Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Dec 5, 2015 8:25:37 GMT -5
About 12 years ago, at the dawn of the MMO (massively multiplayer online game) era, I got "pulled in" to one particular game (not particularly popular; a user base of perhaps 5K dedicated players) that I devoted about 30 min. a day to over the span of half a year. The game was "free to play" (F2P), and like most of the F2P games of the time ( and unfortunately still today), suffered from the problem of having vastly overpriced monetizable content (MC). By "monetizable content" I mean the various bonuses, perks, gameplay accelerators, etc. that consumers are willing to pay for to enhance their gameplay experience. Effective monetization is actually a fascinating subject in and of itself, but I digress. Without exaggeration, this particular game was overpriced by a factor of 100. It charged $10.00 for perks that might offer 1-2 additional minutes of entertainment. MC in F2P games can't always be rated in terms of "minutes of entertainment", but when it can, conventional wisdom is that $0.10 per minute is the absolute upper limit of what most consumers will pay. The game was well-designed in the sense that by the time I reached the point where I became interested in purchasing MC, I'd been playing for quite some time and probably would have shelled out money for content as much as tenfold overpriced. For content a hundredfold overpriced, there was no way. Before I quit the game, I probed its interactions with the server that hosted its payment transactions and (long story short) discovered a vulnerability that allowed me to purchase premium in-game content for whatever price I chose. I decided that I would continue to play the game while paying a fair price for its MC. That is, if I wanted to buy a $50 bonus, I would pay the developer $0.50; a $200 bonus would net the developer $2.00, and so on. I took this approach for about 6 months, my conscience nagging at me, ultimately spending about $180.00 (which ordinarily would have cost $18K) to reach a highly advanced stage in the game. My run ended when I confessed to a friend what I was doing and he, being a Christian, soundly condemned my actions as theft and immorality. Wanting to continue playing the game, I reasoned with him that, although technically "theft", my actions were entirely ethical. Our debate ran roughly the following course: Me: I have two options: either play the game paying reasonable prices, or quit. If I continue to play and pay reasonable prices, I can 100% guarantee you that the company is making money off of my patronage. The only additional cost to them is a pittance in bandwidth, hence they've made $179.90 off me so far. If I stop playing, they get nothing. Him: You're considering only the marginal cost, but their revenues cover one-time costs as well. They had to pay programmers to make the game. They had to pay to set up the server. Those costs are amortized and included in the price of the MC. Me: True, but I can also guarantee you that if every player paid what I'm paying, the developer would still be raking in a healthy profit. Their revenues over the past six months alone would have been close to a million dollars. I don't know what their revenue is now, but I'll bet my life it's only a tiny fraction of that, and more importantly, it's $180.00 greater than it would be had I decided to quit the game. Him: How is this any different from walking into a shoe store, taking a $100.00 pair of shoes off the rack, stuffing them into your coat, leaving $10.00 where the shoes were, and walking out of the store? Me: Apples and oranges. To make an accurate comparison, the shoe store would have to be charging $10,000.00 for a pair of shoes, which they'd be charging out of utter incompetence. I'd leave behind $100.00, which would net them a generous profit, and oh, by the way, I'd be their most profitable customer. They could only wish that all customers were like me. Didn't this exact same thing spur the revolution in the music industry? It was greed rather than incompetence in that case, but the bottom line was that prices were so inflated compared to the content being delivered that there was scarcely a man alive who wasn't pulling everything down off of Napster and the like. Hence what did the music execs do? They made individual songs available at $0.49 and $0.99, which was more than profitable enough, and now the industry is thriving. Him: "Thou shalt not steal," Virgil. This last argument I couldn't rebut. The Bible very clearly defines theft. Stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's starving family is theft. Taking a single piece of gold from a man so rich he'd never even notice or care about its loss is theft. Taking something that does not belong to you without permission is theft. What I was doing was clearly theft. Hence begrudgingly I stopped playing the game. In retrospect, I'm glad I did. What I'd been doing was immoral. The question I want to ask (and the reason for starting this thread) is: Was what I was doing also unethical? And if so, on what basis?Consider, if we apply Kant's imperative to the situation (which I'd inadvertently been doing while arguing), we find that my "pay what is reasonable" approach, universally put into practice, would have led to a more profitable outcome for the game developer. Even assuming this wasn't the case and users were paying too little to make the venture profitable (such as with the music industry), we saw that such "market pressure", embraced more-or-less universally by society, led to a reformation of the industry. We see nothing but favourable outcomes in these specific cases. The conclusion from the Kantian perspective seems clear: my actions were indeed ethical. What say you?
