Pirated Games…

[adz]

crawff wrote:

I was wondering if the impact of pirated games for the Amiga seriously contributed to Amiga’s downfall...

Short answer...No

Long answer...Use the search function, this has been discussed waaaay tooooo many times already.

[amigadave]

crawff wrote:

I was wondering if the impact of pirated games for the Amiga seriously contributed to Amiga’s downfall or was Commodore still largely to blame?

If we had brought all are games at full retail price, would Commodore have been in a superior financial position?

I am only curious… I remember reading my Amiga magazines at the time which suggested that Pirated games would spell the end of the Amiga… (as a mainstream system)

As others have stated, the software pirates only caused some of the software developers to stop writing games and applications for the Amiga and write for different OSes instead, not because there was less piracy, but because there were more sales to offset the lost revenue due to the piracy.

I am sure that the pirates had some small affect on there being less games and applications for the Amiga as more and more developers moved to writing for MSDOS, Windows and even MacOS.  That lack of good software late in the Amigas life probably had an affect on sales of the Amiga A4000, A1200 & maybe the CD32 (but we all know that C= couldn't get the CD32's into the USA due to other problems at the end).

Management of Commodore killed the Amiga, piracy just scared a few developers away and that only made it harder for the Amiga to survive at the end.

That is my take on the past in a nutshell, but very simplified, as there were so many other factors.

[Delta]

I remember some of my friends had a huge collection of pirated games.  Everytime we went to the (only) local store selling Amigas to order any of the good titles, they could never get it.  

It was easier to borrow or get my own dirty copy.  I was just a spoiled 14 years old kid who wanted to play the game NOW, not some day when he maybe would find a legal version

[mdv2000]

Software Piracy tends to push hardware sales, so I don't think it killed the Amiga... probably actually kept it going for longer than it would have if there was no piracy.

To paraphrase the people at EPIC (Gears of War Creators) - "the people who know how and install top end graphics accelerators on their PCs are the same ones who know how to use newsgroups and torrent tools."

Off but on the subject too - PC Gaming is dieing due to piracy - but only cause consoles can take over.  You can't compare the experience/quality of a 52" HDTV + Xbox360(or PS3) with a PC Gaming not matter the video card!

  In the heyday of the Amiga, there where no consoles that could perform at the quality/level of Amigas (80's).  It wasn't until the SEGA Genensis/SNES that some games even came close... but nothing as good as Wings or Awesome on those consoles!  So getting games easy was probably something that kept the Amiga alive....

I also remember getting Amiga software was so hard unless you mailed ordered.  EggHead software near me quit carrying Amiga software in 91 and EB quite in 92.

Part of the reason I went to a PC in 94 -couldn't find software new or used!

My 2 cents worth....

[Delta]

Off but on the subject too - PC Gaming is dieing due to piracy - but only cause consoles can take over. You can't compare the experience/quality of a 52" HDTV + Xbox360(or PS3) with a PC Gaming not matter the video card!

Hopefully for me PC gaming will stay alive because I just can't play with a joypad...I simply hate it.  

Ironically a good ol' one button joystick made me a happy Amiga user.

[AndreasM]

mbrantley wrote:
More software sales would have certainly helped the software companies, but Commodore was primarily a hardware company. And I believe it went out of business through no fault of its customers.

Yes and No.

More software sales helped at first only the software company. right.

And many pirate copies help the hardware company. right too.

BUT not enough software sales or to many pirate copies make that the software companys dont make new games for the system.

and no new games damage at the end the hardware-company.

that (not the only one) problem what amiga have.

[takemehomegrandma]

Pirated games definitely *helped* the Amiga...

[AndreasM]

takemehomegrandma wrote:
Pirated games definitely *helped* the Amiga...

at the start yes. but at the moment where are to many pirated games and not enough sold games, they was a part for the damage of amiga.

[coldfish]

My first Amiga, A500 came with a stack of pirated games, which was good because that allowed me to get into the machine.

It wasnt that long before I was buying original AAA titles, I probably collected around 20-30 boxed originals, at about $20-50 each during the time I owned an Amiga.

Most of the pirated games I had I probably wouldn't have bought anyway so from the developers point of view I wasnt a lost sale.

[amigadave]

How many $20 to $50 games could the average 14 year old afford per month or year from 1985 to 1995?

