How about this... lower the prices of software, games and movies and we'll talk about slowing down the amount of P2P-ing thats going on.

I don't know if it's the same for everyone but the only reason one should be downloading any type of content is to check it out, as in if a movie sounds good, you download it and find out that it sucks, don't buy it, if its good then support it. The same goes for games, if it sucks or runs poorly then why spend rediculous amounts of money to purchase it? A good example of this is Assassin's Creed. I wanted to buy it since it looked like a sweet game, so I checked it out and it turns out that it is known to crash when its running with Vista. So I gave up on the stupid thing and didn't buy it.

Think about it, would you buy a car without giving it a test-drive first?

I understand where you are coming from Monkey, but then what would demo's become? Demo's are essentially the test drive of many games. But P2P sharing isn't going to stop nor slow down, because people are going to go on the 'free' binge. There is always going to be a flaw or flop in the legal system that everyone is going to be able to bypass, and it happens when the government thinks they started to control the internet.

There is also Blockbuster, Roger's Video and local Video game renting stores. You can 'test drive' games/movies from these stores.

Very true about the demo bit, but demos are usually fairly small and don't portray the full scale game. Meaning that you wont see the bugs or issues with compatibility with certain OSs or hardware(usually). I also agree with you on how P2P-ing isn't going to slow down or stop and I really don't think that it can, unless you pull the plug on the net.

My main point is still this, if you download content and you like what you see, support who created it. I know only in a perfect little world would this be possible, but I would still like to pretend that I'm not the only one with the same ethic.

I'd like to see if you can find me a Blockbuster that rents PC games and software Jason, oh wait, you can't, because they don't want you to crack the games and make them playable without cds.

Happy hunting and good luck with that.

Ouch...that one hurt ^__^

Anyways, to the point, Monkey is right. There are no Video game renting stores that rent out PC/Mac games, at least in Canada. I think I heard of a couple in Europe. The games contain special program simular to Blizzard anti- CD recording crack. Last i heard it was still renting was back in 2004 when I went to Paris for a class trip. I also heard rumours that netflix is trying to open up some online servers ( mind you this a rumour, and I don't believe it none the least, but I'll post it anyways) so that they can rent games and play them for a certain amount of time, through their server. You get a password and username, and it expires whenever your time is up. I know for a fact this is crap and untrue but I figured I would post it anyways.

Now another point, why the games are so damn $$$, gaming technology is progressing into so many different factions it's insane. The technology being used in games is increasing and in turn is making games deeper and more realistic with each leap they take, but in order to keep the good games coming, they need to rake in the dough. It sucks, but hey, I know I can wait for some games to lower in price two+ months down the road.