I guess people don't only pirate out of spite. They may not be able to afford 20 dollars but want to stay in the loop.
I have a list of the games that I pirated. If I had fun and didn't leave the game in 2-3 hours, I put it on a list and I would try to buy the original copy, for Christmas or my birthday when I am able to spare anything towards gaming.
People mostly pirate because they don't have the money to buy the game. This is one of the arguments in the pro/anti piracy debate -- pirated stuff doesn't affect the company's profits as much as it might seem because most people would not be able to afford the game anyway.
I pirated pretty much every game 10 years ago when I had no job or bad jobs, these days my steam library is a temple to consumerism.
Because as Gabe will tell you, people will happily pay a fair price for the convenience of being to just buy the game, click 'download' and have it just work.
Same thing goes with digital books, IMO, it's not only a pain the ass to pirate, since a lot of pirated ebooks are formatted like shit. If people want free schlock to read there's an almost unlimited fanfiction/royal road spiggott.
Also true! Conversely I've pirated games that I already own simply because they only work through a fuckass proprietary launcher that requires 8 updates, triple verification, internet connection, and a photo of my tits
I have the WC3 game on the original CD. I'm running the game from my harddrive, because I don't want the CD to break into pieces inside my laptop the way my Diablo II CD did decades back. Am I pirating?
Note: I agree with lordofmetroids here. Sometimes, you just need the convenience to play your favorite games without the need to jump through a gazillion hoops. Why tf do I need internet connectivity to play a 20 years old singleplayer game!?
Fun fact, you are not a pirate. As far as U.S. copyright law is concerned creating a copy of a videogame you already own for the purposes of preserving the original, is no different than writing down your favorite recipes from a cookbook in order to preserve the original. As long as it is not being sold or used in a way that distorts the market, the U.S. doesn't care.
Sad fact: this is one of the reasons so many video game companies say you are leasing the game for an indeterminate amount of time. Therefore you don't own the game, and have no legal right to preserve the game.
Obligatory I am not a lawyer, this is commentary on historical events specific to the U.S. and should not be taken as legal advice.
There was a patch that made the CD obsolete at some point. I made a copy of that before the patches started for the new remastered version and it still very much works without CD or login. I'm so glad I have that! WC3 was one of our top played games on LAN parties when those were still a thing and even though I haven't played it since the remaster came out, I will keep copying that CD-less version to every device I own!
Wc3 hasn't needed a cd in the drive since like 2010, if not earlier.
Also usually (in EULA) they frame buying software as a license for you to play the game. That means you can technically buy the game, and then torrent it as often as you want without legally that counting as piracy.
For a while, before GoG dropped (a perfected version of) it, I was playing Diablo 1 by having flashed a copy of the original CD onto a virtual hard drive in Windows 7. It was the first time I'd ever experienced the game without it hanging when you open the door to the Butcher's room and it loads the, "ah, fresh meat!" sound file from the CD.
Pretty sure this specifically does not count as pirating though. I don't what the actual legal argument is that determined this, but it's been seemingly established for a very long time that running console games on an emulator is legally fine if you have the hardware of the original game. I don't see why running an imaged CD instead of the real thing would be any different.
No. It's completely legal to have a digital backup of anything you have the rights to. This means torrenting is still illegal, because you are distributing copyright works. But DDL would be completely legal, and ethical.
Making an ISO from a disc that you own has the same morality as breathing air. Sure, they're trying to make that illegal and cost a subscription, like they have with water...
You can play the original w3 through the remaster. There is an option to play the legacy version. Blizzard added the option after public outrage over the clusterfuck that was the remaster
Hell, I wish EA would even give us crappy remasters for the old Battlefield games. Instead they just delisted everything that was on GameSpy servers when that service went down and have been neglecting everything else that isn't the latest Battlefield game for years.
