My first thought was 'Only $300?'... looked it up and that's about $486 in today's money (or $675 AUD with current exchange rate). Hardly seems worth the risk imho.

Either way, its a good story, thanks for the link!

interesting read, but why anyone would pirate anything is mind boggling to me. I mean look at TIE fighter, if you waited one flipping week you could have bought the game. And you would have had a manual too 🤣

80's sneakernet mentality was still a holdover at the time. 😒

Jade Falcon wrote:

interesting read, but why anyone would pirate anything is mind boggling to me. I mean look at TIE fighter, if you waited one flipping week you could have bought the game. And you would have had a manual too 🤣

Gosh your mind is easily boggled! The mentality around here during the 80's / early 90s was that all software should be free, and at most a few bucks if you were feeling really posh and sent away for a pirated version with a photocopy of the manual. My father taught me that and I didn't think twice until CD's made the floppy swappy more of a challenge.

The story about a guy who snagged it on the "internet" back in 1994 is kind of funny, should have been a BBS.

I snagged DOOM 2 a month before it hit stores from a BBS in Canada and passed it onto my friends. Would have just purchased it if it was available but hated waiting.

Anyone remember when the codes to unlock Quake 1 shareware CD were leaked (plus all the other games on it like DOOM , Heretix, Hexen, etc), everybody was running to the stores to snag those and I still have mine from BestBuy.

cool story SquallStrife!

God bless that dude 😀

many a crack / trainer / cheat mode / intro did I write back in the pre-windows days *cough*..

Unknown_K wrote:

The story about a guy who snagged it on the "internet" back in 1994 is kind of funny, should have been a BBS.

I snagged DOOM 2 a month before it hit stores from a BBS in Canada and passed it onto my friends. Would have just purchased it if it was available but hated waiting.

Anyone remember when the codes to unlock Quake 1 shareware CD were leaked (plus all the other games on it like DOOM , Heretix, Hexen, etc), everybody was running to the stores to snag those and I still have mine from BestBuy.

I think I still have mine. Was it a paper/cardboard jewel case? I never heard anything about a code leak. Figures, of course, after I've bought all those games off GOG or Steam. 🤣.

snorg wrote:

Unknown_K wrote:

Anyone remember when the codes to unlock Quake 1 shareware CD were leaked (plus all the other games on it like DOOM , Heretix, Hexen, etc), everybody was running to the stores to snag those and I still have mine from BestBuy.

I never heard anything about a code leak.

I'm sorry but I totally have no idea what you are talking about 🙁
(nfo here) /me *whistles*
oh the memories...

It's nice that these old shareware CDs in fact have the full soundtrack as CD-DA, which you can rip to ogg and use with a more up-to-date engine/gfx pack combo like Quake Epsilon.

Jade Falcon wrote:

interesting read, but why anyone would pirate anything is mind boggling to me. I mean look at TIE fighter, if you waited one flipping week you could have bought the game. And you would have had a manual too 🤣

"So people are stealing stuff and we're optimists. We believe that 80 percent of the people stealing stuff don't want to be; there's just no legal alternative."
--Steve Jobs, Esquire, June 2003.

"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."
--Gabe Newell, The Cambridge Student, November 24, 2011.

You seem to be lacking context. Maybe you didn't grow up in the 1980-90's and/or take for granted the current instant global economy.

Back in the good old days, software distribution was a huge challenge if you didn't live in the continental U.S.A, near it's borders or some countries in western Europe. Computer retailers were few and almost exclusively carried spreadsheet, word processors, programming languages, disk utilities and antivirus programs. The 1985 crash had deep repercussions too. Maybe for you it seems ridiculous to pirate just to get it 1 week in advance, but for the rest of the world, gray and black market software distribution was the only option. Mexico, Central and South America, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Australia, New Zealand. Punk culture had some influence too, but I would blame poor distribution mostly.

I remember the local weekend computer shows from the 90's had software venders selling export versions of games at big discounts, not sure how that worked.

They are. The inherent difference is that someone who pirates essentially makes a copy of something. A car burglar takes the one car and drives away.

Piracy is a deep and interesting matter and can't be dismissed that easily. It has arguably done a lot of negative and positive things throughout history. Music distribution certainly wouldn't be the same nowadays without piracy. A big name artist for example, making their own music and selling it on their own was unheard of back in the late 90's, early 00's. Just look at what music companies were charging for CDs back then and how many of their profits were actually going to the artists.

psychz wrote:

I'm sorry but I totally have no idea what you are talking about 🙁
(nfo here) /me *whistles*
oh the memories...