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Shooby
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Post by Shooby on Dec 5, 2015 8:56:56 GMT -5
I think part of the confusion is that a lot of what we now purchase isn't even real. We are purchasing electronic blips on a computer screen. Like downloading music. You used to have to physically buy a record or cd or cassette tape. Then, you actually owned something. So much of our lives now isn't real. It's a fleeting image or blip on a computer. That has really blurred the lines of reality. We can understand the concrete. Walking into a store and putting a phsyical item in your pocket, we do understand as stealing.
In your case, you are making a judgement about their profit. You are saying that the extra perks "were only worth X rather than 10x". But, I don't think that argument really holds. Deciding "worth" is really consumer driven. It is only "worth" what someone is willing to pay for it. So, you really cannot say this is 'overpriced". For you, as the consumer, that was a price you were not willing to pay, but clearly others were willing to pay it. It is no different than buying a house. A house is only "worth" what someone is willing to pay for it. And, it is a physical tangible thing. If all of the sudden, people decided that owning a home was worthless and preferred to live in trees, the cost of homes would plummet and the price of treehouses would sky rocket. So, you judgment of what they are charging really only matters according to market prices.
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OldCoyote
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Post by OldCoyote on Dec 5, 2015 9:19:16 GMT -5
Stealing intangible as compared to tangible? That is a hard question.
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OldCoyote
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Post by OldCoyote on Dec 5, 2015 9:24:52 GMT -5
My bank has no problem stealing an intangible, an example would be applying fees for services not rendered, that just appear on my statement.
On the other hand if I stole the same amount of actual cash from the same bank, I would be arrested!
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Shooby
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Post by Shooby on Dec 5, 2015 10:15:22 GMT -5
So much of what my kids want for Christmas isn't even real, lol. They want Spotify memberships and game memberships and downloads and so forth. It is really a strange time that we live in.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Dec 5, 2015 10:42:54 GMT -5
I think part of the confusion is that a lot of what we now purchase isn't even real. We are purchasing electronic blips on a computer screen. Like downloading music. You used to have to physically buy a record or cd or cassette tape. Then, you actually owned something. So much of our lives now isn't real. It's a fleeting image or blip on a computer. That has really blurred the lines of reality. We can understand the concrete. Walking into a store and putting a phsyical item in your pocket, we do understand as stealing. In your case, you are making a judgement about their profit. You are saying that the extra perks "were only worth X rather than 10x". But, I don't think that argument really holds. Deciding "worth" is really consumer driven. It is only "worth" what someone is willing to pay for it. So, you really cannot say this is 'overpriced". For you, as the consumer, that was a price you were not willing to pay, but clearly others were willing to pay it. It is no different than buying a house. A house is only "worth" what someone is willing to pay for it. And, it is a physical tangible thing. If all of the sudden, people decided that owning a home was worthless and preferred to live in trees, the cost of homes would plummet and the price of treehouses would sky rocket. So, you judgment of what they are charging really only matters according to market prices. I get what you're saying, but let me posit a simple hypothetical: Suppose Proboards, desperate for revenue, starts charging ten cents per page view on all of their message boards, including ours. Obviously this would kill off our board. There's no conceivable reality in which YMAM would survive. The price point is lunacy. It has no basis in actual costs, market realities, or anything else. Now suppose that Moon discovers a loophole that allows us to avoid the $0.10 per view fee. There's a bug in the software that she can exploit