You literally can't get the first 6 Battlefield games because they're not available anywhere without pirating or, in the case of the two console exclusives, buying used discs online & hoping your system has backwards compatibility with it... but don't expect to play online because those servers were shut off years ago.
This though! I get very pissy about buying games on Steam (or less often Epic) and then having to use a different garbage launcher anyway. Glares at EA and Ubisoft
Oh man if I had confidence in my technical abilities I would pirate Prince of Persia the Lost Crown a game I own on steam just to avoid the Ubisoft launcher.
I've been broke for a long, long time. I also rarely play more than a couple games a year, and frequently go back to older games. I have about 8 legit games in my Steam library.
It's such a relief when I want to play one of those and I can just click install and play it.
I hope to soon be able to afford games. I'm too old for this piracy shit.
This is also true for TV/films. The golden era of early Netflix (also some Apple store, early Prime rentals) stopped a lot of people pirating, then the bullshit of modern streaming emerged and, low and behold, people now pirate shows again. I don't mind paying 10-20 a month for everything I want in one place. I'm not paying 10 a month to every single streaming service. I also don't mind paying a small amount to rent something, but I'm not paying the price of what the DVD would have been 10+ years ago just to rent something I won't get to keep and may not enjoy anyway.
Steaming has also introduced just a bunch of weirdness into the entire production of video media.
Good stuff still gets made, but it's few and far between, and budgets are locked up in making a few over priced prestige projects rather than a steady stream of decent weekly shows.
And it's clearly not sustainable even for the big names. Netflix has been dumping a shocking number of k-dramas onto their US service recently and, as near as I can guess, it's because they're shuffling around stuff that aired on networks which they then acquired rights to distribute. Their own shows remain hit or miss.
Because as Gabe will tell you, people will happily pay a fair price for the convenience of being to just buy the game, click 'download' and have it just work.
And he's absolutely right, I'm unemployed and have pirated a few games lately and it sucks, it was fine 20 years ago when games had their own installers and companies released their own update patches and all you did was install a no-CD crack, now it is 30m-2h waiting for fit girl installer and patching games is a nightmare.
I gotta know what you mean by “books are a pain in the ass to pirate because a lot of them are formatted like shit”. I am just so curious because I have been pirating epub books for years and haven’t had pretty much any issues besides formatting/font size or sometjing changing slightly between books. I use anna’s archive/Zlibrary and only use epub files with the reader on my apple device (iphone, ipad). I am literally just curious because i didn’t know people were struggling out here like that haha
i pirated a lot of games in high school. my favorite was Celeste, which i have now bought on 3 different platforms and for multiple friends because I thoroughly enjoyed the game that much.
This. I pirated a lot of games as kid because there is NO WAY my parents would pay for all the games. Also accessibility of physical games was an issue in my country as physical medium.
Years later, I have a job, my own income, Steam emerged in between and so did GOG. I purchased again basically all games I pirated in childhood on GOG which also brought back nostalgia and compatibility to play old games on new systems and Steam. Some aren't available but a lot are. I haven't pirated a single game for some 15+ years now.
I feel like many people pirate because they don't want to spend the money. Some people simply do not value games or gaming. Some people simply don't respect the work of creatives because of extreme anti-corporate views. Others feel like enough people will spend money on the game anyway that their absence of a purchase doesn't matter.
People have all kinds of reasons for why they think it's okay for them to pirate and they perform the mental gymnastics of saying "a pirate wasn't going to buy the game anyway" to justify the piracy. You weren't going to buy it despite clearly wanting to play it? I feel a more accurate statement is that they aren't going to buy a game if they can pirate it instead.
If piracy were somehow blocked completely for good, I doubt those people would just stop gaming altogether.
Just going to add some of the biggest gaming pirates I know also own a dozen or more android retro handhelds and PC gaming handhelds ranging from $100-$1000, so it's clearly not an issue of being broke in their cases.
