The software industry complains a lot about piracy. There are many
things one can say about the subject. Both bad and good on both sides
of the fence.
Nog long ago I found a pirated version of "Baldurs Gate 2" on Piratebay.
This however was no ordinary pirated game. No this was a pirated
version of the game and both expansions that had been modified and
merged with "Wine" to actually run on Mac. As far as the game understood
it was running on windows, when in reality it was MacOsX Leopard.

Now, this special version was in spanish but faithful to the community
people had left links in the comments of the torrent file to where one could
download english, german and french language files. And with a little
experimentation I managed to get the game to switch to english.

Ok, it crashes now and again. There are a few little graphical glitches but
in general it is fully playable. Just remember to save often.

This had not been possible at all without not only piracy but also the whole
community behind the sub-culture of this. An excellent example of how
a "on the surface" bad thing can and IS used to something not only
creative but also compensatory. The responsible gaming houses had
not been interested in making an updated Mac version.
So this was the only way.

The gaming industry can really learn something from this,
if they are aware of it that is. IF they see it as a possibility and
not simply a problem.

Whatever... I now have Baldurs Gate 2 on my brilliantly good little
MacBook.

Information really wants to be free.....

Tags: Misc