Pirate shmup-o's (split from Fast Striker)

[Wenchang]

I'm not trying to start a fight,

[nem]

Understood the point. It was stupid.

No, you're stupid!



But seriously: no, Ford shouldn't get money when you resell your car. It's your car to do whatever you want to it. That's not my point.

Cave, NGDEV Team and Ford all make their money from sales of new merchandise. After said merchandise is out of manufacturing, piracy, bootlegging and second hand market sales doesn't really affect the bottom line one way or another (marketing ppl will have a different view, but whatever).

[Drum]

Wow, lots of people defending this bullshit. Ineptly. And personally attacking a guy who is concerned about it. Clearly these are gentlemen of quality and worth.

[emphatic]

Wow, lots of people defending this bullshit. Ineptly. And personally attacking a guy who is concerned about it. Clearly these are gentlemen of quality and worth.

[ZacharyB]

A downloaded copy of a game is not a lost sale

This is potentially incorrect...

Cave gets absolutely diddly squat from the $900 you spent on your Ketsui pcb.

...and so is this. They ignore how basic economics work.

1. When you buy a piece of entertainment, a DVD, video game, book, whatever, you are not paying for the physical stuff of the entertainment. You are paying for the opportunity to be entertained. When you entertain yourself with said product without paying for it, you can't get that initial entertainment value back. It's spent. The only way to get it back would be to delete the memory of the entertainment in your head... technology we do not currently have (unfortunately). If you don't trust a piece of software to entertain you sufficiently for the cost of entry, then that's alright. But don't put the developer at risk. You guys KNOW that THE is a small developer... Just some food for thought. Can't stop anyone if they really want to do something.

2. About the CAVE (or anyone) not getting back money from the second hand market... this is also potentially incorrect. When you pay the person who spent that $900 (or $50 or whatever) on a second-hand product, you are reimbursing them for their initial purchase of it. This affords them the opportunity to purchase again. Of course, they may not buy the same make of product. But you maintain economic flow by giving that person the room to spend money again on whatever they like. And it just may be another CAVE PCB. (You could extend this analogy to cars or any product.)

[Wonderbanana]

This whole thread is bullshit.

99% of people here must probably used Mame for shmups they don't 'own'.

Either piracy is piracy and you don't do it/condone it (bye bye shmupmame thread for example) or you accept it does occur and stop calling out folk individually as this thread has done (totally unfair to that user imo).

Any attempt to condone this because 'NG are small' or 'they post here' is crap regardless of your own thoughts/feelings on the matter.

[emphatic]

snip

This is potentially a great post.

[BPzeBanshee]

A downloaded copy of a game is not a lost sale

This is potentially incorrect...

Cave gets absolutely diddly squat from the $900 you spent on your Ketsui pcb.

...and so is this. They ignore how basic economics work.

1. When you buy a piece of entertainment, a DVD, video game, book, whatever, you are not paying for the physical stuff of the entertainment. You are paying for the opportunity to be entertained. When you entertain yourself with said product without paying for it, you can't get that initial entertainment value back. It's spent. The only way to get it back would be to delete the memory of the entertainment in your head... technology we do not currently have (unfortunately). If you don't trust a piece of software to entertain you sufficiently for the cost of entry, then that's alright. But don't put the developer at risk. You guys KNOW that THE is a small developer... Just some food for thought. Can't stop anyone if they really want to do something.

2. About the CAVE (or anyone) not getting back money from the second hand market... this is also potentially incorrect. When you pay the person who spent that $900 (or $50 or whatever) on a second-hand product, you are reimbursing them for their initial purchase of it. This affords them the opportunity to purchase again. Of course, they may not buy the same make of product. But you maintain economic flow by giving that person the room to spend money again on whatever they like. And it just may be another CAVE PCB. (You could extend this analogy to cars or any product.)

Valid point, but to be brutally honest I'd still pirate a game if it was easier versus buying it legit. No, there's no moral breaking involved with me there, its as simple as how I can get hold of said game and whether the developers choose to put in the effort to get the game to my area. In the case of Guwange it consisted of this:
1) connect 360 I already own to XBLA
2) buy Guwange on XBLA

Getting the arcade PCB would consist of:
1) finding who has the PCB
2) negotiating price
3) arranging delivery/shipping/money transaction
4) purchase PCB to TV adapter of some sort
5) purchase joystick setup that works with PCB

Now I'm no expert but getting it via XBLA and indeed MAME as a pirate is far more easier on me than getting the PCB. Guwange made it to my area so I bought the XBLA release despite having it already on MAME. I still gave my money to the company because I respected that choice to get the game to me that I've wanted, and I believed based on already playing it in MAME it was worth the buy.

