Piracy Archive

  • Epic Games says something silly about piracy

    Epic Games says something silly about piracy

    Posted on May 18, 2010 | No Comments
    Anyone else tired of video game publishers complaining about piracy? Like, human nature is such that you'll always have a bunch of knuckleheads who will hop on BitTorrent and download away. Forget them, they're jerks. Just focus on the non-jerks out there and go about your business. Anyhow, today the spotlight falls on Epic Games, makers of Unreal and Gears of War. Seems those guys think that all the money these days is in consoles, so PC gamers will have to get used to crummy ports or nothing at all!

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  • MPAA refused to tell U.S. GAO where it got its piracy numbers

    MPAA refused to tell U.S. GAO where it got its piracy numbers

    Posted on April 23, 2010 | No Comments
    More fallout from last week's U.S. Government Accountability Office report on the entertainment industry's piracy numbers. The gist of the report was that the government (and you and I) should never believe what the entertainment industry has to say again re: piracy because it was pulling data completely out of thin air. “Oh, 44 percent of all unauthorized file-sharing comes from universities, so you universities have to install filters to prevent students from downloading this and that, and we'll need new laws passed to protect our dying business methods. Oh, wait, sorry, math error, that's only 15 percent of unauthorized file-sharing. What, you want to know where we got these numbers from? Sorry, can't tell you, trade secret, but please pass favorable legislation anyway, kthxbye.”

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  • OMG! Fake Five Fingers appearing everywhere

    OMG! Fake Five Fingers appearing everywhere

    Posted on April 21, 2010 | No Comments
    Just when you thought it was safe to buy some nice VFFs for your wedding, Chinese pirates are creating knock-off five fingers with names like Mupuk Five Fingers. While I’d normally say live and let live when it comes to Chinese piracy – after all, what can we do about it? Cry? – I’d recommend [...]

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  • Nintendo blames piracy for 50% drop in EU sales

    Nintendo blames piracy for 50% drop in EU sales

    Posted on April 20, 2010 | No Comments
    Sales of Nintendo's DS games are dropping in Europe, and according to Nintendo there's clear reason why: piracy. With the release of software like R4, it appears that more and more owners of the portable systems are turning to less then reputable sources for their games.

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  • Government Accountability Office: Don’t believe piracy studies because they’re wicked flawed

    Government Accountability Office: Don’t believe piracy studies because they’re wicked flawed

    Posted on April 14, 2010 | No Comments
    You know how you read stories that say the U.S. loses X-amount of jobs per year due to piracy, or that this or that industry loses zillions of dollars per year because of piracy? The Government Accountability Office just released a new report that says that all of those reports are flawed and are completely worthless. In other words, the next time you hear the MPAA say “Downloading that DVD rip will ruin the movie industry” you can safely say, “Really? Where's the proof

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  • Retrode easily turns your SNES, Sega Genesis cartridges into ROMs

    Retrode easily turns your SNES, Sega Genesis cartridges into ROMs

    Posted on April 13, 2010 | No Comments
    Let me set the scene; it's very interesting. I'm sitting here listening to one of my many soccer podcasts World Football Daily, for the curious), browsing YouTube like a complete dweeb. A couple of keystrokes later and I'm watching this video, wherein a fine upstanding gentleman by the nom de plume of Review Tech USA talks about the Retrode, a USB device that automatically turns your old SNES and Sega Genesis cartridges and turns them into emulator-friendly ROMs. Now, I don't know where you come from, but in my neck of the woods, that's a fine piece of kit.

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  • Android’s “Blapkmarket” pirated app repository goes down hard

    Android’s “Blapkmarket” pirated app repository goes down hard

    Posted on February 24, 2010 | No Comments
    Now, before we enter the breach, I think it bears repeating that MobileCrunch and indeed the rest of the TechCrunch network in no way condone software/application piracy. Developers work too hard for responsible members of the tech community to give them the shaft like that. That said, while cracked iPhone app repositories like apptrackr continue to operate with impunity, we're surprised to see that the big Android equivalent has been forced to shut down first. Jesusxxx's Blapkmarket, which provided paid apps free of charge to its users, was just recently shut down by his hosting company.

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  • Penny Arcade tackles piracy

    Penny Arcade tackles piracy

    Posted on February 19, 2010 | No Comments
    Those wacky Penny Arcade guys! Always writing something intelligent about issues that force most gamers to resort to name-calling and cursing!

