Not all games downloaded are warez or cracked. I bought my 2142 version from EA thru the EA download manager. (Not all games bought come with a CD or box.)

At first I thought the thread pertained to simply if folks had downloaded games, as many games are now for sale as downloads, While downloading pirated versions is a whole different issue.

I have never downloaded any pirated content, the reality is If I cant afford it, I dont get it...too often in todays society is larceny accepted as sticking it to the man or rebelling against the machine. The cold reality is, there is no machine, just people trying to make a living, pay their bills, put food on the table for their lil ones, etc. Stealing their hard work and efforts without compensation, dont make one cool or a rebel. It makes them a thief plain and simple.

I guarantee you pirates and those who dl the stuff would be the first to holler if folks started stealing out of their pockets on a daily basis.

While I agree the whole issue has gotten out of hand, please put blame where blame is due, without folks stealing games and movies ,music, there would be no need for the measures we as customers have to deal with daily.

This is going to seem like I'm trying to stick to to the machine or rage against the man, but ah well.

I think computer game pirates are being scapegoated to fool people into accepting ridiculous 'security measures' that clearly do nothing to prevent piracy, but do everything to increase profits.

EA's 'security measures' are the most obvious example, with them farming your information to be used for advertising, as well as forcing some people into buying more copies of their games because they've ran out of installs.

and do they prevent piracy? do they fuck. Spore was cracked BEFORE it was even out, and that contained some of the most restrictive security measures to date. If you want to know how effective these measures are at fighting piracy, try writing any of these into a bittorrent search engine :- Mass Effect, Spore and (tomorrow, or maybe saturday) Red Alert 3. I'll eat my hat if you can't find a single good copy.

Nah, I don't think that saying "these security measures are only in place because people download games" is true at all. Especially since we're speaking on a stardock forum which is a company that makes/publishes good games for good prices and has copy protection that is seriously easy to deal with.

And just between you and me, I don't think they're doing bad business at all.