Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Why torrents are not evil imho

Okay, so I originally got the game by using a torrent file. Please refrain from condemning me until you read my short story.
I have been caught in the past by buying a full price game, that had no demo version, and not being able to play it with reasonable frames rates on my old computer. It was simply a waste of my money.
So what I do now when I see a game I might like is I get it for free first via a torrent. Then if I like what I see and most important, it plays well on my pc, I will purchase it.
So being able to first get a torrent of the game the Devs at Larian have made another sale.
I have now purchased the GOG version of DOT as well as the DLC.

And as a side note. I reckon the best form of DRM is lots of updates. Torrent sites do not always keep supplying updates. A person just might get fed up and buy a game knowing this.

I think the majority of people do this.
Every game should have a demo mode.
But it's still illegal.

I understand and support your reasoning, and agree that games really should come with a trial that you can sample before you commit to purchase. In my opinion it could only help sales, as it would give gamers security pre-purchase that they are going to buy a worthwhile product, but when you have no demo to go off of, it is kind of like buying a pair of shoes without seeing if they fit first.

I don't support the torrenting of games myself, and I bought my copy off of GOG yesterday, but still I support your reasoning. I'm just glad we have a website such as Youtube, to give us a great indicator of what things are actually like.

As far as logic goes, I agree with your reasoning but it still remains dodgy...

It would be the same as stealing a computer from a computer store, and then show up in that store a week later to confess your crime and pay the money... :p

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." -- William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Still, you must admit there is a very strong rationale for making the behavior you describe illegal. When tempted with the prospect of not paying for a game they've determined they enjoy, you must realize that most people would take a course other than the one you did.

I wouldn't say torrents themselves are "evil" or that unauthorised copying is either (as the OP has pointed out, it will lead to some extra sales). But demos can have issues too (may not be updated to fix bugs or performance issues and can give a misleading indication of gameplay) and they require support and download bandwidth from the developer.

It's worth noting that GOG now offers a 30-day guarantee if a game fails to work on a system, and most games there have several user reviews.

The problem of this is that 95% of the pirates encountering issues (wheter it are plain bugs or mere performance issues), blame it on the devs and write bad reviews and stuff like that, when most of these issue have already been fixed or addressed in patches they did not have because they pirated the game

They will probably blame, shout and point fingers instead of buying the game

I knew a game store once, where you could try out the game you wanted to buy on one of the store's computers. Now that was a nice store. It ceased to exist, like many other game stores. Too many websites around where you can get your games from. /sad

I completely understand why people try a torrent first. Too many games lack demos nowadays and too many games just simply turn out to be a piece of crap. And that's easily ~50 euros/dollars wasted.

@Stargazer: It's very nice that GOG offers a money back guarantee, but since it's only offered when a game fails to work on your system, you still have to be careful not to buy an unenjoyable game.

With all the people streaming games on Twitch or uploading whole playthroughs on youtube, you can make yourself a good picture how the game plays like, even if there is no demo version available. Since this game got financed with the help of Kickstarter, there is also a lot of information from the developers available, starting from the planning phase till the full release.

Advertising the use of torrents on the official forum is just straight up wrong and I would not be surprised if the thread gets locked down.

While I applaud you for buying the game, I don't approve of your methods prior to doing so. That aside, there's a very good reason why this game doesn't have a demo available, resources. As in, Larian doesn't have the resources available to them to make/update the game and work on a demo. They're a small studio, and so they have to prioritize on fixing the bugs before they can dedicate time/money to a demo. Perhaps they'll release a demo version once they get the majority of the patches sorted out, but I'd wager that won't be for a while.

I recall what Neil Gaiman said about piracy.
Think of your favorite book. The fist time you read it, did you own it? Or were you borrowing it from a friend?

If you like it, buy it. As long as you follow that rule, I don't think any harm is done.

Its tricky, when most companies can't be bothered to release demos anymore - be they large or small, then I have less issue with people torrenting to try them first. Its all well and good people saying "well you can watch a youtube / twitch stream to see what you think of the game" and it will give you some idea of what the game is like but it won't tell you how the game will perform on _your_ computer and how you get on with the controls or the interface, which are important things to know.

Its particularly annoying when many Xbox 360 games have demos, and certainly everything available in the Xbox Arcade has a trial version that you can test out.

A good option, now that GOG do it though Steam don't yet, is that GOG will do an unconditional refund within 30 days. So one could buy it there, test it and if things don\t work out as you'd like then you can get a refund rather than running the risk that you get caught downloading a torrent or get a torrent infected with a virus.

GOG will never give unconditional refunds. Any fool could just buy a game from GOG, download it, tell GOG they don't like the game and ask for a refund. Meanwhile the game is already downloaded, so GOG can't tell if you're still playing the game or not.
No company in the world would do business like that.

Well developer swen have stated on his blog that he had his moments on doing pirating when he was a kid because he had no money. Now, he's buying it since he got the money.

I'm with the guys that pirating in itself is not a bad thing if it is a means to an end. If you're going to buy a game, you need to test the waters first. The best thing to test the waters is either a demo or a full game (pirate).

Just being practical.

Another entitled person with whatever motivation to share his faulty logic...

Please, spare us the details. You will do whatever you feel right but don't try to push your wrong logic to us. Just shut up.

Have I woke up and logged into the RPG Codex by accident?

Not enough racism in this post I suppose to be the Codex but I remember seeing quite a few "I DO PIRACY AND I'M BADASS AND EDGY!!!" posts there.

When I was younger I stole about every computer game I had. It had little to do with being "edgy" and a lot more to do with being broke and lazy.

And perhaps even more importantly I was a part of a culture that frequently traded video games, something you can't really do now.

Indeed. But that was nothing to be proud of...

Well, judging from D:OS Larian and that forum seem to be joined at the hip, eh?

Hello and welcome to the forums Stubbie!

The veterans here that actually read Swen's (Larian Studio's owner) blog (www.lar.net) will know that he actually did this himself. It was the only way for him to play video games growing up. The end result is he is running a successful business and helping tons of independent game developers build their companies. He's even advertised some of their kickstarter products.

I'm not sure why there wasn't a demo version available, I guess because of how they ran the beta. I wish Larian would have made a demo along with the current game. I would suggest making the last version of the beta a demo.

Torrents are not bad. I myself have pirated a Larian game. When the hack came out about converting the German version of Divinity 2, I torrented it and hacked it. Of course when it came out I bought the game, then DKS, and then again with the Divinity Anthology pack.

The important thing is that Stubbie here is now a paying customer. Also Larian doesn't care to waste money on DRM that gets cracked rather quickly. If anyone here got the Anthology and read the developer diary, there will know how much Larian hates DRM themselves.

I'm sure there will be another kickstarter campaign in the future going off the success of this past one, would be a way to help fund the next game in development and help beta test it.