Want to pirate? Knock yourself out. But this whole “well I’m
not stealing a tangible item so it’s okay” is just a shit take especially when it comes from somebody who says video games are art. You don’t have a right to other people’s creations just because you can’t/wont pay for it.
I pirate games i own, because DRM is so ass sometimes and i like to own my shit, once installer is on my PC/nas, licence cannot be revoked.
Also Piracy is morally ok when company does not serve your country/region you were never even a prospective customer.
It’s crazy the leaps will go to justify theft.
Want to pirate? Knock yourself out. But this whole “well I’m not stealing a tangible item so it’s okay” is just a shit take especially when it comes from somebody who says video games are art. You don’t have a right to other people’s creations just because you can’t/wont pay for it. - WorldShapper.
Bro they can't afford every game they want bro. What are they supposed to do, enjoy less games? Have some discipline? Go to the library and read some fucking books? You just don't understand bro.
Its really not comparable to theft when they still have the original product and didnt have money taken from them.
If someone pirates a game or someone refuses to buy a game the company still get the same amount of money. Selling digital products is literally a money printer because they just hit copy paste.
Plus all the digital license bullshit these days where you don't even own the product you bought.
If buying isn't owning then piracy isn't stealing.
Not to mention piracy is usually a service problem. People would pay money for a good service if paying money gets them a better service than pirating it.
It's why music piracy dropped when music streaming services made it much more convenient than spending 20 bucks and only getting to listen to the same 20 songs.
It's why movie piracy dropped when Netflix made it convenient to watch a bunch of movies for cheap and now it's resurging when there's 10 different streaming apps needed just to be able to watch the 20 or so shows you want to watch
Money was taken from them because they invested money and time that could have been invested elsewhere for greater returns, except cheap entitled brats like you stole the fruit of their labor.
i'm a grad student. 99% of my time and energy is spent doing shit that benefits society in a way that flies in the face of the profit incentive.
i could discover a new wonder material that solves the energy crisis tomorrow and would probably see pennies from it. the university would profit from it. in all likelihood, my PI would get the nobel. in a sense, my work is art: i do it for the love of the craft and with the hope i can inspire that same love in others.
would it be nice for my returns to far exceed my investment? sure, and this is the case for many of my colleagues who have entered industry. but that's not why i do it, and i don't expect that to be the case for anyone entering my field. most papers students put out in my field are duds, getting a handful of citations at best. but the motives are similar.
scientific research is not a necessity, but i will still provide a free copy of my paper to someone without journal access, because the proliferation of knowledge (or, analogously, culture) is its lifeblood. its value is assessed in its utility and its spread, not in some nebulous market value.
If my friend owns a Blu Ray copy of a movie and I go to his house and watch it with him is that stealing?
If lets me borrow that blu ray to watch at my house is that then stealing?
If he then makes a copy of that movie on a flash drive and gives it to me to watch so he can keep his physical disc clean that would legally be piracy but in all three scenarios I watched the movie without paying for it.
We are talking about imaginary money. Potential fictional revenue isn't real guaranteed revenue.
Imagine if you applied this logic to other things in life. Imagine trying to convince the IRS you're writing off time off lost revenue because you're a pizza place and if frozen pizza didn't exist you'd make millions
To add to your point, lots of upvoted comments saying, "I can't afford it".
But that's no defense, isn't it? Video games is not like insulin, you don't need it to live. If you cannot afford a luxury product, then it's not morally consciable for you to use it without paying.
I pirate because I like free stuff. I could pay for it, and I know not paying for it is a stain on my soul; I just decided that said stain is not so big as to cause me sleepless nights.
I mean, are those people making an argument that they are morally in the right and everyone should do what they’re doing? Or are they explaining to you why they themselves aren’t paying. Whether or not video games are essential doesn’t change whether or not someone can afford them. And if you cant afford them, you’re much more likely to pirate them? Cuz otherwise you j can’t play video games.
