Oh man I can't wait for this game. It's like Tim Schaefer is only allowed to produce Concentrated Awesome and if he doesn't he gets sent to jail, so he has to hit projects out of the park to stay out of prison. He should be the posterchild for brilliant game design. Activision has no idea what it's done.

Bizarro piracy, or Is it still piracy if you pay for something?

Now, apparently this isn't all that new but it is new to me - the short story is: People buy CD keys from... less than reputable places online, which allows them to 'legally' play some games online. For all intents and purposes, they own the game, since they still own a CD key, albeit a heavily discounted one that originated from another country.

We all know that for the longest time, CD keys were pretty much the only obstacle blocking the way of game pirates from playing online - after all, online play is one of those benefits dangled tantalizingly in front of gamers, so they'd pony up the dosh, leaving those filthy, barnacle-encrusted game pirates high and dry - everyone wins!

But now, since it's easy enough for someone who wants to play online to get a much cheaper CD key (how they 'acquire' the game is, of course, another matter), the question is whether or not it's still ethical. After all, the developers are being compensated - the games stripped of their CD key in a different country, are, for all intents and purposes, still moving off the shelves, putting money in the devs' pockets. Just not quite as much as they'd get in the original country to begin with.

Does this prove, then, that Price is a major deterrent? Should games be sold at a standardised price?

For further reading:
http://savygamer.co.uk/2009/07/question-of-what-is-right.html

Yes, we've heard of the song parody video. But when the parody uses the complete same video to make fun of it that takes it to a whole new level.