How much pirated Amiga software did you have?

[jj]

Probably at one point about 400 - 600 floppies

[Aussiholden]

When I bought my first A500, it came with a heap of un-original games, I eventually bought the original ones I liked, mainly for any of the maps or instruction that came with the games like Red Barron or Gunship. But even now I might download a game from Back2roots, mainly for Winuae.

[Ral-Clan]

Coming from the C64 tradition where disk-swapping was a popular pastime, I went straight into this with the Amiga.  Of course I was also a high school student with little money and no real appreciation of how much work it was to produce these games.  So....yes, I had about 99% pirated software, which was probably a hundred titles.

After I hit twenty I started gradually buying software.  It started by paying for Shareware licenses: Wzonkaland, ShapeShifter, SoundFX.  

After Commodore died and in the late nineties I would sometimes buy full boxed copies of older software from vendors at computer shows.  It's the classic case of "you don't know what you've got until it's gone".  It was just so nice to see some Amiga software in a real, professional box - you wanted to buy it partly for that reason.  Perhaps if we'd bought more boxed original software before Commodore went belly up things might have been different.

In the late nineties I started paying for full fledged application software like ImageFX, Aladdin 4d, PageStream.  I had been fumbling with pirated versions of the software for a few years, not fully understanding it, but still getting a lot of use out of it.  I realised that if it was really something I was using everyday I should PAY for it.  Even if it did seem expensive, with the amount of use I was getting out of it the price would work out to pennies a day.   Plus it was the right thing to do.

The benefit (especially for applications) was that it was much better to have the real manual and support from the official mailing lists or the author.  With this I started using the software to its full potential.  Plus it feels so much better to know you are supporting the author for his/her work and encouraging development of the title.

I've never regretted paying for this software.

So if any of you are using pirated versions of Aladdin 4d, ImageFX, PageStream, etc.....get out there a pay for legitimate copies.  These three publishers are still in business and we NEED them.  Some of them are porting their software to OS4 and they need the support.

All these titles are less than $100 and they are very much worth it for what they can do.

[fishy_fiz]

27

[Ral-Clan]

I feel mostly the same regarding software. The most I am ever willing to spend on a specific software product is $25 dollars. Unless this software is going to cure cancer and HIV alltogether, I am not willing to spend a dime more. It is unreasonable from a home user perspective to pay more than that. It is absolutely different from a corporate perspective.

I find this argument a bit weak because you are under no obligation to use the software if you don't like the price.

[KThunder]

I've always liked PD games and demos, if a game interested me enough to want to play it I figured the author deserved their money. If they wanted too much I just wouldn't get it.

People think of software differently than hardware and it is weird. They will pay thousands of dollars for computer hardware and upgrades but 50 bucks for a program they would use all the time? No way! that's too much!
I saw in Amiga Format once (think it was amiga format) a reviewer talking about piracy  and he said something to the effect of "this isn't charity, if it's a good program pay the author what they are asking"

"That computer isn't worth $500 so instead of buying it I'll just swipe it." Why does that statement make any less sense than stealing software, from MS or Ubisoft, or Ocean, or an independant publisher.

I have discussions with my brothers all the time about this stuff, they pony up the dough for xbox 360's and ps3's but $50 for a game inconceivable!

[Einstein]

Hi Mr Rabbit!

I had enough to not be able to play many for long
That's the idea with demo versions which I could only get with (british) magazines, which themselves cost more than 25 times a single blank floppy, *and* you coudn't randomly pick any game but was limited to whatever the mag shipped with.
Therefore as you can see, pirated games (and a few apps) were effectively demo versions for me.

Fanscale is a time traveling piracy cop! He'll go back to the past and arrest you all using the information you provide here in the future! BEWARE!!!!

When he enters my apartment he will find a cassette player with a cassette inside which he will play. It starts with: "Hello Fanscale, I want to play a game...".

[Einstein]

Fanscale is a time traveling piracy cop! He'll go back to the past and arrest you all using the information you provide here in the future! BEWARE!!!!

When he enters my apartment he will find a cassette player with a cassette inside which he will play. It starts with: "Hello Fanscale, I want to play a game...".

[KThunder]

I think there should be a poll asking if people think that anyone should be able to make a living writing software. I use lots of freeware, open source and pd games and stuff but I see the value of commercial software; I just haven't bought a real lot of it.