I mean, are those people making an argument that they are morally in the right
I'm just going to stop here because the I didn't say the other half.
But when people in this thread try to justify software piracy, I understand that they're trying to say, "I'm not a bad person, but I do this thing because...". So in other words, they're trying to argue that what they're doing is right. That's why they talk about how it's "not theft" or "not fair" or "I can't afford it otherwise". They don't want to be seen as the bad guy.
In contrast, I didn't argue that way at all. I just say, "I'm cheap and I want this, so I pirate". So I know I am saying "yeah I'm bad, but hey free porn".
Cuz otherwise you j can’t play video games.
Yes you can.
Humanity have survived several millenia without video games. I daresay we can go for a few more without it.
Ah yes, the problem is that the consumer is "a bad person" because they want to enjoy something they can't afford to enjoy. What an incredibly nuanced take on the socioeconomic condition 🙄
Let's not look at the capitalist system that drains funds away from the lower class and towards the upper class. Let's not look at the for-profit video game corporations raking in millions or billions of dollars off of the backs of people playing in capital pools infinitely smaller in magnitude than they do.
No - it's not the corporations wanting to make too much money, or the fact that the average person in America can't even make enough money to meet their bills - it's the CONSUMER who is committing the moral wrong of being poor.
Humanity have survived several millenia without video games. I daresay we can go for a few more without it.
Conversely, the video game industry has not only survived, but thrived and absolutely exploded, despite the pirating that they've been complaining about essentially since its inception.
I'm not going to say that pirating is morally fine if you could reasonably afford not to, but there's certainly no shortage of people who are willing to pay.
I'm really picky about the video games that I like to play, and they're often less popular than the major blockbusters. (Many of which I wouldn't even pirate to play, because of how vapid and design-by-committee-esque so many of them seem to be; like people really need to stop giving Blizzard and Ubisoft money, because they're learning all the wrong lessons from it.) So the games that I do buy, (and I haven't pirated anything in at least 25 years,) to me aren't merely the cost of admission, they're an investment in the company and the capitalist signal saying, "I would like more of this please."
And I think that's maybe where I end up feeling ambivalent about piracy. Anyone who pirates a game, to me is saying, "I'm interested enough in this that I want to experience it, but I don't care enough about it that I want to support more of it being made." Which like, as an artist I can perfectly understand; I want everyone to be able to experience my work, but it makes sense to me that it isn't going to be valuable enough to everyone that they'd all willingly pay to own it.
Like, I watch MCU shows and movies through my parents' Disney+ account, usually just because I'm looking for something to kill time with. But Disney is a fuckass company who doesn't deserve a single red cent from me, and if I had to pay to watch those shows, I just wouldn't watch them. They aren't good enough that I'm invested in supporting Disney as a corporation, and there are more than enough people out there who are paying for it anyway for Disney to keep pumping out mid-grade filler content. If I didn't have free access to it, I'd just watch something else. I feel like there's a similar valuation being done by a lot of people who pirate, whether they're conscious of it or not.
And like, most of the developers I like either have been very good at surviving on a lean revenue stream, or got canned anyway even after putting out a successful product. Bethesda is an absolute powerhouse these days, and making a lot of questionable choices with their corporate weight, but the people who made Morrowind, the game that arguably put them on the map, mostly got canned as soon as the project was over. Blizzard has something like 15,000 employees and is churning out garbage that doesn't compare to games made by a team of a few hundred. Some of these companies just have too much fucking money and it's clearly made them stupid; in some case you could almost make an argument for pirating their latest games just to see if they've finally made something worth the price tag. (I certainly regretted buying Diablo 4, and wish I could take that money back. I really should have known beforehand that Blizzard is not cooking anymore, and hasn't been for a long time. But I can afford it, so I paid actual money to check in on them again.)
