lost sale when that simply isn't true. I believe it was Iseethings who posted this before, but there are 5 types of people: People who will buy new, people who will buy used, people who will obtain an unauthorized copy, people who don't care, and people who just don't know. The only people that you can turn into sales are the ones who just don't know and that's where the exposure comes in.

The music, movie, software, and video game industries have been making money hand over fist especially since the turn of the century when it's been easier than ever to obtain unauthorized copies of their works due to P2P file sharing. The video game market has expanded more than ever since that time with more and more systems and games being sold every console generation. The Nintendo DS just broke basically every single sales record that ever existed despite the fact that it's the easiest, cheapest, and most convenient system for downloading and playing roms. The same thing goes for the PS2 before it.

[BIL]

By giving them exposure that they wouldn't have had otherwise. Cave would probably still be around, but smaller companies and independent developers probably wouldn't have bothered with shmups because no one would know about them much less give a single damn about them.

Exposure also forces them to make better games. If the game is terrible, then it will be well-known and the game won't sell. If it's good, then that will get out and the game will see better sales.

I didn't ask "how," I asked "when." Did pirates save the genre from obscurity in the mid-90s? mid-00s? More recently?

And what a load of nothing you just wrote. What smaller companies, exactly? Milestone, Qute, Warashi, Moss? Triangle Service certainly weren't begging Western fans to pirate Trizeal. Seems it sold enough to keep them alive, though. CAVE's contemporaries like Psikyo, Raizing and Takumi are long gone. Guess they didn't get their piracy benefits.

I'm sure there are independently-made beltscrollers out there too, by the way.

[Nasirosuchus]

Morals and ethics are completely subjective. Your standards of what's right and wrong don't encompass the entire world.

There should still be a level of core honesty where you don't take someone's work for nothing just because you believe you're entitled to it. If I was a niche game developer and I published a game and everyone just pirated it, I'd never write a single game again, and I'd probably post a nice big 'fuck you on behalf of myself and my family' to the relevant community.

Or you could just ignore that antiquated stigma and appreciate the exposure that you otherwise would have never had. As I stated in my previous post, the market for games and the money brought in have increased more than ever since P2P file sharing made it possible for anyone with a broadband connection to download them to their heart's content.

[Nasirosuchus]

By giving them exposure that they wouldn't have had otherwise. Cave would probably still be around, but smaller companies and independent developers probably wouldn't have bothered with shmups because no one would know about them much less give a single damn about them.

Exposure also forces them to make better games. If the game is terrible, then it will be well-known and the game won't sell. If it's good, then that will get out and the game will see better sales.

I didn't ask "how," I asked "when." Did pirates save the genre from decline in the mid-90s? mid-00s? More recently?

And what a load of nothing you just wrote. What smaller companies, exactly? Milestone, Qute, Warashi, Moss? Triangle Service certainly weren't begging Western fans to pirate Trizeal. Seems it sold enough to keep them alive, though. CAVE's contemporaries like Psikyo, Raizing and Takumi are long gone. Guess they didn't get their piracy benefits.

I'm sure there are independently-made beltscrollers out there too, by the way.

Whoa, we've got a badass here.

MAME and the P2P file sharing weren't around in the mid-90's, and Raizing, Takumi, and Psikyo were all dead by the mid-2000s', so there's no need to ask that question when the answer is already there for you.

Whether Triangle Service asked for it or not, you'd better believe that they benefited from the exposure. My point here isn't that P2P saves every single company that makes games of a dying genre nor that every single company would fail if it weren't around (Cave, for example). My point is that it has benefits and isn't some evil which serves only to siphon off profits.

[BIL]

Whoa, we've got a badass here.

Careful, last time you got flustered with me you forgot how to use quote tags and trainwrecked an entire thread. :/

MAME and the P2P file sharing weren't around in the mid-90's, and Raizing, Takumi, and Psikyo were all dead by the mid-2000s', so there's no need to ask that question when the answer is already there for you.

So clearly, major-league shooter developers besides CAVE would still be around were Westerners able to pirate their games. How strange then that not even minor names like Milestone and Warashi could survive today despite all that Western exposure. And funnily enough piracy didn't seem to help Yagawa's CAVE games to not bomb either. Or even get a PS2 budget reprint. Maybe foreign exposure via piracy isn't as relevant to the fortunes of Japanese arcade game manufacturers as you'd like to think.

Whether Triangle Service asked for it or not, you'd better believe that they benefited from the exposure.