[coldfish]

I bought a lot of originals, in fact when I sold my A500 I fished out all the boxed originals and was surprised to see just how much I had, stacked together they built about a 1m cube!  Some games like; Frontier-Elite2 you had to have the manual for.

Of course I also had 100's of copies aquired from adverts in the paper.  You'd go around to someones house and pick out a stack from his collection, pay about 50cents a disk. Irresistable towards the end of the Amigas life when retail outlets stopped stocking Amiga software.

People are right about actually playing the copies, at some point it stops being about enjoying the software and more like collecting for the sake of it, because you can.  

I used to really savour my originals, a good game like Myth or Frontier could keep me going for weeks.  On the flip side, paying $50 for a crap game stung so bad it'd almost justify getting copies to try b4 U buy.

[gertsy]

Arrrh me hearties..!
I see we all be wearing the bright Pirate colours.

tis a shame a real shame.

It was easier for me to count my originals.  Less than 15.

[Lando]

I had several hundred I suppose.  That's why I, and most of my friends, got Amigas, because of the ease of getting, copying, and sharing pirated software.  Otherwise I would have just kept my SNES.

[clusteruk]

Ok, note to self.

DO NOT WRITE SOFTWARE FOR AMIGA PLATFORMS ;-)

Hardware supported software development only from me then, even Siamese system had a dongle which was the switcher.

This is why I cannot get people like Paul Nolan and others to come back.

Sigh.

[amiga4ever]

Not only were all my games and apps pirated, I also used to sell 'em.

I was about 11 when I first discovered the "demo scene", which lead me into direct contact with crackers and at about 13-14 years old, I got myself a modem and opened the door to the candy-store world of BBS's. THAT's about the time I began selling them to people at my school, neighbouring schools and loads of people in my residential area. I basically had my own little business, database of customers, customer snail-mailing lists (sending printouts with latest releases/prices, etc), deliveries, etc. I even "employed" a friend who I used to give every latest release to and who I used to call-up when I had an order. He would then copy the ordered item and deliver it.

It was actually unbelievable. The amount of money I was raking in at 13 years old.

Nowadays I purchase every single app/game I have. Mainly because secondhand console/PC games are dirt cheap and I like the support/updates for the professional applications I use. Plus, obviously, I have an income now. £30 for a 13 year-old in the 1990s was completely unreasonable - which is why I'm proud of the service I offered way back then...90% of my "customers" were kids my age and FAR from well-off financially speaking.

[Ilwrath]

That's the idea with demo versions which I could only get with (british) magazines, which themselves cost more than 25 times a single blank floppy, *and* you coudn't randomly pick any game but was limited to whatever the mag shipped with.
Therefore as you can see, pirated games (and a few apps) were effectively demo versions for me.

Again, a great point.  Back then you were limited to cover disks for demos, and those were expensive and not always very representative of the final game.  If you wanted to try out a game, you pretty much had to pirate it.

I could easily flash the DVD on my X360 to play copied disks.  It's a trivial hack.  I haven't bothered, though, because there is no need.  They have a marketplace to freely download accurate game demos.  If I want to check out a title, it's right there.  It doesn't expire, vanish, cripple my system with goofy copy protection schemes, or any other nonsense.  I download an evaluation, and it stays on my system until I either buy the game or decide I'd rather have the HD space to try out something else.  That's fair.  

I don't buy games at a greater rate when I don't pirate versus when I do, though.  The number of games I buy doesn't decrease when I download more of them.  

It's not a lost sale unless you have all of the following:
1) The ability to buy it.
2) The desire to buy it.
3) Then you didn't buy it after getting a pirate copy.  

That's the only way it's a lost sale.  Most of the "piracy == lost sales == platform killer" argument folks neglect the fact that nobody would have bought that crap game had it not been free.  9/10ths of the stuff I had probably wasn't worth the cost of the blank floppy it was on.  The fact was, I was just to lazy to sort, reformat and relabel that floppy, so I just bought more.   :lol:

[jj]

Dont get me wrong I bought a lot of original games and software also.  Especially from 2000 on.
 
And now as consoles are my main gaming device all my software original.
 
Dito for my massive software collection for PC