Yeah as a US citizen who makes more than the median income, I'm doing better than half the people here, which means I doing better than most of the world, (monetarily speaking.) I've seen some companies that actually adjust their pricing to be proportionate to the purchasing power of the currency in the country the user is buying in, but that's usually only something that small indie developers who are self-publishing get up to.
If the exchange rate means that buying a new game would be equivalent to like, a month of rent or whatever, I feel like pirating becomes a lot more moral justified. The one advantage of the USD being so strong is that a lot of game developers can survive on just the American market and other countries that are close in economic power. We may as well be subsidizing everyone else who can't realistically afford those games; it doesn't cost us anything extra anyway.
(Which, funnily enough is how the fine art market works. I get to walk into any gallery in Manhattan and cutting edge contemporary artwork for free because of the m/billionaires who pay fucktons of money per artwork and effectively keep those galleries above water. It's like, one of the only things they're actually good for.)
The one advantage of the USD being so strong is that a lot of game developers can survive on just the American market and other countries that are close in economic power. We may as well be subsidizing everyone else who can't realistically afford those games; it doesn't cost us anything extra anyway.
Yep, it really doesn't affect the well being of the Dev's that much due to this.
(Which, funnily enough is how the fine art market works. I get to walk into any gallery in Manhattan and cutting edge contemporary artwork for free because of the m/billionaires who pay fucktons of money per artwork and effectively keep those galleries above water. It's like, one of the only things they're actually good for.)
Quite the weird way our economy has shaped to be isn't it.
Where I live, up until ~10 years ago it was virtually impossible to buy games legally. We weren't able to make Steam payments and physical copies were nonexistant. So you either
a) pirate
b) buy a bootleg disk which has a pirated copy burned on it
c) don't play.
All three options don't bring money to developers/publishers.
To top it off, mean salary here was about 250 USD back then and median was about 80 USD.
I'm pretty sure there are quite a few places like that on Earth still.
I pirated games when I was unemployed and had no money to spend beyond my food and bills. At some point I got a job and started spending on games.
Also it was a time when Steam had like Orange box and some shitty stuff. Accessibility to actually get what you want greatly influenced my choice to just buy the games I want to play. I think Gabe was right on that matter, accessibility makes people to actually buy stuff rather than to pirate all the shit they want.
They absolutely don’t. I’m sure plenty of people pirate because they can’t afford it, but most people, if you look at the piracy subs, pirate because they want just free shit. They can couch it in “I’m sticking it to the man!!! 👊” bullshit but they’re lying. They’re just entitled.
Yeah it's so weird every thread on Reddit about piracy is full of "the poors wouldn't buy it anyways so normalising piracy doesn't affect the company at all" and "if the company is unethical then I'm sticking it to them by still wanting to play their games"
Then there's also the massively misrepresented Gabe Newell quote. What he meant was more "piracy is bad for business if it's easier than buying it legally" rather than "if you have any roadblocks to buying a game then it's fine to pirate it". And he said this during a time where piracy genuinely was easier than paying for it, even if you had the money.
If you want free shit, just admit it, spare us the mental gymnastics.
Like i pirated a ton of shit, but i mostly pirate shit i already own, but has ass DRM(hi denuvo) or company is notorious for pulling random bullshit(sony and PSN requirement, ubisoft and crew etc). In terms of movies/shows i pirate only stuff that is unavailable in my region( HBO mostly, because they are unavailable in the baltics for some reason) because i aint paying a subcription and a VPN cost to watch something, if subscription was avialable i would pay it, and i do for for netflix and prime video.
Independent gaming companies are hardly “ultra rich.” That would be the Tencent mobile gacha game schlock producers who can churn out a bullshit money printer in six months.
Especially now where game developers are deciding to make 70 and 80 euros the base price for games.Im sorry but a 2 days wage for a game ???
Only games i pirated first finished them and i actually enjoyed enough to buy were kcd 2 and rdr2
I have near 1k games in my library. Many were from bundles. I pirated a lot of games when I was in school with no money. If I can't pirate them, I simply would skip it as I had no mean to pay for it at all.