to limit the total cost per month to $100.00. She comes to the reasonable conclusion that for the amount of traffic YMAM receives, $100.00 per month is exquisitely generous compensation for what Proboards provides. By "exquisitely generous", let's suppose that if every board hosted by Proboards paid an equivalent amount per view, Proboards would rake in 300% over and above its full operating costs. Hence, not wanting to shut down the board, Moon exploits the loophole without telling Proboards. YMAM lives on, hence all of us are happy. Proboards collects generous compensation for the services they provide rather than going out of business, hence they're happy (or at least much happier than they'd be if Moon hadn't discovered the loophole), and one could argue that, although technically "stealing", what she's doing is proactively compensating for a fatal defect in Proboards' pricing model. In other words, she's part of the market forces you're talking about, with the only difference being that she had to exploit a loophole to do it. From a capitalist perspective, wouldn't you say that her actions aren't in fact a boon to the overall efficiency of the entire system? That's precisely the objective of capitalism: efficient allocation of capital. ( Disclaimer: I'm positive Moon wouldn't actually exploit such a loophole. This is all purely hypothetical.)
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Shooby
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Post by Shooby on Dec 5, 2015 10:56:05 GMT -5
You are simply making a judgment about what is "generous, exiquisite, etc". What one's profit SHOULD be is purely subjective. If i can make something for 10cents and sell it for $100K and others are willing to pay for it, that is a fair transaction. And, most likely someone else will soon discover they can make it for 10cents and sell it for $1000 and undercut you, etc. That is fair because it is a business transaction in which both parties agree.
Computer glitches are kind of difficult. Proboards has the responsibility to watch over it's own businesses. If Moon is operating illegally under Proboards, then they can shut the board down. If they then decide that she is collecting revenue and are happy with the collection, then they may do that as well. However, in reality, it would make far more sense for her to start her own forum and charge a fee and take members with her.
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mmhmm
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Post by mmhmm on Dec 5, 2015 11:15:31 GMT -5
Personally, I feel no obligation to meet the objective of capitalism. I do, however, recognize my obligation to ethical behavior.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Dec 5, 2015 11:16:37 GMT -5
And, most likely someone else will soon discover they can make it for 10cents and sell it for $1000 and undercut you, etc. That is fair because it is a business transaction in which both parties agree. Right, but what if there's a prohibitively steep penalty for that whole process to take place? In the case of YMAM, we pay a huge penalty for transitioning to a new board. We lose all our content, our special plugins and features, our domain name, our links, everything we've worked to establish over years. It's fair to say the board wouldn't survive. In the case of my game 12 years ago, I would lose all of my progress, my accomplishments, the relationships with other players, etc. that couldn't be replaced. It was either that game or "screw it". Hence this isn't like switching gas stations to save a bit on gas, or switching phone companies to save on long distance. There's a significant loss incurred by switching from one provider to another, and the industry knows this. We can reasonably assert in both cases that the only two options are "stay" or "shut down". "Migrate" isn't an option, and that throws a wrench into the usual process of price discovery you're talking about. It simply doesn't work in this case.
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Shooby
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Post by Shooby on Dec 5, 2015 11:17:26 GMT -5
I don't think stealing is a "capitalist" issue.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Dec 5, 2015 11:17:54 GMT -5
Personally, I feel no obligation to meet the objective of capitalism. I do, however, recognize my obligation to ethical behavior. Right. So is the theft in the OP ethical or not, and why? It's the why I'm specifically interested in.