Wow, thanks for the video. I've always heard about the unlocking programs but never saw one in action! 😎

Jade Falcon wrote:

lavadrop wrote:

"So people are stealing stuff and we're optimists. We believe that 80 percent of the people stealing stuff don't want to be; the […]
Show full quote

Jade Falcon wrote:

interesting read, but why anyone would pirate anything is mind boggling to me. I mean look at TIE fighter, if you waited one flipping week you could have bought the game. And you would have had a manual too 🤣

"So people are stealing stuff and we're optimists. We believe that 80 percent of the people stealing stuff don't want to be; there's just no legal alternative."
--Steve Jobs, Esquire, June 2003.

"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."
--Gabe Newell, The Cambridge Student, November 24, 2011.

You seem to be lacking context. Maybe you didn't grow up in the 1980-90's and/or take for granted the current instant global economy.

Back in the good old days, software distribution was a huge challenge if you didn't live in the continental U.S.A, near it's borders or some countries in western Europe. Computer retailers were few and almost exclusively carried spreadsheet, word processors, programming languages, disk utilities and antivirus programs. The 1985 crash had deep repercussions too. Maybe for you it seems ridiculous to pirate just to get it 1 week in advance, but for the rest of the world, gray and black market software distribution was the only option. Mexico, Central and South America, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Australia, New Zealand. Punk culture had some influence too, but I would blame poor distribution mostly.

I'm not a crook and I don't care for them. Your steeling no matter how you word it. If you can't afford the software go without. pirats are no different then car jackers, burglars, peruse snatchers or shoplifter. Just because buying the software legally it less of a convenience does not make it right to steel.

That's easy to say but not looking at the motivation and trying to understand it won't make the problem go away. Look at the above mentioned music industry. If they had continued to ignore the underlIng problem and just continued to condemn the music pirates the issue wouldn't have been resolved the way it has now.

Has the music piracy issue been resolved? Are digital downloads the way? Less money to the label/more to the artist, agreed, but less sales = less money in general, plus big label = big artist promotion campaign etc. That's a long discussion for sure, but a different matter altogether, I think it can't be compared to software piracy at all, apart from the "making a copy instead of stealing something from somebody" argument.

psychz wrote:

Has the music piracy issue been resolved? Are digital downloads the way? Less money to the label/more to the artist, agreed, but less sales = less money in general, plus big label = big artist promotion campaign etc. That's a long discussion for sure, but a different matter altogether, I think it can't be compared to software piracy at all, apart from the "making a copy instead of stealing something from somebody" argument.

Sure, I'm not saying things are peachy, but I'm certain they are better than they were 15 or so years ago. I think the subjects are similar enough though. Video games also became more accessible thanks to online distribution and competition in the online market. Indie devs certainly have it far easier than they ever did before, and to be honest I'm utterly glad it is so.
Granted, this is a double edged sword, as online distribution opened up the door to greedy tactics such as "reserved content" being sold as DLC, despite being ready since release. Or how about Always Online DRM, that's another one of my favorites... And many many more of course. I tend to avoid companies that do this and vote with my wallet by not being their games anyway, but most people don't really put a lot of thought into it, which pisses me off immensely.

Music Piracy changed when people quit listening to whole Albums, tapes, and CDs and instead just filled ipods with just the hits. You see the trend of fewer labels and fewer dollars for the artists and industry while Apple which creates no music gets a nice cut for distribution on iTunes. Since people just buy a single hit song for $1 (instead of buying the whole CD for $15) there isn't as much piracy going on. Artists are broke unless they can tour and make money.

F2bnp wrote:

Granted, this is a double edged sword, as online distribution opened up the door to greedy tactics such as "reserved content" being sold as DLC, despite being ready since release. Or how about Always Online DRM, that's another one of my favorites... And many many more of course. I tend to avoid companies that do this and vote with my wallet by not being their games anyway, but most people don't really put a lot of thought into it, which pisses me off immensely.

That's the future! 😜 It appears that single-player is slowly dying as well; a part of me is here for the simplicity of "insert media and play" of retro builds and old consoles, with no need at all for an internet connection, account log-ins etc. I guess that most people from the active gaming target demographic don't care about it though. It's easy to promote "the new hot thing", be it DRM schemes, DLCs or whatever, to kids who happen to accept things as they are, since their parents are paying anyway 😵

As for indie devs, yes it's neat, however it's common to see that their lower budgets make a gap between "quality" and "indie" games. It's not always the case, sure there are bright examples of awesome indie games, but people mainly care about first name titles and that's not gonna change any time soon, so much that me and you and some other small group voting with their wallet isn't enough to change the way gaming is heading 😢

@Unknown_K: Precisely. Artists make 95%+ of their money from live appearances nowadays...

Plot twist: game devs collaborate with pirates (1987).