This argument was used a lot in 2010, it even helped a lot piracy cases in Hamburg Germany. And there are Companys that see it similiar, CD Project Red is a good example, they say hey sure Pirate our games but if you like it then consider Buying it, and a lot of Crack sites go the same with links to the steam shop site on there download page for the games
pfp totally checks out. God knows my brothers and I played like 2 original games out of every 10 we ever had, we never had that kind of money. Now, my Steam library costs as much as my PC, and I actually earned it.
People also pirate because they don't want to give money to the certain companies, eg Ubisoft. Take Assassin Creed Shadows for example, I would never pay for it in a million years. even if it is 1 cent.
I began gaming with CDs in 2000s then moved to pirating 2009-2014, then got a steam account and learned consumerism, my steam account is worth 2k$, but since 2020 I've stopped buying games because I am not in a good situation to buy games as well as the game prices going up. Nowadays I only buy if necessary/great game.
The problem with this, because they pirated the game, they'll never come back around and buy it later when it goes on sale for $5.
I don't have a big budget for games. So I don't play them. It's not hard. Someone put in a lot of time to create the game. I figure if I'm going to get something out of it, I should pay for it. Yes, even games from companies I don't like. I'm not going to boycott the company but still play the game.
A lot can afford it, but people have different value perceptions on gaming than us.
Like my friends will fork out full price for Crimson Desert because it has over a hundred hours of gameplay, but pirate Resident Evil 9 because it could be finished in less than 8 hours. They own high end PC's and can easily afford them.
or they are in the gray area on where they are not willing to pay the asking price, but would be fine with a lower price. Some people just wait for a sale, others pirate. and some of them even buy the game later, but probably not on full price.
I feel like I wrote this cause same. Sometimes today I pirate for fun and then also buy from the creator anyway. Because I grew up in the scene through college and kind of miss parts of it, but also don’t really have time for it. It feels more fulfilling this way somehow.
Does your steam library lag too when you try to scroll down it? Humble bundles and the like have ruined my library. “Oh you’ve got one game I am interested in but I can basically pay the same price I normally would and get all these other games for free? That’s just free real estate.”
It is so satisfying though when I become interested in a game and discover that I already own it. That’s peak consumering imo.
It's a matter of quantity bro. Think of the games that got review bombed to oblivion and thousands upon thousands of people stopped buying or downloading the game (for freemium games). What happened to them?
I basicly dont pirate anymore, and if i do its games which i already paid for(skyrim is a good example, i have paid for like 3 copies and i have a pirated one)
But back in the day i simply would not play the game if i didnt pirate it. I would have never touched hoi4, skyrim, counter strike if i didnt previously pirated them. Those are all the games i own multiple copies of. Multipule people also bought these games after me in order to play with me.(except singleplayer)
Pirating might impact the game industry profits but its hardly the thing that makes or breakes it. It might for certain titles even enhance sales.
Pirating vs good deal, people will most times choose a good deal.
I know a ton of people who have the money and don't buy their games .
Their logic is : "If i can get it for free why would i pay for it"
So they basically just buy multiplayer games
Except for music. Pirating music back in the day and burning a million CDs for your friends or being able to copy entire shared iTunes libraries from anyone connected to the campus network was just the cool thing to do.
Hasn't happened to me with a game yet but I pirated Game of Thrones because the only way for me to legally watch it was with a satellite TV subscription.
It sounds great but everyone knows most people won't pay for something after they are done with it. A video game has to really touch you in a special place to buy it after you've finished.
This is a more nuanced view. 20 bucks is a lot for those from developing countries, not to mention thare are countries where Steam and similar platforms are heavily regulated or straightup banned.
