"The reality of course is quite a bit more nuanced"

Sorry, I know I'm not helping, but

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/103759/

;)

"If at some point you’ve downloaded a pirated copy of a game (or anything else), do you think that what you did was ethical? If yes, why? If no, why did you do it anyway?"

If you are someone who follows the news in the video game industry and you agree with the consequences I'm going to write in my answer to your third question, then yes: It is surly not as un-ethical as, let's say, stealing, but it is certainly hurting people, and unless you really lack the money, you should better buy the game. That said, the reason why I (mostly) buy software is only to a little degree because of ethics and other people. It is mostly for selfish reasons: I try to stay away from piracy because I think it is better for _me_, at least in the long run.

For people who are not much into the gaming industry, I guess piracy is not un-ethical at all. I say this because most people I consider good and honest people are pirating software: My father is a teacher and a very good person, and he made an illegal copy of one of his tom waits records for me when I was a kid. My sister is a doctor. She has a illegal copy of Microsoft Office on her computer, and if I told her that this was illegal (and where she can download OpenOffice for free), she smiled and said "yes, but everyone is doing it". My other sister is a teenager of only 15, and despite her pirating music, I know she is a very good person.

You have to consider that sharing of videos/music/games has been a normal part of peoples life for many generations.
The fact that the new technologies have made media distribution so easy that it is now damaging the industry is a problem, but it does not make people's behavior suddenly more evil. People haven't changed. In fact, they are supposed to use the internet to share and distribute stuff. That's what the internet is good for.


"Is there a difference between copying the property of an individual (like an indie game dev) and copying the property of a large company?"

Well, you mean ethical and for me personally? I would say no. I don't really care if EA makes money or not, and I feel sorry if a small company needs to close down. But the main victims in my eyes are not the owners of the licenses but the gamers who play the games. And gamers are facing the problems of piracy no matter if it happens to evil EA or to some indie company.

Like you, I don't know how many people who pirating games are lost sales. There are no real numbers on that, except for some fantasy numbers made up by desperate people (Crytek: "Every pirate who keeps playing our games is a lost sale"). So maybe EA is not hurt by piracy at all, or maybe they loose billions every year because of it. We don't know. But we do know that the fear of piracy is driving the industry crazy, and us gamers are the ones that have to suffer from this.

"What do you think the long-term implications of wide-scale IP infringement might be?"

What we already see today: The big players move to proprietary DRM systems, like consoles, subscription services and rental services. I do not really think that they do this only because of piracy - Renting games is much more profitable than selling games. Especially if the rental fees are the same price as the purchases, like with Spore. But piracy is certainly the top argument to market the whole DRM stuff, and they would have a hard time to get make this transition without that argument.

Another very important result of piracy is that you cannot compete with the big franchises in price. Let's say a small developer creates a good shooter and sells it for $5 per license. Without piracy, this would be a very challenging offer. With piracy, a price of $0 for game A is not more or less expensive as a price of $0 for game B.

I know this problem from other software markets. There are great free and open source software products that do not get a chance in the market because no one if paying for the proprietary stuff anyway.

I do not think that PC Gaming itself is in any bad shape, by the way. Even if EA and Activision/Blizzard would suddenly disappear - As long as there are people playing on PCs, there will be developers making cool games for them. And there will always be people playing on PCs, since consoles are very restricted in freedom.

PS: Your comment function is broken: If I press the "Add comment" button, nothing happens "goToSubmitComment()" is not executed. Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008072820 Firefox/3.0.1

On OS X it works fine: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070206 Firefox/3.0.1

And again, no mention of the DRM system. Masses of people who pay for this game will think they just bought another software license.

No a word of the "you only buy 3 activations." thing, and what this actually means for customers.

I think EA has the right to release their games in any way they like. But it is very disappointing that this review does not include any information about what you (don't) get for your money.

Some people install games only once or twice, and then they forget about it. Others will be shocked to find out that they may not be able to play Spore for many years. I'm not saying that Spore is a bad game. But I am very disappointed that PC Gamer does not mention such important information in the review. It is very important information if you consider buying this game.

(PS: And yes, I know that you may pay for a call to EA support and they will maybe reset your activation count for another 3 installs. But you have no right to get this reset, it is really only a accommodation that they can reject whenever they feel like it)

http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B000FKBCX4/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?_encoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore_(2008_video_game)#Digital_rights_management

http://consumerist.com/tag/mass-effect-DRM/?i=5016980&t=ea-allows-3-activations-of-mass-effect-and-thats-it-period