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Shooby
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Post by Shooby on Dec 5, 2015 11:20:25 GMT -5
And, most likely someone else will soon discover they can make it for 10cents and sell it for $1000 and undercut you, etc. That is fair because it is a business transaction in which both parties agree. Right, but what if there's a prohibitively steep penalty for that whole process to take place? In the case of YMAM, we pay a huge penalty for transitioning to a new board. We lose all our content, our special plugins and features, our domain name, our links, everything we've worked to establish over years. It's fair to say the board wouldn't survive. In the case of my game 12 years ago, I would lose all of my progress, my accomplishments, the relationships with other players, etc. that couldn't be replaced. It was either that game or "screw it". Hence this isn't like switching gas stations to save a bit on gas, or switching phone companies to save on long distance. There's a significant loss incurred by switching from one provider to another, and the industry knows this. We can reasonably assert in both cases that the only two options are "stay" or "shut down". "Migrate" isn't an option, and that throws a wrench into the usual process of price discovery you're talking about. It simply doesn't work in this case. And, basically what you are saying above is that stealing is OK if because there is a cost involved to you if you don't. So, if I steal some perfume i don't "need" that you view that as wrong. But, if you steal something because it might cost you not to steal, then that is justified.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Dec 5, 2015 11:32:23 GMT -5
You are simply making a judgment about what is "generous, exiquisite, etc". What one's profit SHOULD be is purely subjective. If i can make something for 10cents and sell it for $100K and others are willing to pay for it, that is a fair transaction. And, most likely someone else will soon discover they can make it for 10cents and sell it for $1000 and undercut you, etc. That is fair because it is a business transaction in which both parties agree.
... Also, let's think of this same issue in terms of progressive taxation. What is the concept of progressive taxation? Simply put: that higher-income individuals should pay a proportionally greater percentage of their income into public coffers. But personal incomes in our society are by and large determined by market forces. Supply and demand. Hence why do we do this? Because as a society, we've implicitly reached the conclusion that wealthier citizens' income is "more than fair" for the benefit they provide to society. In other words, progressive taxation is a reflection of society's view that market forces alone are insufficient to determine the optimal price point for the services provided by various professions. Rather than live with this sub-optimal outcome, we proactively adjust taxation to bring personal compensation more in line with what we (reasonably?) believe is optimal. Hence if disregarding market forces to set price points that we reasonably believe to be more optimal is inherently unethical, we can reach no other conclusion than to say progressive taxation is unethical. And yet the vast majority of people reading this wouldn't characterize it as such. In making this judgment, we often defer to the fact that doctors, lawyers, and other upper-tax-bracket professionals are still very generously compensated. They make more than enough to live in luxury. Why? Just because the state makes the reasonable determination rather than the individual? If the determination is reasonable, why should that even matter? Do you get what I'm saying?
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mmhmm
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Post by mmhmm on Dec 5, 2015 11:35:37 GMT -5
Personally, I feel no obligation to meet the objective of capitalism. I do, however, recognize my obligation to ethical behavior. Right. So is the theft in the OP ethical or not, and why? It's the why I'm specifically interested in. As I see it, the theft is, indeed, theft. Theft is unethical. Theft is taking that which does not belong to you. The means by which the theft is perpetrated are irrelevant. You probed the game for a way around following their rules. That was the first unethical step. What you could have done was contact the owners/operators of the game with your idea for making it better. Instead, you created a backdoor and took what you wanted. As you said, you wanted to continue to play the game. Your wants do not excuse subterfuge and unethical activities. That's my take on it.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Dec 5, 2015 11:39:54 GMT -5