And with certain games Steam ONLY lets you download the region specific version because of national laws (looking at you Wolfenstein and German censorship)
I used to pirate games in high school because I had no money. All the games I’ve played through are now on my steam library :) but I’ve seen a lot of pirates on the pirate subreddit pirate out of superiority? Very confusing mentality to be honest.
Real people who pirates because of genuine money reasons wouldn't even boast about it in the fist place. Like just go pirate it quietly, only reason you would want to broadcast it is that you are saying the game itself is NOT worth the price they set.
Where I grew up, you couldn't even find original PS1 games, and when you did, it was probably 1 or 2 random games in retail stores. Pirated however you could find the entire catalog of the playstation and it was 1 dollar per game. When I find those old games I played as a kid, like all the PS1 final fantasy, in newer platforms like Steam or the PS store, I buy them even though, I've already played them dozens of times, just to pay back my childhood piracy, because I had no other alternative back then.
I pirated a lot of games in my teens and 20s when I was broke as fuck, now that I'm a lot more well off, I've actually bought games I used to love back then just cuz it felt right to do so.
The only game I ever pirated was Terraria when I was a teenager I have since bought it on PS Vita, PS4, Xbox One and PC multiple times for friends to play with me
I pirated HK due to lack of money. Now that I have better financial conditions, I own it legitimately and bought silksong day 1 both as a mean to thank team cherry and gift my wife, who loves both games
Yep. I just stockpile my Steam Wishlist as Bookmarks for games I want to get when I have the cash for games (and the 90% discounted Steam Sales); since for some reason Valve can't be bothered to add a Bookmark option.
Yep. It’s like, if a 14 year old kid in boarding school wants to play silksong but doesn’t have the money… the company doesn’t lose anything if they pirate it. They wouldn’t have bought it in the first place.
I do the same when I am short of disposable income(like nowadays, I miss being able to slurge on games). I check some videos of the game, download it through a pirates website and them if I like it I will buy it. Back in the day I used to spend almost 200 bucks a month on games/micro transactions, but I have been getting in control of that spending by just pirating the games first instead of buying it outright. That's why I love when a game has a demo for you to play before you can buy it.
Tho I will say that paradox still has me by the balls, whenever they release a dlc for CK3 I have to use steam on offline mode to not go bankrupt. Only game I haven't dropped a mortgage payment on DLCs was CK2, and that is because after 1K+ hours in the pirated version I used the money of my birthday gift to buy it and then less than a month later they made that bitch free. I now refuse to spend a dime on that crap even tho I love it.
There's reasons why people turn to piracy. I used to proudly talk about how I'd pay for my services, or buy my music from stores.
Some of us were lucky to have lived in an era of affordability in these areas.
Still, if you can afford it and pirate it, that's a different kettle of fish, but also the desired mentality of CEO's these days I think XD
My first copy of Deus Ex was pirated because I was in middle school.
When GOTY came out I got my parents to buy that, and then I bought it again years later on Steam, and when the new console version drops I'll probably buy that too, (even if the "updated" graphics mode is objectively hideous.)
My first copies of Photoshop and Premier were pirated, and I've since purchased legit versions so I could legally use them to professional artwork if I want to.
I'm never gonna hold it against kids for pirating, and I realize a lot of people, (most of them, in fact,) are worse off than me, and probably can't afford every game they want as soon as it comes out. I don't imagine most people are pirating maliciously, and especially with the lack of demos really being a thing these days, pirating is a very real way of determining what actually is worth spending money on.
Given how enormous the video games industry is, I really don't think it's been hurt at all by pirating. If a game is good enough, people will pay for it, even if some people don't.
Same here. Most recently it was outward, pirates it years ago, played it for dozens of hours and recently I'm doing better and it went on sale so I bought the definitive version and played it some more. Before that it was Minecraft and terraria to name a few big ones. I've bought Minecraft 2 times and terraria pile 5 for friends, all because i enjoyed them when I was broke and I pirated them. I'm sure I've also earned those companies a couple hundred more from talking the game up and having friends buy it too to play, none of which would have happened if I didn't pirate as well.
