Piracy-Crippled Game From Hunted Cow Returns to App Store as 'Battle Dungeon: Risen'

It's a shame that server-side/multiplayer gaming can be at the mercy of pirates.

Yes, some multiplayer games succeed anyway. Others fail for a stupid reason like this, and it shouldn't be that way. Small developers are the most vulnerable.

Pirates: you are stealing actual money from the people who make what you seem to love playing! (Because if you weren't playing, the servers wouldn't be overloaded.)

If you like someone's creative work, pay them for it.

Well said Sir.

On a side note, I hate people who say "I download stuff to try it out. If I like it, I'll buy it." The logic is so stupid, it's like stealing a car for a weekend, and then going back to the dealership, or driving it off a pier.

Just buy stuff, or look up reviews. Save the economy, and small businesses.

No it's not. 1. When you steal a car, you're not leaving the original car behind. 2. You get to test drive cars.

If you like someone's creative work, pay them for it.

Well said Sir.

On a side note, I hate people who say "I download stuff to try it out. If I like it, I'll buy it." The logic is so stupid, it's like stealing a car for a weekend, and then going back to the dealership, or driving it off a pier.

Just buy stuff, or look up reviews. Save the economy, and small businesses.

Finally someone on the internet who can think with his brain instead of his emotions.

Scarcity is the root concept you seem to be getting at. Concepts of property arose to avoid conflict over scarce resources. Almost universally, moral norms and justice systems across humanity stem from concepts of property in scarce resources. This development is automatic, spontaneous, a necessary fact of the human condition, across almost every culture throughout different times on different continents. To my point, for concepts of property to be valued and respected in society, a class of people calling themselves "government" isn't required to invent the concept and impose it on society. Free markets, religious folk, justice systems, families, communities, naturally develop and value property due to it's capacity to reduce conflict over scarce resources.

Property is wholly separate from government grants of monopoly privilege. These do not arise naturally in society without government inventing and imposing them. Examples of these are copyrights and patents, and the fact that their supporters refer to them as "property" no more makes them so than a random guy becomes your father just because him and his friends refer to him as your father. To be clear:
A) government grants of monopoly privilege have utterly nothing to do with property
B) by definition, free markets don't automatically value and develop government granted monopoly privileges
C) government grants of monopoly privilege fly in the face of property based moral norms and justice systems, because they rely on violence to restrict what peaceful people can do with their own actual property

So no, copying files has utterly nothing to do with theft. When you steal a car, it's theft because the car is scarce—the owner can't control it while you do. When you copy a file, it isn't theft because the owner's of control over his scarce resource (data on a computer chip, or something) isn't violated.

Do you like getting paid for the work you do? Don't you think a worker should benefit from the fruits of their labor? Copying files is not paying a worker for their output. I would think a person with your views wouldn't want to shaft their brother worker.

I'm amazed by some of these responses..

So it's okay to steal somebodies time, because it is their time and not their property? These developers spend 100's of hours building these Apps in the hope that they get paid. They usually don't have the backing of a huge company like EA or Microsoft.

I don't know what their server side looked like, but I can tell you from experience that if they are using some sort of cloud hosting you usually pay per server or per transaction. They developer would need $X number of dollars per user per server. If a large number of those user's have paid nothing, then they can't afford to bring up more servers.

A decade ago I could see why people would pirate games. $60 for a game can be pretty expensive for a lot of people. But the majority of these types of games cost less than a gallon of milk.

Pirating software is not theft. It is wrong, it is morally reprehensible, the people who do it are culpable, but it is not the crime of theft nor should it be analogized to it. It's plain different.

Theft, as defined by some the top legal minds, is only applies to things that are commoditizable and exhaustible. Meaning, it only applies to things that can be bought and sold, and only when the wrong committed deprives the rightful owner of doing what they want with it.

Infringing on someones copyright does not deprive the original owner of buying, selling, copying, etc. their original copy. Also, the right to copy and sell copies is not really a commodity, not in the traditional sense anyway.

