You could just not have morals about the subject like me and some of my friends up at college....here is what we did and do
Age of Empires 2......great great great multi-player game......
hmmmmm....only 2 guys had a copy of it in our suite (5 rooms x 2 people per room = 10 people)....8 of us had it installed on our computers and just got a crack for it off the net where there is no cd in the drive required to play......
then we could play 4 vs 4 AOE2 all the time

Well I think it should be like this:
say your game is $30, and based on network play. It uses a WON-like autentication (half-life)

There are 2 versions to buy:
1) 1 license game for $30
2) 2 license game for $40 or $45

When 2 friends want to play this against eachother and over the internet, they will buy number 2, saves them money.
Right now, if someone buys it, he usually wait and to see if he really wants to pay the buck for that.

so basically, both players and developers benefit from this.
Ok, your second game sells for less, but it takes less to produce (no extra box, only a jewel case or well, that''s up to the publisher actually). But more important, it''s better to have sold 2 items for less, than one and being unsure about the second one.

Yes, there will be somekind of market at schools, but hey, if kids can get a game legally for less, they are more willing to pay for it

just my 2 bucks for all publishers out there

first of all it is pirating even if you don''t sell it. Giving a copy to a friend for him to use at his house is very bad, he never needs to buy one then.

On the other hand if you have a home network things are different. Most companies realize that letting multiple people play on one network helps drive sales. Thus many companies such as blizzard have set it up so that eight people can play per cd, but the fake copies can only join games created by the real copy. In fact you can even play on battle.net with a spawned copy. This of course makes more people buy the game. Of course not all companies have the time to build that in, or maybe they aren''t smart enough to realize the benefits. So you have three choices: don''t buy the game, buy it and make a copy for your lan, buy two copies. Not buying the game just hurts you and the company, I think they would prefer the middle choice over that. Sure they don''t get to sell two copies but they probably wouldn''t have anyway. I mean if a game doesn''t let me play on multiple computers I probably won''t buy it at all. For the most part lan play is just a minor part compared to internet play anyway, they should view spawning as free advertising.

Going to play devils advocate a bit here .

quote:
Video is a second generation market. It is there to mop up additional revenues after the primary revenue, which is showing it on the big screen. It also comes out quite some time after the ''real'' version. It would be better to compare videos to re-released software: which you still have to buy multiples of, but costs a whole lot less. If you want to wait for the cheaper version, feel free, but if you want it now, pay up.

I think you missed the point he was trying to make: that it''s absurd to have to pay for multiple copies of the same product.

quote:
I don''t see why being in the same family means you shouldn''t have to pay for the software! If 2 people want to play, why shouldn''t they pay twice?

Because they''re probably only playing part of the game (the multiplayer aspect). If they were also going to play the single player as well, than perhaps they should buy another license.

--TheGoop

For the home network, I don''t think you should have to buy a new game. In my eyes it seem like an unreasonable thing to ask a player, who has already shelled out 40 bucks for a game, gets home and can''t play against a friend to bo pay another 40 bucks for the game again. I like the way Freespace 2 handles its multi player in this area, It will allow you to install and the game from the cd''s and start the game without the cd''s in the drive. But when you logon to the server, you have to play against someone with a cd in their drive. This way if you wanted to play against a friend, you would just have to make sure they were logged on.

Glandalf

I believe that if I buy a copy of say, Diablo II, then I am more than justified in playing with my roommate on our LAN. If they make a 1-player-1CD rule, we''ll burn a copy.

Now of course, maybe Diablo II is a bad example. We are all definately buying a copy of that one!

Bottom line is this: the license agreement printed on these games are BS. It''s a cohesion contract in which I have no power to modify any aspect of it. These agreements, which are dictated by one party with absolute power over the other are barely legal and never stand up in court when challenged.

When I open a game, I cross out the lines I don''t agree with and write new ones, like:

"I have the right to play this game on any computers in my private household."

If the software maker disagrees with this change, they are free to contact me, but for some reason they never do.

JoeG: those gaming places have different popularity depending on where you live. I don''t think they would be that successful in America since we don''t pay by the minute for local calls, thus making it easy for everyone to have a good internet connection. For FPSs and other ping sensitive games yeah an internet place would be cool, though more and more are getting cable or dsl, so I think it would weaken and die in a few years, you wouldn''t be able to charge that much.

Europe I hear they have some, never been there but I bet most big cities have at least one, Canada too. Korea on the other hand is filled with the places. Starcraft''s popularity is astounding there. It is a social thing there where normal people go and place for hours and hours, some people even go on dates to these places. They charge about a dollar an hour and you just play whatever you want. They are usually open 24 hours. The country has 17000 of them at last count, each with dozens of computers. Estimated revenue for 1999: 3.5 billion dollars, in a country of only 40 million, just from these places. Several top Starcraft players have actually lived in Korea for months at a time, living on tournament winnings and endorsements. I could go on and on, quite simply an amazing phenomenon. Some guy actually died because instead of sleeping he would go and play some game every night after work and play till he had to go back. After a few months his heart just failed and he collapsed.

I haven''t heard whether they get a discount or not, but I''ve heard that like 40% of the copies are pirated.

I don''t know if it would work where you live, maybe if you tie it in with other things. Perhaps have a back room for quite internet use (like reading email) and you could give the average person lessons in how to use the internet. You might sell software, people could then take home the stuff they play during the day and they get to try it out first thus driving impulse buys. Hmm you could rent out the place to groups like maybe magic tournaments. I think a D&D neverwinter nights lan thing would be extremely popular.