My point is that toward the end of Amiga production, piracy had affected the number of software developers writing for the Amiga and the number of new games and applications available, as well as the number of computer dealers that carried Amigas, or any software or games for the Amiga, hence your trouble finding the game you wanted at a local store.

Piracy did not cause all of Amigas problems, but I would say after 1990-1992, piracy was doing at least as much, or more harm than it could ever do good by enticing your friends to go buy an Amiga just because they too could pirate a bunch of games.

Without good, new software applications (and games) to run, any computer, no matter how advanced and great, is just a waste of electrical energy.  One of the challenges for our Amiga community to stay alive and thrive is to have coders continue to write and/or port new and exciting software to the AmigaOS3.x, AmigaOS4.x and MorphOS2.x, so please support the few commercial developers that we have left, support the very few Amiga dealers that are willing to stock Amiga hardware & software when no one else will anymore.  Don't PIRATE Amiga software anymore.  It isn't helping anyone, or keeping our community alive. (not intended to be directed at anyone in particular)

Learn to program and join a group to write a new game or improve a web browser, or word processor.

[AmigaHeretic]

amigadave wrote:
How many $20 to $50 games could the average 14 year old afford per month or year from 1985 to 1995?

This is a good point.

People talk about Amiga piracy a lot, but on the PC it was the exact same things.  All my friends had pirated Windows, pirated Photoshop, etc etc.

But lets take a look at Photoshop....

Can your average 14 year old afford Photoshop?  No, but does it really matter to Adobe if they pirate it?  I mean most 14 years olds back then weren't actually using Photoshop in a business or to make money.  Or, that is to say if it wasn't available through piracy then those 14 year olds wouldn't have gone out and bought it so, there really is no lost sales.

But, come 10 years later.  Those 14 year olds are now out of College.  Guess what program they are 100% efficient at??  Photoshop!!   So, now they start their own business or work for a company and guess what product they are going to buy or get their company to use?  Photoshop.
So to me, the kids using Photoshop is the best free advertisement Adobe could get.

Piracy didn't kill off MS because they were smarter than Commodore management.  Kids in my school had just as much pirated "PC".  More since people actually new what a PC was thanks to what I call Commodore's no advertising policy.

It's funny that the only place I ever say Amiga ads was IN Amiga magazines!   Uh, I think the people reading those mags already new what an Amiga was..  oh Commodore lol!!   :-)

[Phantom]

PIRACY is all over even now, everywhere.

Who buys original games for their PS2, PSP, XBOX, PC machine anymore? The same applied for the Amiga market too. The difference is that the above machines have strong market and plenty of money.

I don't think that only piracy destroyed Amiga. It was just a piece of the cake.

[AndreasM]

Who buys original games for their PS2, PSP, XBOX, PC machine anymore?

enough

when not, no new games. simply way

[Phantom]

Sure, but keep in mind that when the Amiga was even at its top, even in Greece was very difficult to find original games. So the only way, was piracy unfortunately. It's not our fault in some ways, but Commodore marketing to some countries like ours.

[stefcep2]

At its most popular ie the OCS and ECS years, most people that bought an Amiga did so for the games.  Sure there was Lightwave, the Video Toaster and DPaint, but the A500 plus pirated GAMES (not apps) was what "Amiga" meant to users at the height of its popularity.  So the proficency at photoshop argument didn't apply.

the fact is that most Amiga owners i knew had a collection of 200+ games: 195 pirated and 5 genuine.  Now if anyone thinks that didn't affect the bottom line of the games publishers and programmers, they are kidding themselves.  

Games piracy made Amiga hardware popular initially, but had a huge impact on games publishers choosing not to support Amiga and move on to consoles and PC ( where piracy was a fact, but because there were so many PC's out there, they could still make money, and CD burners were only for the rich, so it was harder to burn copies of PC CDROM games).

In the AGA years, people had huge hard drives ie 1 gig, they had 56k modems, so that it was easy and fast to download a 250k lha game file and store hundreds of them on your hard drive.  Consequently, games publishers sold only about 1 in 10 of the games that were being played.  Ofcourse that meant they lost money, moved elsewhere, and without software, the lifeblood of the platform dried up.

[guest3110]

from stefcep2:

games publishers choosing not to support Amiga and move on to consoles and PC ( where piracy was a fact, but because there were so many PC's out there, they could still make money,

Yeah, few in the Amiga community want to talk about this--how, if Amiga OS were to go to x86-64, it would face the same thing the developers who went there did: success
 :lol: (*despite* piracy).