Top New Games Releasing On Switch, PS4, Xbox One, And PC This Week - March 15-21, 2020. PC/Mac/Linux Society. You are contributing to the piracy woes on the PC while at the same time. Dec 01, 2015  Yes they are available, but not that extent up-to which Windows win32 applications can be found. Reason is simple user base of Windows and many Windows developers deliberately allowing their software to be pirated/cracked(it’s all market and busin. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a game created by Valve Corporation and released on August 21st, 2012 as a successor to previous games in the series dating back to 1999. The latest installment to the Counter-Strike franchise maintains a healthy, ever-intensifying competitive scene alongside a growing casual playerbase.

When software piracy is mentioned, it is usually in reference to PC games and movies downloaded off of illegal sites. Very little attention is given to the piracy of iOS games, which has become a huge problem for some developers.

Hunted Cow, the team behind the title Battle Dungeon, was forced to shut down its game this afternoon because the servers could not handle the load created by significant numbers of pirated copies of the game. Here’s what the team told fans:

Unfortunately we have taken Battle Dungeon down for the forseeable future. This was due to high levels of server load created by large numbers of pirated copies of the game. The high load revealed technical issues which we don’t feel we can fix to the level that our paying customers deserve.

In a forum post, the developers went on to explain that after a pirated .ipa surfaced on the internet, the number of people joining the game multiplied. As they were not paying customers, Hunted Cow was left without resources to maintain the server. Battle Dungeon, which is no longer available in the App Store, was a game that impressed app review site Touch Arcade.

Battle Dungeon offered up gameplay in the vein of Outwitters [Free] and Hero Academy [Free], with a 3D environment, XCOM style action points and an RPG twist. The ability to level up characters and buy better equipment was balanced against a point-cost system in which having more powerful champions meant playing with fewer of them. It was an appealing package for anyone who wanted more “crunch” and micromangement out of their async strategy games.

Players who invested money in the game will have the opportunity to get a refund by contacting support, which will include the $4.99 purchase price and any cash spent on in-app purchase.

For as long as video game piracy has existed, gamers and the industry have argued about whether the practice really hurts sales of legitimate games. In 2010, the Business Software Alliance estimated that generalized software piracy costs the world $51 billion annually and half a million jobs. Even most people who doubt every pirated download is equivalent to a lost sale will admit that illegal downloads have some negative effect on overall game sales.

So it's more than a bit surprising that an exhaustive study of piracy's effects by the European Commission found that 'illegal consumption [of games] leads to increased legal consumption.' To be more precise, the study estimates that for every 100 games that are downloaded illegally, players actually legally obtain 24 more games (including free games) than they would in a world in which piracy didn't exist.

The 306-page 'Estimating Displacement Rates of Copyrighted Content in the EU' report (PDF) points out a number of caveats for this headline number, not least of which is a 45-percent error margin that makes the results less than statistically significant (i.e. indistinguishable from noise). That said, the same study finds that piracy has the more-expected negative effects on sales of films and books (and a neutral effect on music), singling out games as one area where piracy really does seem to work differently.

Mac Game Piracy Reddit

'This positive effect of illegal downloads and streams on the sales of games may be explained by the industry being successful in converting illegal users to paying users,' the study authors write. Increased game sales may come from piracy as 'players [get] hooked and then [pay] to play the game with extra bonuses or at extra levels,' they continue. When it comes to games, 'only free games are more likely displaced by online copyright infringements than not,'—that is, people who pirate games seem to use them as replacements for other free gaming options more than for games they would otherwise buy.

How do they know?

The core of the study's findings come from surveys of 30,000 consumers in six EU countries (UK, Germany, France, Spain, Poland, and Sweden). Thus, it relies largely on self-reported data about game purchases and use of illegal download sites. But the study isn't so naive as to simply ask 'how many games do you pirate' and 'would you buy more games if piracy wasn't an option' and be done with it.

On the contrary, the study authors take pains to use a number of survey strategies and statistical models to limit the effects of false and misremembered responses, as well as the 'endogeneity' problem in the correlation (i.e. people who like games are more likely to play both pirated and legitimate games).

For instance, the survey asks respondents about their generalized moral attitude toward piracy and their familiarity with piracy terms, both of which are highly correlated with reported piracy rates. As the study authors put it, 'if people know piracy terms but do not report piracy, this might indicate untruthful responses.'

Reddit Piracy Mac Games

Mac Games Piracy Reddit Youtube

Respondents were also asked specific questions about their willingness to pay various prices for their last illegal download to try to transform hypothetical counterfactuals about a piracy-free world into specific questions about an actual game. Finally, econometric models were used to estimate piracy's effects based on piracy-correlated factors like the availability of high-speed Internet and the frequency people use the Internet to read about news or to do homework.

Reddit Piracy Tools

While it may be truly impossible to know what a piracy-free world would look like, this is one of the more exhaustive and rigorous efforts we've seen to actually suss out whether and how much piracy displaces legitimate game sales. The counterintuitive finding that sales likely increase as piracy goes up should be taken with a grain of salt, but it can't be dismissed entirely.