Then you've got stuff like Fast Striker:
1) setup Dreamcast emulator
2) download ISO

versus:
1) find a guy on internet with Dreamcast
2) negotiate price
3) arrange delivery/shipping/moneyhandling
4) online purchase of Fast Striker

I'm assuming there that THE has something like Pier Solar dev's service in the way that you can purchase the game for a set price and put in your mail address details and worry no more, but if that isnt the case there's even more instructions there, making that process more lengthy again.

You could argue various points I've made here but bottom line: BPzeBanshee will buy a game legit if developers make it possible for him to get without troubles.
Cave did it for Guwange so I got it.
Fast Striker didnt so I didnt buy it.
(though to be fair I havent actually even bothered downloading it, been interested in other games no disrespect intended on Fast Striker itself)

[burgerkingdiamond]

This whole thread is bullshit.

99% of people here must probably used Mame for shmups they don't 'own'.

Either piracy is piracy and you don't do it/condone it (bye bye shmupmame thread for example) or you accept it does occur and stop calling out folk individually as this thread has done (totally unfair to that user imo).

Any attempt to condone this because 'NG are small' or 'they post here' is crap regardless of your own thoughts/feelings on the matter.

disagree. Using MAME to play games that are going on 15-20 years old, and in many cases never got a console release is not the same thing. We are all fans of a half dead, niche genre of games that doesn't get a lot of quality development. NGDEV are making professional, quality games for us, the hardcore shmups fan. They deserve to be supported.

[emphatic]

Some people just download EVERYTHING because they can. Let's call them hoarders. They never play these games/albums/movies, and some of them actually put lots of time and money in printing out artwork for their copies etc. These are the same type of people who build MAME cabinets and spend no time playing, just tweaking the frontend etc and spend days setting up emulators for games that they never will play. They will never buy games, nor play them.

For every 100 completed downloads of Fast Striker, I'm betting that only 50% will actually unpack the game (to add it to their iso library) and perhaps 20% will burn it to a disc to try it in their Dreamcast. 10% of these will fail, as they have no idea how to burn a Dreamcast disc properly. Then another 5% will just remove the download, because they find something else that they need to shoehorn in on their overfull harddrive (hoarders, remember?).

[burgerkingdiamond]

Some people just download EVERYTHING because they can. Let's call them hoarders. They never play these games/albums/movies, and some of them actually put lots of time and money in printing out artwork for their copies etc. These are the same type of people who build MAME cabinets and spend no time playing, just tweaking the frontend etc and spend days setting up emulators for games that they never will play. They will never buy games, nor play them.

For every 100 completed downloads of Fast Striker, I'm betting that only 50% will actually unpack the game (to add it to their iso library) and perhaps 20% will burn it to a disc to try it in their Dreamcast. 10% of these will fail, as they have no idea how to burn a Dreamcast disc properly. Then another 5% will just remove the download, because they find something else that they need to shoehorn in on their overfull harddrive (hoarders, remember?).

hahaha good point sir

[KBZ]

Some people just download EVERYTHING because they can. Let's call them hoarders. They never play these games/albums/movies, and some of them actually put lots of time and money in printing out artwork for their copies etc. These are the same type of people who build MAME cabinets and spend no time playing, just tweaking the frontend etc and spend days setting up emulators for games that they never will play. They will never buy games, nor play them.

For every 100 completed downloads of Fast Striker, I'm betting that only 50% will actually unpack the game (to add it to their iso library) and perhaps 20% will burn it to a disc to try it in their Dreamcast. 10% of these will fail, as they have no idea how to burn a Dreamcast disc properly. Then another 5% will just remove the download, because they find something else that they need to shoehorn in on their overfull harddrive (hoarders, remember?).

Truth. They are mere worms!

