But what if playing the leaked version convinces you that you shouldn't buy it upon release? You've enjoyed the benefit of all those marketing people without actually having to pay them!
Actually, one legitimate concern is that the leak is busted in a way that the final product isn't, sullying your experience in a way that the developer could not foresee. So I'm saying don't do it.
I don't see why it wouldn't. If in the end the product was bad and you decided not to buy it then it is no different to refusing to pay for a bad meal at a restaurant.
Only if you still purchase the game after playing some of the leak. It's weird to use the leak as a demo, and it' even worse to play the whole leak and just buy the game for the sake of it. You can wait, you know.
EDIT: "and don't buy the game for the sake of it" not "just buy the game". Ugh.
Nah. If you download it, you're feeding numbers that these companies look at and make really bad decisions based on. Plus, plans change. If by the time the game comes out, you've had your fill, or some accident leaves you broke, then you've straight pirated the game - and that's no good.
Fileshare is considered such a bogus child-raping abomination on Giant Bomb that even mentioning it is a problem. Downloading a leaked version of a game is considered fileshare (or "piracy"), therefore this thread is going down.
Nope, what if you find out you don't want to buy the game after playing it? Also why potentially ruin the game by playing unfinished versions and succumbing to piracy.
@MikeGosot: Why is playing the leak and also buying the real thing worse?
Most games have demos out that you could play if your just looking to test something out so I don't see any tremendous advantage to it. On the other hand it makes me think of when my hard drive died unexpectedly and took a majority of my amazon bought pre cloud mp3s with it and rather than rebuying them all I went and downloaded pirated versions of all the albums I'd had. So I guess it's not something that I have a problem with it if you actually do buy it day 1, though I wouldn't do it.
So you play the leaked, possibly broken, version and get quite far in, being bothered along the way by glitches and bugs that wouldn't be in the final version, and then you buy the real game and have to start a new game in the real, finished and mostly bug free, version of the game and lose all your progress.
My main question after all this is: "What's the point in going through all that annoyance and frustration just to delete the save and start a new game in the real version?"
I'll download what I want, I don't care what anyone else thinks.
I downloaded Skyrim to play it earlier because I'm going on holiday tomorrow and wanted a bit of extra time with the game as my delivery didn't show up until this afternoon. When I got my retail copy I punched the code in on Steam and continued with my saved games, simple, and not in any way morally corrupt. The only very very minor downside is because I wasn't playing the game through Steam (cracked version doesn't use it) I missed out on a bunch of starter achievements, fortunately I don't really care about achievements.
Haters gonna hate.
@TorMasturba
said:
So you play the leaked, possibly broken, version and get quite far in, being bothered along the way by glitches and bugs that wouldn't be in the final version, and then you buy the real game and have to start a new game in the real, finished and mostly bug free, version of the game and lose all your progress.
My main question after all this is: "What's the point in going through all that annoyance and frustration just to delete the save and start a new game in the real version?"
Also, why can't you just wait?
There's no annoyance, very rarely does a game get leaked more than a week or so early in the case of a PC game, so there's very little chance anything is going to be broken as you're just playing the version meant for retail anyway.
Why wait, if you can play it early and want to, why shouldn't you? If you bought the game I see no issue. Who cares? That's my attitude about it, I would have just waited for Skyrim but as I said, I'm away as of tomorrow so I wanted to put a few more hours in before going cold turkey.
I say yes, but only on two conditions. One, if you happen to have beaten it and loved it, you still buy the game at full price to support the developer. Two, if you didn't like it and didn't finish it, then you either find out how long or how many days you played and rent it for that long or see if you can donate or buy something else by that developer for that amount of money. That is according to the standards set by whatever renting system you would have chosen.
What is legal and what is wrong are two totally separate, subjective things.
Everybody tends to stretch the boundaries based off of what they can get away with, either with the law enforcement or their own conscience. Don't let other people try to dissuade or approve of your decision.
Legally, no. Morally, there's no moral standard for anything - it's subjective for society, culture and just personal opinion. So a forum, not the best place to ask. Whatever helps you sleep at night.
Whether you're going to buy the game later or not is irrelevant. By downloading a game you haven't purchased, or acquiring it in any other way for free, you are supporting an illegal framework and allowing it to grow. It doesn't really matter if you plan on purchasing the game later because you've already supported an illegal business model. What's done is done regardless of what you do in the future.
Nah. If you download it, you're feeding numbers that these companies look at and make really bad decisions based on. Plus, plans change. If by the time the game comes out, you've had your fill, or some accident leaves you broke, then you've straight pirated the game - and that's no good.
This is pretty much the best reasoning against it, and the reason I'm also against it. Also, when you torrent a game, you seed the torrent, helping those who would not later purchase the game to download the leaked version.
Also, wasn't there that one time where a 50 Cent album leaked months early and sounded nothing like the eventual release? Isn't that enough to keep people away from leaks these days? With the number of Day-One patches we get these days, it should be no surprise that the game still needs work before release.
Log in to comment