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Original post by Trinavarta Yes, you are right its not really "pirating" if I am the one who is offering the game, but does it really matter if I sell a game and wait a week for it to be pirated by someone else or release it by myself as a pirated copy?

Sure it matters... you are knowingly misleading people. If someone else steals your game they will be doing something unethical, not you.

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Original post by Trinavarta I personally do not think that I am really offending someone with this method. It's just a way to use a huge network as a sales channel.

You will be misleading people, which could offend someone. You can use the huge network as a sales channel in a way that will not be misleading people.

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Original post by BrokenKingpin Quote: Original post by Trinavarta Yes, you are right its not really "pirating" if I am the one who is offering the game, but does it really matter if I sell a game and wait a week for it to be pirated by someone else or release it by myself as a pirated copy? Sure it matters... you are knowingly misleading people. If someone else steals your game they will be doing something unethical, not you. Quote: Original post by Trinavarta I personally do not think that I am really offending someone with this method. It's just a way to use a huge network as a sales channel. You will be misleading people, which could offend someone. You can use the huge network as a sales channel in a way that will not be misleading people.

Hmm.. you have a point there. Doing this may make me worse then the one who is illeagly copying the software since I am betraying them too (no matter if their behavior is correct or not). So is it ethical to use illegal downloading people to raise my sales? I am not sure anymore...

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Blizzard has World of Warcraft which probably would make almost the same amounts of money even if they allowed people to distribute the client freely.

Actually, you can download it for free directly from the blizzard website.

almost every MMORPG I've played allows direct download of the client from some place. The only ones that I recall that didn't were consoles games as well, PSU, originally PSO (later with Blue burst yo could, not sure with the first PC ver), and FFXI... so it is very common practice to offer the download of the client for free.

MMORPGs hardly make money off client sales, but rather micro-transactions and access to the servers.