Right, but what if there's a prohibitively steep penalty for that whole process to take place? In the case of YMAM, we pay a huge penalty for transitioning to a new board. We lose all our content, our special plugins and features, our domain name, our links, everything we've worked to establish over years. It's fair to say the board wouldn't survive. In the case of my game 12 years ago, I would lose all of my progress, my accomplishments, the relationships with other players, etc. that couldn't be replaced. It was either that game or "screw it". Hence this isn't like switching gas stations to save a bit on gas, or switching phone companies to save on long distance. There's a significant loss incurred by switching from one provider to another, and the industry knows this. We can reasonably assert in both cases that the only two options are "stay" or "shut down". "Migrate" isn't an option, and that throws a wrench into the usual process of price discovery you're talking about. It simply doesn't work in this case. And, basically what you are saying above is that stealing is OK if because there is a cost involved to you if you don't. So, if I steal some perfume i don't "need" that you view that as wrong. But, if you steal something because it might cost you not to steal, then that is justified. Let's not use "right" and "wrong", because I consider stealing immoral under all circumstances. Let's use "ethical" and "unethical", which basically requires us to "prove" wrongness via the application of some ethical heuristic such as Kant's imperative. I'm saying that in both cases we're looking at, the only two reasonable options are "continue to use the services of service provider X at a price you know will net them a profit" or "stop using the services entirely". There is no option: "switch to service provider Y". In other words, there's no way to exert market pressure on service provider X. You either use their services or your don't. If you don't, they go out of business because they're incompetent, greedy, or both. That's the baseline situation.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Dec 5, 2015 11:41:39 GMT -5
Right. So is the theft in the OP ethical or not, and why? It's the why I'm specifically interested in. As I see it, the theft is, indeed, theft. Theft is unethical. Theft is taking that which does not belong to you. The means by which the theft is perpetrated are irrelevant. You probed the game for a way around following their rules. That was the first unethical step. What you could have done was contact the owners/operators of the game with your idea for making it better. Instead, you created a backdoor and took what you wanted. As you said, you wanted to continue to play the game. Your wants do not excuse subterfuge and unethical activities. That's my take on it. That's a moral argument. "Theft is wrong." "Subterfuge is wrong." I'm looking for an ethical argument. Why is it wrong.
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Post by ArchietheDragon on Dec 5, 2015 11:42:29 GMT -5
I like seeing your dark side , Virgil!
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Dec 5, 2015 11:52:38 GMT -5
I like seeing your dark side , Virgil! I'm not advocating stealing. This is just one case where I see moral arguments coming into direct opposition of ethical ones. "Stealing is wrong. It doesn't matter why. This moral authority says so. Don't do it." OK. But an ethical argument can't fall back to something as base as "Stealing is wrong." It has to be justified. Reasoned out. And every line of reasoning I can come up with in this case leads to the conclusion that stealing, under these particular circumstances, is a justifiably ethical thing to do. Obviously I'm not alone, because some ridiculous majority of North Americans were pulling down free songs illegally during the Napster era, feeling fully justified in doing so because of the greed of the corporations. And there was zero compensation to the producers in that case.
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mmhmm
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Post by mmhmm on Dec 5, 2015 11:55:09 GMT -5
I disagree. Finding a backdoor to get what you want (one that, additionally, puts other, less knowledgeable players at a disadvantage) is unethical. You could have played the game without the enhancements. It seems like you wanted to gain advantage within the game. That's strictly self-enhancement, not game enhancement. The prime directive is concentrated on "me, me, me first."
I was once a game master for a rather large MMORPG. I'd played for several years before accepting that position, so knew a lot of the players. I was aware there were some things going on (of a sexual nature) that I didn't approve of but had always figured adults would handle the little kids who came to them with these "doubtful ideas" and the game's operators would handle the rest. Once I was in a position where I was required to jump into scenes I began to see things weren't being controlled - not by the adult players and not by the game's operators. I brought this to the attention of management. They hemmed and hawed. Ultimately, they decided it wasn't their responsibility. There was a blurb on the game's home page that claimed the game was safe for those over 13 years of age. I couldn't justify the lack of ethics. I quit.
