I must say, if every developer took the step that Cliff took the electronic market would be a busier, happier one. I had never heard of Positech Games until reading about the “pirate outreach” on reddit. I applaud our one-man-shop here, if not for attempting to make peace with pirates, then for a highly intelligent and rewarding marketing play. (For the record, I am in no way saying that Cliff did this for the marketing, it was, however, a very nice perk to his main goal.) Regardless of his intent, two things that cannot be denied; this is the first attempt by a developer to try to come to a common ground with pirates (who I personally see as criminals of the electronic era, sorry pirates; but there is no excuse for the intentional theft of a copyright, published work, regardless of the reason.) The second thing being that Cliff has brought several (possibly hundreds) of new, prospective buyers to his midst, and I can only hope that most will respect not only this man’s dedication to his work, but the price tag (LOW price tag) that comes with it.
Pirates, some of you I sympathize with, as I do a child stealing a loaf of bread for his poor family. It’s against the law, but accepted due to human emotion, ethics, whatever. Anything other than that brings nothing but contempt. You. Are. STEALING. These programs do not outline a plot to wipe out the human race, they do not hold top-secret information pertaining to your existence, and thus are not owed to you. Just because a program is written in a language that is open to everyone doesn’t mean everyone is entitled to that property, otherwise the inventor of C would be one happy go-lucky SOB.
Next time you’re bored and looking for something else to steal, try actually extending your knowledge. Open a book on C or C++ (I personally recommend “The C++ Programming Language” by Bjarne Stroustrup) and learn what it takes to build something of value on these modern-marvels called computers. It is not easy. The work that goes into developing something worth any value is WORK. Everyone enjoys getting a paycheck from their job right? Or, let’s say whoever is managing burger king comes up to you and says “Hey man, no paycheck for the last two weeks you’ve worked here. Nope, sorry. Looks like pirates took our burgers.” How would you feel? Now, take the difficulty of that job flipping burgers, multiply it by the time it takes to learn a computer language, and increase the amount stolen by $15 per burger. Am I doing a good job of putting this into perspective? Do you see my point?
No matter what your reason is. It’s wrong. It’s against the law. It hurts the people that are spending years developing tools to entertain you.
There are exceptions, and I will call myself a hypocrite before anyone else. Microsoft. Nuff said. There IS a line when it comes to pricing your software, and I’ve never been much of a fan of monopolies. Cliff is not Microsoft. Cliff is a one-man-show and it disgusts me that he is suffering from pirates to the extent that he’s changing the way he makes his games to appease them. Please people, pay for your products. Don’t take advantage of the internet, don’t take advantage of the people providing you with entertainment. It won’t be long before pirates and their supposed “love of freedom” bring the government into the internet and soon there will be a policed WWW where you can’t even whack one off without the feds spying on you through your webcam.
Furthermore, don’t take your anger for this post out on others. In other words, I don’t want this to piss off pirates into thinking “Well, I’m going to stick it to Mind537 by pirating this, which I’d have otherwise bought” Don’t do that. I’m a nobody posting a rant on a messageboard, please don’t take it out on other people. Hate me, burn me, troll me, flame me, whatever. But pay for your goddamn software!!! …(unless it’s microsoft 