Cracked games. The more things change...

[brenry]

[brenry]

Don't Copy That Floppy !!

[Amiga_Nut]

Runequester

Good thread. One of the main things that killed the amiga 3rd party software development both games and productivity was ST PORTS costing £5 extra

Fixed that for you, I'm sure Shadow of the Beast 1 sold a lot, as did Defender of the Crown etc and Sword of Sodan as % of userbase. Crap like Outrun/Turbo outrun/Powerdrift (ALL ST PORTS) did not sell well after reviews were published, and quite rightly too...what a piece of shit that was....worse than the 8bit Sinclair version.

[Amiga_Nut]

Not trying to pass moral judgement btw
 
When I was a kid, it was what I could afford. Today, I make different choices. I was a bit concerned about posting this thread, as I don't want it to be about the merits or lack thereof of piracy.
 
 
Whether piracy killed the amiga, I dont know. I imagine it didn't hurt hardware sales at all, but it could have pushed developers towards consoles instead.
 
It seems software pretty much stopped dead (with a few exceptions) when Commodore folded, and Escom did nothing to reassure anybody.

I agree, piracy has an effect, but if the games weren't so bad and people didn't keep getting ripped off with sub standard arcade conversions due to lack of effort in design/programming then more people would have bought Amiga.

Also not supporting various accelerators, external hard drives, more than 1mb RAM and not supporting hard disk installs was suicide for the software houses.

Their demise was their own doing in my opinion. And seeing as the only way I can play Lotus 2 or 3 on my A1200 is via a crack then thank god for cracks

[EvilGuy]

And seeing as the only way I can play Lotus 2 or 3 on my A1200 is via a crack then thank god for cracks

And some places still haven't learnt. Steam is the most awesome game delivery system ever invented, yet there are still some companies that refuse to use it. They force you to still have the CD in the drive to play their game.

Then they wonder why people download the NoCD patches and never buy their games ever again.

I've bought more games from Steam in the last two years then I had for the previous five years from retail outlets. The games are cheaper, they have special offers where you can pick up fairly recent games at stupid percentages off and when I buy a new computer the games are there when I reinstall Steam.

[brenry]

EvilGuy: Going on a limb here in assuming you are in your 20's ?  Steam is a bad idea in the long run.  The average game is completed within a week and very little replay value offered.  With Steam you are unable to loan it out to friends or to sell.

That aside think of future "retro" collectors, and how people go crazy for old stuff now.  My mom threw away all my old boxed games from the 80's and 90's and they would be worth a lot of money these days.  Digital downloads are worthless, and you might as well be going to the time-proven Fairlight for it.

I don't see how you are saving money, games I bought digitally were the same price as retail box like Blizzard games and Bad Company 2.  I put alot of hours into BC2 I should have got the box so it could sit on the shelf next to my other BF1942 games.

[EvilGuy]

EvilGuy: Going on a limb here in assuming you are in your 20's ?  Steam is a bad idea in the long run.  The average game is completed within a week and very little replay value offered.  With Steam you are unable to loan it out to friends or to sell.

Well, a fair bit older than that, unfortunately ;-)

The problems you describe are to do with the gaming industry in general, not the delivery mechanism. Without Steam, I'd be buying new copies of games when the CD gets damaged, or I buy a new computer, or having to fool around with NoCD patches to do things the way they should've been done when the game was released.

As for loaning and selling used games - I understand that is important to some people and no solution will make everyone happy. But for the most part Steam does more good than harm.

I don't see how you are saving money, games I bought digitally were the same price as retail box like Blizzard games and Bad Company 2.  I put alot of hours into BC2 I should have got the box so it could sit on the shelf next to my other BF1942 games.

COD:XXX (the last three editions) I've bought off Steam at at least 10% less then EB had it for; CitiesXL I got for 95% off. When patches for those games come out, Steam keeps them upto date. I've got heaps of boxes sitting in the computer room, I don't need more

[A1260]

Piracy didn't kill the Amiga (do you really want to go down that line of argument its been down to death).
But since starting to dig through my games (both original and not) and testing what works and what doesn't i have seen what rune has been talking about some originals don't work (disk are ok) where as the crack versions do... also vice versa.
speaking of which i came across Historyline is it any good??? never seen it before.

P.S I have a steam account with alot of games (and so does my son) but I still use "crack" games.... sometimes it nice to play without having the remember to put a DVD in or most cases they get rid of some annoying problems
P.P.S Not that games these days are all that great getting pretty boring great/realistic graphics are all nice and good but alot of times they forget game play.

try settlers 7 from ubisoft... they have put a drm on the game so you must be online or you cant play at all... and if you lose connection you will be kicked out of the game and lose your gameplay... if you fansy a fame of settlers7 after 10 years you will not beable to play it at all... ubisoft are very nice guys... you go for the cracked version you have no problem at all... the choice is easy...

[Plus4]

@Thread

I'm pretty sure I would have never bought an Amiga if it wasn't for all the copied games I could get,  And I never would have bought Three joysticks and and extra drive.

[kedawa]

PC games have next to no resale value to begin with, so I don't think that's even a consideration.  You can't trust people not to just sell you the disc and keep on using the CD key, leaving you with a nicely packaged coaster.  Besides, having the games on Steam means that every time you reinstall a game it's up to date, you can play the game on any computer with an internet connection, and you can preload new games before they even get released, so you have it installed and ready to go the moment it hits.  Sale prices on Steam are better than just about any retail deal you could hope to find, and group discounts on new games makes it cheaper than buying the physical copy as well.
Of course it has the drawback of not being able to loan out individual games, but I think what it offers more than makes up for that.  As an added bonus, it will allow me to play games without the need for an optical drive, which is great because I don't plan on putting one in my next PC.  I haven't used the DVD-ROM drive in my current PC more than a dozen times in the last three years, and I don't even use it for OS installs anymore since installing from a flash drive is so much faster.

EvilGuy: Going on a limb here in assuming you are in your 20's ?  Steam is a bad idea in the long run.  The average game is completed within a week and very little replay value offered.  With Steam you are unable to loan it out to friends or to sell.

That aside think of future "retro" collectors, and how people go crazy for old stuff now.  My mom threw away all my old boxed games from the 80's and 90's and they would be worth a lot of money these days.  Digital downloads are worthless, and you might as well be going to the time-proven Fairlight for it.

I don't see how you are saving money, games I bought digitally were the same price as retail box like Blizzard games and Bad Company 2.  I put alot of hours into BC2 I should have got the box so it could sit on the shelf next to my other BF1942 games.

[MustangJeff]

I had a lot of cracked games, but do you know how many I actually played?  I can't think of a single crack that I sat down and played for any length of time.
 
There were a TON of really really bad Amiga games that companies were spitting out.  I'd pretty much boot em up and check them out, and they would then go back into the box forever.  If I found something worth playing, I would go out and purchase it.  (and either play the crack or use the crack as a backup)
 
I knew a ton of people who used cracks as nothing more than a way to preview the games to figure out what was woth buying and what wasn't.
 
IMO people wasting money on poor software helped the demise of the Amiga.  At least now you can get into a beta, download a playable demo, or check online reviews/previews to see if a piece of software is worthy of purchase.