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Post by ArchietheDragon on Dec 5, 2015 11:57:44 GMT -5
I like seeing your dark side , Virgil! I'm not advocating stealing. This is just one case where I see moral arguments coming into direct opposition of ethical ones. "Stealing is wrong. It doesn't matter why. This moral authority says so. Don't do it." OK. But an ethical argument can't fall back to something as base as "Stealing is wrong." It has to be justified. Reasoned out. And every line of reasoning I can come up with in this case leads to the conclusion that stealing, under these particular circumstances, is a justifiably ethical thing to do. Obviously I'm not alone, because some ridiculous majority of North Americans were pulling down free songs illegally during the Napster era, feeling fully justified in doing so because of the greed of the corporations. And there was zero compensation to the producers in that case. I picture you with a leather jacket on and riding a harley while you say this. so badass.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Dec 5, 2015 12:05:26 GMT -5
I disagree. Finding a backdoor to get what you want (one that, additionally, puts other, less knowledgeable players at a disadvantage) is unethical. You could have played the game without the enhancements. It seems like you wanted to gain advantage within the game. That's strictly self-enhancement, not game enhancement. The prime directive is concentrated on "me, me, me first." Of course it was selfish. That doesn't make it unethical. As for gaining advantage within the game, the game, to me, wasn't worth playing without that advantage. It was poorly designed in that regard, which was one of the reasons the user base was so tiny. Also, just so we don't tread into the domain of cheating rather than stealing, I'll disclaim that this was more of a "Minecraft"-type game where players just happened to be sharing the same world. They weren't in competition with each other. In fact, higher-level players were afforded certain powers and privileges that were a boon to the in-game community. Suffice it to say that the only wrong being perpetrated was against the developers. There was no "cheating" involved (in the sense of negatively impacting other gamers' experiences), and even if there had been, let's consider it off-topic for this thread.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Dec 5, 2015 12:06:16 GMT -5
I'm not advocating stealing. This is just one case where I see moral arguments coming into direct opposition of ethical ones. "Stealing is wrong. It doesn't matter why. This moral authority says so. Don't do it." OK. But an ethical argument can't fall back to something as base as "Stealing is wrong." It has to be justified. Reasoned out. And every line of reasoning I can come up with in this case leads to the conclusion that stealing, under these particular circumstances, is a justifiably ethical thing to do. Obviously I'm not alone, because some ridiculous majority of North Americans were pulling down free songs illegally during the Napster era, feeling fully justified in doing so because of the greed of the corporations. And there was zero compensation to the producers in that case. I picture you with a leather jacket on and riding a harley while you say this. so badass. You're a nut.
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mmhmm
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Post by mmhmm on Dec 5, 2015 12:12:14 GMT -5
I disagree. Finding a backdoor to get what you want (one that, additionally, puts other, less knowledgeable players at a disadvantage) is unethical. You could have played the game without the enhancements. It seems like you wanted to gain advantage within the game. That's strictly self-enhancement, not game enhancement. The prime directive is concentrated on "me, me, me first." Of course it was selfish. That doesn't make it unethical. As for gaining advantage within the game, the game, to me, wasn't worth playing without that advantage. It was poorly designed in that regard, which was one of the reasons the user base was so tiny. Also, just so we don't tread into the domain of cheating rather than stealing, I'll disclaim that this was more of a "Minecraft"-type game where players just happened to be sharing the same world. They weren't in competition with each other. In fact, higher-level players were afforded certain powers and privileges that were a boon to the in-game community. Suffice it to say that the only wrong being perpetrated was against the developers. There was no "cheating" involved (in the sense of negatively impacting other gamers' experiences), and even if there had been, let's consider it off-topic for this thread. LOL! But, of course! I think I'll just leave this here: Justifications and statistics share something in common. Just shuffle the the terminology a bit and you can make either show anything you want it to show. That brings us back to ethics ...
