How much pirated Amiga software did you have?

[Firedawg]

I spent a lot of money on software back in the day (early 80's and 90's), and pirating software was not an option for me.  Today, I take advantage of trial software and if I find it useful I purchase it.  With older software that is no longer being sold or available I find myself procuring it from wherever I can.

The Dawg

[smerf]

Hi, a poll for the old days, how many pirated games or productivity software did you have in your collection at it's peak. Don't count anything post 1997 seeing how it became hard to get a legal copy. If you replaced your pirated software with a legal copy in that time frame, don't count that either.

Hi,

Believe it or not I did not have one pirated game until Arctic Fox, I was buying all my Amiga Software, then when Commodore changed the OS from 1.0 to 1.1, my Arctic Fox would not play anymore on my Amiga 1000, I contacted the software company that produced it and received a smart butt answer. Well on that day my whole idea of buying software changed, I broke and busted every piece of software that was copy protected, but if the software wasn't copy protected I bought it, simple as that.

smerf

[Pentad]

Hi,

Believe it or not I did not have one pirated game until Arctic Fox, I was buying all my Amiga Software, then when Commodore changed the OS from 1.0 to 1.1, my Arctic Fox would not play anymore on my Amiga 1000, I contacted the software company that produced it and received a smart butt answer. Well on that day my whole idea of buying software changed, I broke and busted every piece of software that was copy protected, but if the software wasn't copy protected I bought it, simple as that.

smerf

Yeah, EA was not big on patching their software with new revisions of the OS.   OS 1.0 and 1.1 was pretty horrible so when Kickstart 1.2 shipped with the new Amiga 500s there was a lot of software form them that just wouldn't work.   I always got the impression that it wasn't so much their code as the copy protection would break with the updates to the OS.   Way to go EA...

[zipper]

0. Bought about 50, most abroad via mail order. But inherited about 100 cracks from leaving amigans, stuffed with 10 - 20 different virii...

[Gulliver]

Back in the day, I had very few Amiga games, they were all original. In the year 2000 I started collecting Amiga software, mostly pirated warez kind of stuff.

But I have to say that nowadays the only software which I try to legally buy, is Amiga software. I have registered a few shareware Amiga packages lately, but then it is obvious, that some titles are only found as abbandonware/pirated no matter how you call them.

[koaftder]

This poll probably should have been ordered:

None
A few
A good bit
A lot
Truckloads

[mdv2000]

I never had pirated software for my Amiga - I had no access to BBS and I was the only one of my friends who owned a computer - they all had Atari, NES, etc.

Speaking of Piracy - check out this article.  http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy

I do believe Piracy doesn't hurt game sales nearly as much software vendors claim.

Everyone I know who won't pirate only buy 4-5 PC games a year and maybe a few more console games cause of the used prices they can get them at a Gamestop, etc.

My friends that do pirate - they have hundreds and eventually only end up really playing a few - and still buy 3-4 games a year cause they can't pirate on consoles easily or its a game in a series they always have bought.  So we still spend about the same each year on games - they just monkey around with more than I do.

I write software for a living so I just choose not to pirate - plus installing hacks, mods, utilities, etc is the best way to hose a machine and some of my friends have gotten eat up with viruses!

[Amiga_Nut]

15 a year more like! Why? Simple, after seeing what a hash most coin-op conversions were and all the ST ports shoved in our faces for 5 bucks more than the ST version I was not impressed.

However, Cinemaware ALWAYS got my hard earned cash, as did some of the other original games programmers like Sword of Sodan and Hybris/Battlesquadron group (Discovery) and a few others like Lotus II/Kid Chaos by Magnetic Fields/Gremlin.

Another thing that really annoyed me was magazine reviews, they would wax lyrical about pathetic conversions like Gauntlet II when everyone here with an IQ in even double figures knows Amiga Gauntlet should have looked and played identically to the arcade. So....there were jiffy bags full of disks arriving weekly, and most got formatted or traded back to others.

What made me laugh was people like Ocean/US Gold claiming how bad piracy was but they never admitted just how horrible things like Chase HQ/Outrun really was. Had these companies made the effort to even use 75% of the potential of the Amiga chipset perhaps people would pirate less I never changed my attitude, unless a demo disk showed me just how awesome a game was I played it first on pirate. Last full price game I gladly handed over a wedge of cash for was Super Stardust AGA, if everyone put that much technical effort into their productions I would have bought a lot more....simple as that.

On a side note, Microsoft NEVER deserve a penny of my money until the day the US courts grow a pair and smash them into tiny little companies a la IBM for all their dirty scummy tactics in keeping Windows on 95% market share! And it was the same with my ST also, Gauntlet 1 and Magnetic Scrolls beautiful adventures got my cash without regret.

The software companies have themselves to blame for piracy levels. there was no excuse for crap like Outrun/Chase HQ....especially when Lotus II Turbo Challenge showed the Amiga world just what they should have looked like.

[haywirepc]

I had alot back in the day, but one thing no one mentioned is how incredibly annoying real bought games could be, even today.
 
I bought a crapload of boxed games for amiga when I got a new 1200.
I was so annoyed with finding manuals and typing in codes and all that nonsense, I quickly gave the boxed games away and got whdload versions.
 
If I pay for a game, I don't want to go hunting for a manual, which was the most common form of copy protection back then. Its like I paid for being annoyed like this?

Now I realize, they had to do something, but that shit just irked me, back in the day, and now even more.
 