Of all analogies to common crimes, infringing a copyright is most similar to trespass. The copyright owner has this metaphorical piece of property, and the infringer goes onto this property and uses it. He does not deprive the owner of their use (he stays out of his way), and he does not lower the properties value. He is intruding on the owner's right to exclude, that is all.

In this case it's theft because it's not merely copyright infringement. The software is backed by real services that have real costs per user. Each pirate using the servers has a real associated cost to them.

Wow. A lot of people are really putting a lot of effort into hiding behind semantics to justify software and media piracy.

Finally someone on the internet who can think with his brain instead of his emotions.

Scarcity is the root concept you seem to be getting at. Concepts of property arose to avoid conflict over scarce resources. Almost universally, moral norms and justice systems across humanity stem from concepts of property in scarce resources. This development is automatic, spontaneous, a necessary fact of the human condition, across almost every culture throughout different times on different continents. To my point, for concepts of property to be valued and respected in society, a class of people calling themselves "government" isn't required to invent the concept and impose it on society. Free markets, religious folk, justice systems, families, communities, naturally develop and value property due to it's capacity to reduce conflict over scarce resources.

Property is wholly separate from government grants of monopoly privilege. These do not arise naturally in society without government inventing and imposing them. Examples of these are copyrights and patents, and the fact that their supporters refer to them as "property" no more makes them so than a random guy becomes your father just because him and his friends refer to him as your father. To be clear:
A) government grants of monopoly privilege have utterly nothing to do with property
B) by definition, free markets don't automatically value and develop government granted monopoly privileges
C) government grants of monopoly privilege fly in the face of property based moral norms and justice systems, because they rely on violence to restrict what peaceful people can do with their own actual property

So no, copying files has utterly nothing to do with theft. When you steal a car, it's theft because the car is scarce—the owner can't control it while you do. When you copy a file, it isn't theft because the owner's of control over his scarce resource (data on a computer chip, or something) isn't violated.

Finally, someone on the internet who hides behind semantic arguments to support immoral acts. Scarcity is not what gives rise to the definition, but rather a society's legal definition of property rights, be they physical or intellectual. If the definition of property rights includes that a king is allowed to take anything he wants from his subjects, then his claiming of any good, no matter how scarce, is not theft, even though he is depriving its original owner of its use. On the other hand, if a society defines property rights to include things like ideas or books, then appropriating them for your own use is theft.

Stealing is simply the violation of property rights, and property rights define what is stealing. Making semantic arguments about scarcity and deprivation of use are moot points. There is no universal law or code of conduct, and thus there is no absolute definition of theft. But since society currently includes intellectual property in the definitions of property rights, taking intellectual is theft.

No, you're wrong. Let me repeat: moral norms and justice systems universally stem from property. This has always been, and will always be, because we exist in an environment of scarcity, and property is a construct to reduce conflict over scarce resources. In a world where resources are infinite and instantly accessible, property doesn't exist, and therefore neither does morality or justice, because there is no room for conflict over scarce resources.

The root concept behind mutually voluntary exchange (or what you're calling "fair trade") is property. When two parties exchange, they are exchanging owned scarce resources. At a bare minimum, they own the scarce resource that is their body, and they own the scarce resource they intend to exchange. This is elementary economics.

My point was that this framework develops automatically, spontaneously, as a necessary fact of the human condition. Humans naturally value property as a means to reduce conflict within a reality of scarce resources.

The root premise of government granted monopoly privileges (of which IP is an example) is the use of violence or threats of violence to restrict what people (who aren't given the monopoly grant) can peacefully do with their property. Obviously, peaceful people don't value this, and therefore all of history managed to avoid its institutionalization, until VERY RECENTLY when governments began imposing it—and what else would you expect, from institutionalized monopolies on violence.