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Post by copperboxes on Dec 5, 2015 12:23:51 GMT -5
I like seeing your dark side , Virgil! I'm not advocating stealing. This is just one case where I see moral arguments coming into direct opposition of ethical ones. "Stealing is wrong. It doesn't matter why. This moral authority says so. Don't do it." OK. But an ethical argument can't fall back to something as base as "Stealing is wrong." It has to be justified. Reasoned out. And every line of reasoning I can come up with in this case leads to the conclusion that stealing, under these particular circumstances, is a justifiably ethical thing to do. I suppose one argument is freedom of will. Business owners are generally free to set prices as they see fit, even if the choices are less than optimal. If no life is in danger, it's their choice. Exceptions are sometimes made for vital-for-life services or national interest, but by and large, people can charge what they wish and deal with the consequences, it's their right and freedom. In general, to take services or items and force people to accept a lower amounts per unit unilaterally, is effectively removing freedom of choice, likely in defiance of legal code and a personal oath signed before playing (most programs have people agree not to hack or mess with them) Forcing personal analysis and will on another isn't something that should be done lightly, IMO, same as how private citizens ideally shouldn't smash each other over the head because one party in disagreement with the other analyzes that they know best what should happen. That sort of reasoning, that "I know best what should happen and what will happen" is a very forceful and potentially damaging line of reasoning if used in a wide spread way, because an individual can very well be biased or not be considering logically while overriding the rights of others. For the "already using the service and then the cost goes up" argument, I think that's pretty much how deadbeat tenants assess rental situations. The fiscal and emotional costs of moving and trying to find another place to live are too high, so they try to lock in place and pay what they think is fair. It can be a fairly chaotic line of reasoning if done on a broad scale, to disregard laws and personal agreements.
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Shooby
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Post by Shooby on Dec 5, 2015 12:50:41 GMT -5
I don't really seperate moral and ethical so i really don't understand the question.
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resolution
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Post by resolution on Dec 5, 2015 13:02:38 GMT -5
I like seeing your dark side , Virgil! I'm not advocating stealing. This is just one case where I see moral arguments coming into direct opposition of ethical ones. "Stealing is wrong. It doesn't matter why. This moral authority says so. Don't do it." OK. But an ethical argument can't fall back to something as base as "Stealing is wrong." It has to be justified. Reasoned out. And every line of reasoning I can come up with in this case leads to the conclusion that stealing, under these particular circumstances, is a justifiably ethical thing to do. Obviously I'm not alone, because some ridiculous majority of North Americans were pulling down free songs illegally during the Napster era, feeling fully justified in doing so because of the greed of the corporations. And there was zero compensation to the producers in that case. Even in pure PVE games there is an element of competition for status and prestige among players. Hacking the game for an unfair advantage places other players in a lower position by comparison and damages their game play.
Part of why I left Archeage was all the hacks and dupes being committed by other players. Your hack could have easily cost the game more than you spent by discouraging other players and influencing them to leave the game.
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MJ2.0
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Post by MJ2.0 on Dec 5, 2015 13:17:39 GMT -5
I don't really seperate moral and ethical so i really don't understand the question. He's just trying to do some semantic acrobatics so he can say that what he did wasn't stealing. And yeah, it was stealing - just FYI. The fact that you were able to make a hack to get you to manipulate the prices is IMO unethical. And again, still theft.
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Pants
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Post by Pants on Dec 5, 2015 13:32:55 GMT -5
So not only were you stealing from them, you hacked their server in order to do it?
Yeaaaaaaah...
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Robert not Bobby
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Post by Robert not Bobby on Dec 5, 2015 13:44:41 GMT -5
Virgil, you are really long winded.
Theft, whatever its manifestations and permutations, is always wrong. It is really quite simple...you have something that someone else worked for and acquired, and you took a short-cut.
Go tell that to the banks.
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resolution
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Post by resolution on Dec 5, 2015 13:46:30 GMT -5
It is a chronic problem in MMOs and a lot of players will leave a game if there are too many hackers or farmers, because they don't want to be at an unfair disadvantage. My current game has a guild running a bot program that is above us in the raid rankings, and it is causing a lot of butt hurt right now.
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