While it's sad to see, there are people who will steal from the largest corporation to the smallest mom n pop store if they think they can get away with it. I worked at an independent cd store for a little while and people stole from us several times a week. Didn't seem to matter to them how much we supported local music or tried to offer music at prices that weren't a rip off, and it wont matter to many on here that NGDEV are a small vulnerable shop supporting our need for Neo Geo shmups.

[Wonderbanana]

This whole thread is bullshit.

99% of people here must probably used Mame for shmups they don't 'own'.

Either piracy is piracy and you don't do it/condone it (bye bye shmupmame thread for example) or you accept it does occur and stop calling out folk individually as this thread has done (totally unfair to that user imo).

Any attempt to condone this because 'NG are small' or 'they post here' is crap regardless of your own thoughts/feelings on the matter.

disagree. Using MAME to play games that are going on 15-20 years old, and in many cases never got a console release is not the same thing. We are all fans of a half dead, niche genre of games that doesn't get a lot of quality development. NGDEV are making professional, quality games for us, the hardcore shmups fan. They deserve to be supported.

Tosh. Example: Ketsui.

But that doesn't matter, a company can revive their game at any time as a retro compilation or as an XBLA title (Guwange).

Edit: Should point out I'm not condoning piracy of Fast Striker or anything else, you just can't single out a user in this way for something most people here do by using Mame.

[Skykid]

All you guys are enjoying Ketsui and DOJ BL now, you needn't purchase the 360 ports.

Or buy any of those movies you stumbled across on the internet that you accidentally watched on your PS3.

[burgerkingdiamond]

Strangely THE/RHE have yet to comment. I guess they'd probably rather not deal with it. BTW, I'm getting my Fast Strider LE for valentines day. How romantic.

I found one on ebay with a really nice looking poster, but with shipping to the US from UK it was like $100. Not worth it. So I'm gonna have my girlfriend order it direct from NGDEV.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Then you've got stuff like Fast Striker:
1) setup Dreamcast emulator
2) download ISO

versus:
1) find a guy on internet with Dreamcast
2) negotiate price
3) arrange delivery/shipping/moneyhandling
4) online purchase of Fast Striker

Lul wut?

http://www.ngdevdirect.com/

You buy it straight from the dev. No more complicated than shopping online. How else could they have made it easier for you?

---

This is what annoys me about piracy. Fair enough if you can't buy it anymore - piracy is the only way to play a lot of games without resorting to huge prices on ebay (not a lost sale, but the additional $$$ from the second hand sale is just handing a third party profit - look upon that how you will) or tracking down arcade hardware (few people can feasibly have a tonne of this stuff). If you're paying more than a standard retail price via ebay etc., then you'll want to know if it's worth the investment and this is where free availablity comes in. I wouldn't stump up over £100 for Border Down, say, unless I'd played it first. Around £30 for a new release in the case of Fast Striker (the most I have paid for a new, i.e. not pre-owned, game since Shenmue 2) is about as risky as buying a game from a shop on a whim.

With MAME, the opportunity is there to allow people to purchase the ROM - but instead your only legal route is through the likes of a trickle of xbox live arcade releases or Nintendo's DRM-happy virtual console. With Fast Striker, you can still buy the game direct from the people who made it - so why the need to try to get it for free?

[Super Laydock]

One way ticket to Somalia and never return.

I despise them pirates.
If you deem something worthy of your time than buy it or leave it alone.
Excuses can always be found, but never make good what's bad.

[Casey120]

I'm so proud of you guys that don't use any sort of downloaded copyrighted software , be it games , music or movies or whatever , at first I thought this was another one of those selective piracy indignations but you truly are better Men then me .

The OP still reads as a Burglar breaking in someones house and is appalled to find his friends Watch in one of the drawers he is looking trough to me

[Heartwork]

As someone who is trying to make a living as a musician, I've had this debate many times with many people. The theory is that as independent musicians who are just starting out, we're supposed to hate pirates because we already don't make much money and they're stealing our sales by downloading. However, that couldn't be farther from the truth. Having people download our EP from a torrent site is the best promotion we can possibly have. I'm confident enough in the material we put out that I think anyone who hears it is pretty likely to enjoy it and become a fan. If they hear it via a torrent they downloaded, more power to them. The fact that they heard it is going to mean they'll probably come see us if we play in their city, and maybe buy a t-shirt or something. That's what puts gas in our van, gets us across the country on tour, and let's us do what we do.