Prove it. Show me that Trizeal directly benefited from Westerners pirating shooters and deciding to buy a copy. Show that Western exposure helped TS at all, and not legitimate exposure from within their native country itself.

My point here isn't that P2P saves every single company that makes games of a dying genre nor that every single company would fail if it weren't around (Cave, for example). My point is that it has benefits and isn't some evil which serves only to siphon off profits.

If you'd actually said the above I wouldn't have responded in the first place since it's a vague and fairly obvious statement that I don't disagree with. :/

[system11]

That so-called "piracy" is how a lot of people got into shmups. Without the exposure that it brings, shmups would have died off just like 2D beat-em-ups.

When did Western pirates stop the genre from going the way of the beltscroller, exactly?

(I mean I like the ROMZ as much as anyone, if only for detecting shitty games and subsequently not buying them)

By giving them exposure that they wouldn't have had otherwise. Cave would probably still be around, but smaller companies and independent developers probably wouldn't have bothered with shmups because no one would know about them much less give a single damn about them.

Exposure also forces them to make better games. If the game is terrible, then it will be well-known and the game won't sell. If it's good, then that will get out and the game will see better sales.

You're missing the point entirely.

It's not your right to make that decision, you didn't make the content, why do you get to enjoy it without paying the person who did without the decision being theirs?

I fucking hate the culture of entitlement.

[BIL]

As mjclark advised so long ago, the concept of not taking things that aren't yours is a relic that leads straight to a job at McDonald's.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I fucking hate the culture of entitlement.

Oh god, really. Tons of people assume they ought to be able to download music or videos for free if it's available without feeling guilty. But if you're not actually supporting the developers by buying their shit, it's still taking something for free you're supposed to have paid for. If you enjoy an artist's work, you should make an effort to support their work.

I might play roms, but I don't pretend like it's completely guiltless or totally ethical; I try to buy a company's new releases when I can and I do try and actually own a copy of games I play, even if emulation is more convenient for me.

[Nasirosuchus]

You're missing the point entirely.

It's not your right to make that decision, you didn't make the content, why do you get to enjoy it without paying the person who did without the decision being theirs?

I fucking hate the culture of entitlement.

This is what I'm talking about when I say that morals and ethics are subjective. It makes no sense to brings things like that into the argument because we just don't see things the same way. If you think that it's wrong to enjoy a work without paying for it, then that's fine. I'm not going to change your mind. I don't think that there's anything wrong with it and you're not going to change my mind. I don't feel any shame for it and I don't feel a need to say "I do it all the time but I know it's wrong" to rationalize it. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

On the other hand, when we look at things that can be objectively measured such as whether or not it causes financial or economic harm, there isn't any evidence showing that it does. We can also see that it's brought exposure which is good for any business.

If it's not doing any harm and in some cases is actually helping companies by bringing them more exposure and more business then I don't see the point in making a big deal out of whether or not it's morally or ethically wrong.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I don't think that there's anything wrong with it and you're not going to change my mind. I don't feel any shame for it

lovely sentiments

The issue isn't whether or not it can be exactly quantified how much piracy affects a developer; it's an attitude issue. We should have the attitude that we try to support developers whenever possible, not that we should expect everything to be readily available for free and complain when it's not. If you work hard to produce something that you're selling as a commercial product, it's not unreasonable to expect people who enjoy what you've made to support it by purchasing it to support your work instead of grabbing a free copy.

edit: typos galore

[Nasirosuchus]

I don't think that there's anything wrong with it and you're not going to change my mind. I don't feel any shame for it

lovely sentiments

The issue isn't whether or not it can be exactly quantified how much piracy affects a developer; it's an attitude issue. We should have the attitude that we try to support developers whenever possible, not that we should expect everything to be readily available for free and complain when it's not. If you work hard to produce something that you're selling as a commercial produce, it's not unreasonable to expect people who enjoy what you've made by purchasing it to support your work instead of grabbing a free copy.

We can't objectively measure what attitudes people should or shouldn't have anymore than we can objectively measure morals and ethics. This is why I don't think there's really any point in talking about morality because people simply have different ideas of what's right and wrong. We can only objectively measure the financial and economic effects.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Basically, you justify your actions by saying there's no point in wasting time thinking about whether or not something is right or wrong if it can't be measured purely via quantitative means. Very convenient way to live.

[system11]

This is why I don't think there's really any point in talking about morality because people simply have different ideas of what's right and wrong.

"I've decided I'm doing nothing wrong therefore I'm not".

Selfish /and/ entitled. People like you are why comapnies are so DRM crazy. Good job.