Becoming a consumer of licensed products

Long ago, when I was a 10th grade schoolboy, I was fond of computer games. I bought them in tons on various pirated discs, of which there were abundant everywhere. It was 2003, and the stalls with movies and games bred like a weed, even in Kopeisk, not to mention the regional center - Chelyabinsk. I preferred to buy collections, for the simple reason that it was so cheaper - 10 games on one disc for 150 rubles or one game for the same 150 rubles. While playing various games, I, to be honest, often used cheat codes to simplify the gameplay and improve my gaming experience. It is always nice, you see, when the hero you control is immortal or endowed with some kind of inhuman abilities — endless ammunition or some other equipment. All these actions led me to use specialized software - and here, I am sure, many of you will be faced with the familiar name - ArtMoney. This program allows you to hack even those games that do not have cheat codes. She allowed to earn an infinite amount of money in the game, or make the player immortal, or edit its parameters. One day, after the next update of this program (up to 7, if my memory serves me, versions), I came across the message “You can help the project by purchasing it for 300 rubles and having access to additional buns”. I felt a sense of responsibility and I was eager to help the project.

Several years have passed, and also many very significant events in my life. I entered the university twice on a budget for a good specialty, and flew out of it twice. The year 2007 began, and for the first time I decided (of course, not without the push of my parents) to look for a job. Without experience and with a load of 11 classes behind my back, I calmly got a job as a sales assistant and started earning the first money. Then I ran into difficulty. I earned about 20,000 rubles a month, but I had nowhere to spend them. I bought various expensive clothes, I bought souvenirs home, I subscribed to various gaming magazines, and continued to remain in the dark - and where to spend this money? My parents stopped giving me pocket money, but they would be superfluous - I was already confused. And so, once I went to the computer goods store, and I saw a new shelf with them - with licensed games. Yes, the prices for them, compared with the pirated "15 games for 150 rubles," went off scale, but I was curious. What really interested me is the Orange Box CD, which contains 5 games, which cost 600 rubles (again, if memory serves me). I decided that this is a good investment, plus thanks to the creators of the Half-Life games, Team Fortress, and even Portal (of course, I played all these games before, downloading them from torrents - yes, at that time I was already actively using torrents) . By purchasing this disc, I gladly went home. My surprise was indescribable when I was faced with the need to install some additional software - pirated games never required this. I had to take it for granted and I continued the installation.
***
After I played some of the newly acquired games for a while, I was left alone with this system. The Internet in our area still left much to be desired (256 Kbps for 600 rubles per month), so the idea of ​​online distribution did not inspire me at all. However, I learned that you can purchase games without leaving your home, and generally sitting exactly on your chair, and this in some strange way invigorated me.

When my earnings began to increase, I realized that I could spend 1,500 rubles instead of 150 rubles for 15 games on one disc for 3 games on 3 discs and thereby clear my conscience. Yes, my conscience was clear, even though I lived with the ZverDVD WinXP operating system. I felt completely legitimate! I realized that by buying licensed games, I help developers create further, and this made me very happy. However, an event occurred that turned my rainbow world over. Despite my 100% confidence in what I am doing, the DrWeb CureIt utility (or something similar) showed me that I have at least 60 Trojans in the system. At that time, I didn’t even think about who wrote the Trojans, or how the antivirus could help me - I just wanted security. My experience at that time told me that I needed an antivirus. I used to use different ones - from Kaspersky to the same Doctor Web (of course, using pirated servers for updating or simply stealing activation keys), but this only added to my confidence that I should pay at least an antivirus - I decided that unlicensed keys could not help me protect my computer. I, at that time already an independent young man, decided to spend about 1,000 rubles on a one-year subscription. The opinion of my middle brother was my point of view - I chose ESET NOD32. In addition to the brother's opinion, this decision was also influenced by the fact that only this antivirus at that time had such a thing as “heuristic analysis”, that is, an analysis of the application’s actions, regardless of whether it was added to the virus database or not; in addition, he did not slow down the system, as Kaspersky did then. My choice was made in their favor, and I decided not to waste money on trifles, but to physically prove my involvement in the case - I went and bought a box with a disk in a computer store (yes, they are the same size as A4-sized paper for printers) ). A little later, I realized that this license can be used on three computers, and I gladly gave my close friends the keys.