I can't imagine indie developers like NGDEV are in a much different boat.

[burgerkingdiamond]

As someone who is trying to make a living as a musician, I've had this debate many times with many people. The theory is that as independent musicians who are just starting out, we're supposed to hate pirates because we already don't make much money and they're stealing our sales by downloading. However, that couldn't be farther from the truth. Having people download our EP from a torrent site is the best promotion we can possibly have. I'm confident enough in the material we put out that I think anyone who hears it is pretty likely to enjoy it and become a fan. If they hear it via a torrent they downloaded, more power to them. The fact that they heard it is going to mean they'll probably come see us if we play in their city, and maybe buy a t-shirt or something. That's what puts gas in our van, gets us across the country on tour, and let's us do what we do.

I can't imagine indie developers like NGDEV are in a much different boat.

small difference is that they sell games only. A band can go out and make money touring.

[mjclark]

So to summarise:
Do those Fast Striker torrents (and the publicity provided for them by the OP)
a) Cause harm to NG:Dev and the shmups community by stealing sales from them and depriving them of revenue, with a knock-on effect for future releases?
b) Actually help NG:Dev by providing them with free PR, increasing their fanbase and providing potential customers with a try-before-you-buy option?
c) Make no difference to NG:Dev whatsoever since pirates will always be pirates, shopkeepers will always be shopkeepers and indie dev supporters will always be indie dev supporters?
Looks like we're finding out eh?

I think the tone of this thread from the OP onwards reveals what we were all probably like at school and, if that's true, then it's good news for some but rather bad news for others lol

[LtC]

'Don't ask, don't tell' policy should be applied here. If you really want to start a holy crusade against shmups piracy there are better targets than mjclark.

This thread is pointless and will do noone any good, I suggest locking this away.

[Drachenherz]

I'd suggest putting Mjclark on the stake and watch him burn down slowly and screaming.

And then I'll go and play some Ketsui and DDP DOJ.

[neorichieb1971]

What it comes down to imho is whether we have the choice to steal Y/N?

If the internet was screwed down so tight you couldn't get a worm out of it everyone plays on a level playing field and poor bastards simply go without. Untighten it and we get to assume someone can climb out of their pit and shit on the things we love.

I always blame the system not the person. The system as it is today allows you to do perform copyright crime and brag about it with no lawful comeback on that person. Lets be happy no such relaxed attitude is given to real crime.

Hitting on one person when 50% of the internet users are currently indulging in copyright theft that is going as I type this is just silly. Perhaps some of you think its too close to home. But eventually, quite a lot of bad things get close to home. Thats just life.

[louisg]

Well, is there a Fast Striker demo out there?

[neorichieb1971]

Just demo the torrent and if you like it, buy it.

[gray117]

... Laws, copyright, fair usage all exist for a reason - even if/when the boundaries are a little grey.

As far as to their purpose in this commercial context; I fail to see how anyone could see this as anything, but a bad move.

Its the developers choice as to whether to make a demo, produce an accessible product or market a product well. Unless you are the creator/owner you are not entitled to anything you want at the expense of that creator. You are also not entitled to do what you want with your copy of their product.

I personally see this as still the first iteration, of a small niche developer and whatever your views on sharing I would say that taking control away from the developer does undermine them and their property ...

For example, I wouldn't say this case is even similar to the ketsui emulation concerns I had; where some argued the passage of time and the unique offerings of the 360 port essentially made it a different product.

[Wonderbanana]

For example, I wouldn't say this case is even similar to the ketsui emulation concerns I had; where some argued the passage of time and the unique offerings of the 360 port essentially made it a different product.

The funny thing is though it is You either keep the 'rules' to the letter of the law or you make up your own and if that's the case then everyone is right

[burgerkingdiamond]

'Don't ask, don't tell' policy should be applied here. If you really want to start a holy crusade against shmups piracy there are better targets than mjclark.

This thread is pointless and will do noone any good, I suggest locking this away.

I know this started out with MjClark, but I actually forgot about him. I normally would stay out of this kind of discussion, but the particular circumstances struck a nerve.

[mjclark]

I know this started out with MjClark

All lowercase please
I looked up "self-righteous indignation from all sides" on wikipedia and there's just a link to this thread lol