So don't get involved in a philosophical discussion and dismiss the opposition as "semantic". And don't try to rationalize IP via morality, because it flies in the face of everything morality is based on. You don't use violence to intimidate peaceful people, and you don't treat other people as your slaves, deciding what they can't do peacefully with their property.

This is so inaccurate, I don't know where to start.

Firstly, moral norms, justice systems, government-imposed laws, and even religious "commandments" and guidelines, stem from the need to have a normally functional society. Don't kill, don't steal, don't bear false witness (i.e. don't lie), etc.. are all designed to keep the society healthy and functional because without trust (i.e. everyone stealing from, and lying to, each other) and security (everyone routinely killing and/or harming each other) the society will break down. Morality is by no means limited to dealings with property; personal property is merely a part of it - not the part of it.

Secondly, that world you're talking about, using your own twisted definition of "scarce" and "infinite" resources does not, and will not, exist for as long as humans play any role in creating things. When, and if, the time comes where robots and computers will do all our bidding, including creating new entertainment content (which'll require a great deal of imagination and creativity, effectively eliminating that possibility...), and all humans would do is eat/crap/sleep, then your argument will hold water. As of now, it doesn't.

This brings me to another point. When you acquire (whether legally or illegally) digital content (which is effectively infinite), you aren't utilizing it as a resource - you're utilizing the work, knowledge, expertise and creativity and imagination of the humans that created it - a very much scarce resource - even more so in case of indie developers.

Lastly, I stand by my belief that your "philosophical" tirade is really a diversionary tactic to detach the content creator from the created content, in order to justify piracy. Believe what you want to believe, and justify what you want to justify but my original point stands. By acquiring and using a particular piece of content, one acknowledges that the resource which helped make it, namely the creator's time/expertise/imagination/creativity (which is very much a scarce resource), is useful and/or beneficial to them. By doing that, in turn, one has a moral obligation to pay for the resource they've utilized to their use/benefit.

Finally someone on the internet who can think with his brain instead of his emotions.

Scarcity is the root concept you seem to be getting at. Concepts of property arose to avoid conflict over scarce resources. Almost universally, moral norms and justice systems across humanity stem from concepts of property in scarce resources...
...
...

Arguing about semantics of "property" does nothing but dance around the true subject at hand, namely that of fair trade.
Since the beginning of human civilization, humans utilized the concept of trade, whereby two parties agree to exchange goods and/or services fairly, for the benefit of both parties. It still continues to this day, though people became detached with the concept with invent of currency and 3rd parties such as stores/shops and other various retailers.

There are a couple of core examples of fair trade:
A. I offer you a resource in exchange for another resource (incl. gold/money)
Ex: when you buy groceries, clothing, housing, tools, electronics, etc.. and pay money for it.
B. I offer you a service in exchange for a resource (incl. gold/money)
Ex: when you go to the physician/dentist/psychiatrist/gynecologist, or a lawyer, or a barber, or hire a plumber, and pay them in exchange for their service and/or expertise.
C. I offer you a service in exchange for another service (i.e. "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.")

The case of online piracy almost universally deals with illegally obtained copyrighted content. The content itself, whether a piece of entertainment (e.g. song, a movie, or a game) or a utility/productivity tool (i.e. an app, or other piece of software), is made available to end user via some form of digital distribution.
The aforementioned content is qualified as both a resource and a service, provided by the developers/producers to the, and for the benefit of the, end user. So, utilizing the concept of fair trade, by simply using the content, one becomes morally obligated to reimburse the content owner for their hard work.

So, to summarize:
-The content creator put hard work into creating/providing something for user's benefit.
-By obtaining (e.g. downloading it, legally or illegally) and/or using it, the user acknowledged that the content in question is useful/beneficial to them.
-Consequently, by doing the above, the user acknowledged that the content creator fulfilled their side of the trade.
-With that, it is user's moral obligation to fulfill/finalize the trade by reimbursing the IP owner(s) and/or creator(s) for their work.

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On another side note, I hate people who say "Well said Sir".

Well said Sir! :p