What videogame consoles aren't gouged to oblivion?

[synbiosfan]

I used tapes for my C64 and Atari 1200 xl (I think). The drives were expensive on an allowance. My father took a while to understand that computers were the future. He thought they were just for games.

He apologized years later.

[johnnykonami]

I used tapes for the PET and VIC20 (at school) but only floppies for C64 at home.

I've also never seen a legit retail piece of C64 software except for a cartridge a guy I know had...it was pirate city.

I know you are saying this tongue-in-cheek probably, but I still can't resist a little show and tell for one of my favorite and formative video game platforms.  I had a ton of pirate stuff too, notably my two favorite games, Lazy Jones and Impossible Mission, were both copied floppies.  And all my stuff was on 5-1/4" floppy, but I did get a tape drive from my Grandparents who must have bought into the C64 early on.  They only had a couple tapes for it, I've never personally used it myself but I have it around here.  One day I might experiment with it.  Running software from cassette tape must have been such a small window in the USA, and I think I pretty much missed it.



I used to have boxes for Pool of Radiance along with the manuals and log entry book, sadly they have disappeared somewhere along the way.  I did buy the gold box collection for PC for cheap one day and got a big replacement booklet, so it's not a total loss.  Used to have a boxed Cosmic Relief too, god knows where the stuff went to.  Guess it happens when you are a kid and parents or siblings might trash it when you aren't looking.  I was so proud to beat that game finally.  I think it was called Terramex in the UK.

[SignOfZeta]

I wasn't joking. Nobody I knew with a C64 had a legit copy of anything. It was a poor person's computer, it shouldn't be surprising that the people who had it didn't pay for software.

[Psycho Punch]

I imagined that piracy was common but not to that extent! How did they profit out of anything?

e: this reminded me of Bunten's rant on Modem Wars:

AS FOR GETTING RICH, IT JUST AINT TRUE IN MY CASE. (GOING BROKE MAY BE MORE LIKE IT!) OF THE PRODUCTS I'VE DONE IN THE PAST (M.U.L.E., SEVEN CITIES OF GOLD, HEART OF AFRICA AND ROBOT RASCALS) ONLY SEVEN CITIES MADE ANY MONEY AND HEART OF AFRICA JUST BARELY BROKE EVEN.
(...)
IF I STILL HAVEN'T CONVINCED YOU NOT TO PIRATE THIS GAME, THEN DO ME THE FAVOR OF SENDING ME A LETTER TO TELL ME YOU LIKED THE GAME EVEN THOUGH YOU DIDN'T FEEL LIKE YOU OUGHT TO PAY FOR IT.  (YOU MIGHT SEND A COPY TO EA TOO).  I REALLY DO CARE MORE ABOUT WHETHER PEOPLE LIKE MY STUFF THAN WHETHER I MAKE MONEY.  WE'LL GET BY SOMEHOW.

Now I get the developer's frustration.

[johnnykonami]

I wasn't joking. Nobody I knew with a C64 had a legit copy of anything. It was a poor person's computer, it shouldn't be surprising that the people who had it didn't pay for software.

Fair enough.  I got plenty of legit software for it though.  My sister knew a guy in her High School (I was in Elementary) that provided the bulk of our copied disks.

[SignOfZeta]

I imagined that piracy was common but not to that extent! How did they profit out of anything?

e: this reminded me of Bunten's rant on Modem Wars:

AS FOR GETTING RICH, IT JUST AINT TRUE IN MY CASE. (GOING BROKE MAY BE MORE LIKE IT!) OF THE PRODUCTS I'VE DONE IN THE PAST (M.U.L.E., SEVEN CITIES OF GOLD, HEART OF AFRICA AND ROBOT RASCALS) ONLY SEVEN CITIES MADE ANY MONEY AND HEART OF AFRICA JUST BARELY BROKE EVEN.
(...)
IF I STILL HAVEN'T CONVINCED YOU NOT TO PIRATE THIS GAME, THEN DO ME THE FAVOR OF SENDING ME A LETTER TO TELL ME YOU LIKED THE GAME EVEN THOUGH YOU DIDN'T FEEL LIKE YOU OUGHT TO PAY FOR IT.  (YOU MIGHT SEND A COPY TO EA TOO).  I REALLY DO CARE MORE ABOUT WHETHER PEOPLE LIKE MY STUFF THAN WHETHER I MAKE MONEY.  WE'LL GET BY SOMEHOW.

Now I get the developer's frustration.

It has to be said, I didn't get into C64 until probably '86 or '87 at which point most of that stuff was out of print anyway. My town had user groups for all the major platforms so pretty much everything got jacked. Also, not everything people played on C64 was retail. There was a lot of freeware/shareware.

It's only a problem for the developer if you steal the software in a scenario where it actually affects his bottom line. If he no longer works for the company or the company went out of business or even if you jacked it the day it came out but weren't in the proper market for it anyway (the 10M kids a year worldwide that steal Photoshop or Solidworks in their first year of college and never even figure out how to run it) then it's merely annoying.