I continued to use the antivirus and boasted to these friends. They said that I had lost my mind and that they had license keys until 2016 inclusively, and even for life. I just smirked and said that yes, everyone has such an opportunity, but not everyone is willing to pay for a real product. In the meantime, my stories about the licensed antivirus caught a few more people and we began to invest with them in the extension together. Thus, it turned out that I spend three times less, and get the same. In parallel with these events, Steam unexpectedly switched to a ruble payment method for digital versions, and significantly reduced the cost of games. At the same time, the price abroad remained the same, and I can imagine what kind of titanic efforts Valve had to agree on price reductions in the CIS countries. Our distributors, meanwhile, were naturally not at all pleased, because most often the digital version was worth as much as the jewel or even, in some cases, the DVD box. It was at that moment that I made my first purchase on Steam - I bought the game without having a disc. It was an unusual feeling, because, as you understand, the Russian people used to pay only for something real, and not something virtual there. However, I enjoyed this pleasure, and I began to monitor discounts on this resource, and slowly accumulate a library of my games. Never before have purchases brought me such pleasure. I realized that by buying the game in the digital version, I help the developer a little more than if I bought the same game on the disk - because I paid the same money, and the cost of producing the disk and the box went to zero. Likewise, I realized the value of each digital purchase.
***
Once, once again launching some old game and running parallel to ArtMoney, I saw the same message as I saw five years ago. I remembered the old promise I made to myself - to buy this program in order to support the developer. I went to the site and made the payment procedure. The feeling that gripped me after entering the license key hardly compares to the usual euphoria when buying a regular drive in the store - it was precisely a sense of pride that I helped a simple guy from Russia to develop his product further.

A few years later I stopped using the antivirus for the simple reason that I was literate enough not to cling to viruses from different sources. I didn’t use IE anymore, after installing the system, I always turned off autorun of all disks, and before entering any folder on an unknown flash drive - I always checked whether it was a folder or a disguised application. Plus, the standard Windows 7 security system has always helped me and clarified whether this is exactly the file that I want to run. Additionally, I started using various browser security plugins. Those people who have become accustomed to buying antivirus with me over the past few years have also stopped using it (but I'm not sure that they have learned how to deal with viruses manually, they just lost the sense of buying it from them). At one beautiful moment of my life, I changed my job. At this work, everyone strictly adhered to licensed products and even before installing any freeware, carefully read the license agreement. If the words “not intended for commercial use” accidentally flashed there, even if it was a banal music player, they did not install it, but used analogues. It struck me so much that at first I suspected that the firm I had gotten into was not clean-handed from the very beginning, and there were often checks on the AEC and other regulatory bodies. Fortunately, I was wrong. These actions were dictated only by corporate policy, and after half a year of work, I was so imbued with it that I decided to switch to fully licensed software. It was another upheaval in my worldview - I didn’t now consider Microsoft as the “feeding trough of Bill Gates”, I didn’t understand that behind this name there are hundreds and thousands of people who every day, coming to work, put a piece of themselves (as if loudly This may not sound) in the product that is produced. From that day on, I firmly decided that I would no longer use unlicensed operating systems and office suites. I purchased Win7 and that day when I installed it at home, I felt that a small pebble fell from my soul. I can not call him a huge stone of responsibility - he has never been like that, just a small pebble. But I felt better.
True, it became easier.

As an epilogue I want to add that I continue to use software that I did not buy. In 90% of cases, these are analogs of world-famous and extremely expensive packages of various programs, providing not all of the functionality, but its majority. In 5% of cases, these are hacked games that are easier to download than the same demo versions via Steam. I use them for dating. If I like the game or just like it - I will get it, on sale or even at full price. If I do not like it - at least what kind of advertising campaign would be carried out, I will not spend a penny. Not to be unfounded - I now have over 270 games on my Steam account, and some of them were acquired after becoming acquainted with pirated products (most often on sale, of course). And I leave another 5% to those products that, by virtue of their incredible convenience, are necessary for me, but they cost fabulous money. I am talking not only about the products of the wonderful company Adobe, which appeals to me, except for the differing interface in similar programs, but also about other companies. I know that one day I will be able to help them financially - perhaps with a donat, or maybe with an acquisition. I can not only limit the time. One thing I want to say in conclusion - piracy in the modern sense of the word is not always evil. Pirates eventually become developers, and people who downloaded - buyers. And this is worth thinking about the so-called copyright holders.