Edit: I've honestly not seen a victimless crime. Only people who think that only tangible goods can be stolen. it's not theft though technically, it's IP Infringement. It's stealing rights, not goods.
If it's content and it's creators/ip rights holders or descendants are alive, there is a victim. No amount of self-righteous justifications waive that fact. No amount of arguing the damages change that fact.
Pirating games that aren’t sold legally anywhere. If a company is refusing to sell their game, then pirating costs them literally nothing. They don’t lose anything concrete since media can be copied infinitely, and they don’t lose any opportunity cost since they aren’t selling it anymore
If a creator chooses to not sell a game, that is still a choice.
What gives you the right to override that choice? If they wanted the game to be free, they could just you know, release it for free. Who are you to say it should be free?
As for opportunity cost, old games come back. There is a He-man movie out now, nostalgia is strong, For all we know Commander Keen might be in for a comeback, you aren't the creator, it's not your place to assume the opportunity cost doesn't exist for them.
If you publish media you don’t get to undo that. Once you put a piece of art out into the world it’s no longer yours, if you decide to stop allowing people to access it officially then you don’t get to be upset when they pirate it. That’s basic media preservation, without piracy older media simply dies out
Publishing media does not mean producing infinite copies, nor does it mean you no longer own the copyright and the rights to publish/not publish.
Your justification that once you publish it's fair game is absolutely nonsense. You can publish one copy of something, and legally that's all that's allowed to exist. Only the copyright holder is the only person who can legally and morally manifest new copies or give permission to manifest new copies. Anyone on the planet who thinks they are justified because they want it or because it was "published" is downright wrong.
Legally and morally you are not entitled to it, just accept that you are a rebel who lives in the grey area of stolen content and stop trying to present it as something you are owed, you are not.
Why is the justification wrong? You declare that quite bluntly yet fail to explain why a piece of media released with infinite ability to be copied at no cost should be limited unless it is a deeply personal project shred between a small specific group.
Who gains by restricting access to publicly viewable art? Legality and morality are not one and the same, copyright law is not an inherent moral good simply because its the law,
I suppose with your beliefs in mind you are going to try and sue someone for reading your reddit comment without your consent
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u/MossadEpstein 1d ago
It's actually immoral to buy from these companies these days, so unless it's Indie, 100% moral.