Steven

[Buzzfuzz]

Back in the days I used to drag my Amiga's to clubs, and Xcopy ran more hours than any game I have played.
On the simple note that I couldn't afford games, they would cost anywhere between 50 and 100 guilders or more.
I paid 50 for my first Amiga 500 which was from my aunt.
I was in high school, dind't have a job or anything, so this was the only way, look nicely at my father, dump everything in his van and off we went.
Every 1st or 2nd saturday of the month I was running floppy's trough the drives and my father paid most of them, usually when I got some cash from my grand father and mom that went into new packs of DS DD disks.
 
Sure, I would love to have bought some, but it wasn't easy to get games anyway in the Netherlands, there was always far to little stock.
And even if stores had it, I always had to go to cities kilometres away, sending it by mail was almost 7/10 times a fail because the disks were bent or damaged.
 
On my pc most things are bought, only have a few trial versions of FTP programs and compression tools and all games are bought.
Cause now I have the money to buy games for my pc.
Windows 7 is a OEM paid for and also MS Office 2007.

[Bezzen]

When I switched from the C64 to my first Amiga I made the choice to only go for purchased software. It meant I didn't have all the latest games, but it did mean that I really had time to play the ones I had. Back on the C64 when I had loads and loads of tapes with pirated games I really only loaded them up, played for a minute and said "Next!".

For productivity software I mostly relied on Amiga Format and CU Amiga cover disks.

[clusteruk]

Having invested in application software development and distribution for the Amiga platform only to find it being copied between users I learned early on, make the money from the hardware, normal users cannot copy that.

Still it was true piracy helped to kill the Amiga application market but was not the only reason for its downfall, but it was the reason for software vendors moving to other platforms. As for games, well I never got involved in games.

So here is a question, if a company invested in bringing software back to the Amiga would people copy that. Do people believe software has a value or a developers hard work should be given away for free. All I can say is I hope that chefs out there will cook me dinner for free, and builders sort my roof out for free :-)

[Ilwrath]

This poll probably should have been ordered:

None
A few
A good bit
A lot
Truckloads

Indeed, and I would have answered truckloads!  15 disks in one night would have been a slow night.  

I do believe Piracy doesn't hurt game sales nearly as much software vendors claim.

Everyone I know who won't pirate only buy 4-5 PC games a year and maybe a few more console games cause of the used prices they can get them at a Gamestop, etc.

My friends that do pirate - they have hundreds and eventually only end up really playing a few - and still buy 3-4 games a year cause they can't pirate on consoles easily or its a game in a series they always have bought. So we still spend about the same each year on games - they just monkey around with more than I do.

+1

Exactly.  I had thousands of games and programs I copied.  Of course, the few things that actually turned out to be good or useful I ended up purchasing, or purchasing the next version to.  Most of the productivity software I used on a routine basis was all legally purchased, and I'd almost always end up buying a game if I really liked it and it was available in NTSC.  

Most of the pirated stuff that wasn't replaced with legitimate versions was stuff I either tried and didn't like or tried and liked, but didn't have a real use for.  It spent most of its time collecting dust.  Still does, as a matter of fact.  It's all stuff I never would have purchased had piracy not been available.  

In fact, I'd go as far as to say piracy drove software sales.  I'd probably never have purchased any of the Final Writer series had I not downloaded a copy of it and found out how much better it was than the free Textcraft that came with my A500.  I probably wouldn't have bought Wings, either, as the box and reviews didn't come close to capturing how fun the game was.  If I hadn't have pirated Worms, would I have jumped with glee at the chance to buy Worms: DC?  Probably not....

[dreamcast270mhz]

Arrgh, all the time and still today

[ElPolloDiabl]

So here is a question, if a company invested in bringing software back to the Amiga would people copy that. Do people believe software has a value or a developers hard work should be given away for free. All I can say is I hope that chefs out there will cook me dinner for free, and builders sort my roof out for free :-)

Mostly depends on price. I like winzip, use it a lot and reinstall it every time it expires, but the $50 price tag is too high. $25 would be fairer. You could see it as $25 loss, but considering I'm not going to pay $50 anyway, it's a lost sale.

[stefcep2]

I bought my first A500 from a girl who had WALL CABINETS 4 metres by 2.5 metres high with drawers full of pirated software.  She threw in a box full of pirated software-mostly games for free.  When I saw she had every piece of commercial software ever made for next to nothing I was hooked and ended up buying a 100 or so games from her.  But what I found was that games didn't really interest me for long. I think many people pirated games simply beacsue they could, and probably never played most of them much, having it for the sake of having it.

My Amiga habit really kicked in when I got Real 3D version 1.4 off Amiga Format.  I then realised that productivity software was what I wanted, and to make the most of it, I needed manuals (and the tutorials in  CU Amiga, Amiga Format and ACAR).  So I bought legitimate copies of Wordworth (3,5,6 and Office), DPaint 4 and 5, Brilliance 2, Scala 3,  Cinema 4D v 4.  And HEAPS of software on the magazine covers, some of which I upgraded, for the manuals eg Vista Pro, Image FX.  

One app I never purchased was Lightwave, but I did use a pirated copy, but for its plaudits, I preferred Cinema 4D: Workbench look and feel, easier to learn, quality rendering engine, faster interface and faster rendering.  So even if I could afford the $1299 asking price, I wouldn't have bought lightwave.