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Pirate Copies of Software Games
Pirate copies of software games are distributed by people for a variety of reasons including:
- Profit realisation by putting pirate copies of various software games on one disk and then selling the disk on the street, through the Internet or at stores.
- Money saving by copying the games for friends and family members who also want to play the games, but don’t want to purchase the games.
- In objection to the high prices often asked by software game developers such as console games, many users simply provide pirate copies to their friends.
- Unknowingly committing software piracy, by providing a disk to a friend who then copies and distributes the content freely or at a charge when the license only provided that a person can make three copies for installation on the computers in their home.
- Downloading the games from a download site where it stipulates that a person can only download the game to one computer and then making copies of the game which the person also installs on other computers.
Whether a software game is free, shareware or for sale, it is not legal to copy, install or distribute the games in any way other than provided for by the copyright holders. As such software developers lose a lot of money because of pirate copies.
The authors and developers often fail to get enough royalties because of such actions and even in cases where the games are free, copying such games and distributing them in another way than authorized, are against the law.
Developers are concerned not only with the loss of profits, but also malware which may be installed on the copied disks and thus making the games unworkable or damaging the computers of users. Their integrity is at stake as is their brand name.
If you are a software developer who has lost profits because of pirate copies, get expert legal help. Contact us at Smit & Van Wyk today.
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