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  • Assassin’s Creed II DRM proves that Ubisoft hates your guts and wants to beat you up after school

    Assassin’s Creed II DRM proves that Ubisoft hates your guts and wants to beat you up after school

    Posted on February 17, 2010 | No Comments
    Fellow PC gamers: it's time to freak out. You're familiar with Ubisoft's newfangled DRM scheme that requires you be online in order to play its games, right? It's 100 percent as awful as we had thought it would be. PC Gamer recently played Assassin's Creed II, and discovered what a pain the in the ass the DRM really, truly is. Get this: every time you lose your Internet connection the game boots you to the main menu, and all progress made from the last save point is thrown out the window. This isn't an MMO, mind you, but a plain ol' single player game. In other words, no Internet, no game. Bravo, Ubisoft.

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  • Hot deal on a Blu-ray VHS combo player

    Hot deal on a Blu-ray VHS combo player

    Posted on February 15, 2010 | No Comments
    I’ll be honest with you. This was an odd product to see first thing on a Monday morning. Take the futuregasm known as Blu-ray and mix it with the nostalgia of VHS and you’ve got the Panasonic DMP-BD70V. Normally selling for $200 and up, Amazon’s got it for $140 today.

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  • What’s it going to take for PC game publishers to drop DRM altogether?

    What’s it going to take for PC game publishers to drop DRM altogether?

    Posted on January 28, 2010 | No Comments
    For all of its stupidity, the music industry should be commended for relaxing its DRM requirements. Every single song on iTunes is DRM-free, as are the songs on Amazon MP3 and electronic music specialist Beatport. The Zune Marketplace works a little differently, but many of the downloadable songs there are DRM-free, too. But PC game publishers? They're still bat-shit crazy, as evidenced by the DRM requirements of BioShock 2 and presumably every single one of Ubisoft's upcoming releases. What's it going to take for PC publishers to step back and realize that DRM does absolutely nothing to prevent piracy? Not only that, but that it encourages piracy because the pirated version of the game ends up being superior to the legitimate copy?

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  • UFC signs online pay-per-view deal in China. Say goodbye to your streams?

    UFC signs online pay-per-view deal in China. Say goodbye to your streams?

    Posted on January 28, 2010 | No Comments
    One of the arguments "in favor" of illegal UFC streaming just became a little bit harder to defend. The company signed a deal with China's sohu.com to broadcast events online there. The first event to be streamed will be UFC 109: Relentless, headlined by Randy Couture v. Mark Coleman. No prices were announced.

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  • Ubisoft’s new DRM scheme requires you to be online whenever you’re playing its games

    Ubisoft’s new DRM scheme requires you to be online whenever you’re playing its games

    Posted on January 27, 2010 | No Comments
    In other, non-Apple news: Ubisoft has lost its mind. Its latest DRM scheme—the first game to use it will be The Settlers 7, curently scheduled for a Marchrelease—will require that you always be online in order to play its games. That's not a good idea for many reasons. For example, look at poor ol' Devin. He's been fighting Comcast for God knows how long. Needless to say, he'd be SOL if he ever wanted to play the PC version of a Ubisoft game ever again.

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  • Churches (and others) will have to upgrade their mics right quick or the FCC will be very angry

    Churches (and others) will have to upgrade their mics right quick or the FCC will be very angry

    Posted on January 22, 2010 | No Comments
    The absurdity of this issue, I swear. Get this: churches (and other deals like outdoor events) have been using microphones that operate on the 700MHz spectrum since, like, forever. It turns out that that part of the spectrum, 700MHz, is to be set aside for over-the-air digital TV broadcasts. You see where this is going: churches all over the country are going to have to upgrade their microphones, sound systems, etc. lest they run afoul of the law come June, 2010. You'd think God would have warned them about this.

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  • UFC’s Dana White throws down, vows to go after Internet pirates no matter the cost

    UFC’s Dana White throws down, vows to go after Internet pirates no matter the cost

    Posted on January 11, 2010 | No Comments
    Do not expect UFC to look the other when it comes to online piracy of its various pay-per-view events. Dana White, the company's president, recently told the Vancouver Sun that he and the UFC will do whatever it takes to eliminate piracy. "It’s gonna cost us a lot of money, but guess what, it’s gonna cost them [pirates] a lot of money. It’s gonna get to the point where it’s like, fuck it, maybe we shouldn’t pirate MMA anymore." This is not a very forward-thinking way of looking at the problem, no.

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