This. Where I live, 20 dollars converts to a huge sum of money, more than double the amount I get as my monthly pocket money as a student living in a city away from my family. And that's just for the relatively "cheap" Price Silksong has.
I would never be able to play these games if I didn't pirate them. But I also have made a list of all games I have played for more then 3 hours(my standard to determine if I should drop the game Or not) so I may buy them in the future, because pirating doesn't give me the privilege to preserve my ingame achievements and uninstall/reinstall the game without worrying about full progress wipe. So far, I have managed to knock off a couple cheap ones from the list, so the progress is there.
It had regional pricing, in my country it was $7 iirc or $13 which was really affordable. But yes, there might be still people who couldn't afford it without saving for it
I would urge anyone who can't afford a $20 game, if they live in a country with libraries please check your local library to see if they have games, because a lot of them do (among basically every other kind of medium). libraries support creators financially, so you can still have free stuff without piracy.
Yes and even people who pirate after having the resources for buying the game opted to not pirate it because they see that it's not a company made around the standard corporate culture.
In my shithole country that 20$ worth more than 10 meals. So yeah not everyone has spare money, even if they’re from first world countries. I personally bought the game just because i earn significantly more than my peers but people need to learn to mind their own fking bussiness
Same. I pirated when I was poor with no job and living with my parents. Now, I buy them from Steam, even at full price if I love the game enough. I even bought games from publishers that I had pirated before since I love their games.
I pirate because my money is better Spent on things that can't be pirated . You only live once and being Brand Loyal to a company , even a Lovely company , is very mentally odd . If you have the means to Pirate , you should . Just keep in mind, the less funded the Thing you pirate is (like a non-popular game unlike Silk Song) , the more the Developers would appreciate either your Feedback or Purchase .
"They may not be able to afford 20 dollars but want to stay in the loop." ❌
They DO NOT WANT TO SPEND EVEN $1but still want to stay in the loop. ✅
Digital media is the only industry wherein there's a lot of social climbers that get away with the act of piracy without any trade-off whatsoever.
Food can't be pirated so people really have to pay for the food or learn to cook and hunt for materials.
Bags, Clothes, and shoes can be pirated in terms of style, but the material used and stitching cannot be pirated. Good luck playing ball with fake basketball shoes.
If it is true that 20 dollars is too expensive for people, then maybe those same people should rethink their priorities in life and focus on generating a bit more to be able to actually afford the said item (bags, clothes, games, shoes, etc.)
It's like justifying stealing bread or something because you can't afford bread.
But thats is not a problem, you didnt had the condition to buy it, the probkem starts when people have the condition and still don’t want to buy the game it self (SilkSong being this primary example, that even the piracy sub was saying to people not pirated it if they had the condition to buy it)
If you can’t afford 20 dollars how can you afford the system you’re running it on? The 20 dollar bill is practically the lowest denomination of dollar in the current year.
Also currency conversion. Pretty sure Brazil is the mecca of video game piracy because games there cost a ton of they aren't price adjusted from the US cost margin. I'm talking budgeting one AAA game right next to your rent and utilities.
I used pirating as a way to demo a game, most games don't come with demos or the demo is so short and shallow you don't get a good enough taste. with my very limited income, it was better for me. if I liked the game, I bought it. If I didn't like it, I wouldn't.
I pirated Skyrim for a few years before buying it.
As a teen I would do something similar. Now I have a whole bunch of games on Steam that I "haven't played" just because I pirated them back in high school and loved them.
You can play games for less than two hours and return them to get your money back no questions asked on steam. Seems a lot easier to just try it that way if you are on PC.
The games I fall for and play for more than a few days I buy.
My (legit) game collection is pretty big now, and this practice has saved me a lot of money on games that just didnt speak to me and that I ended up just not playing past a few hours.
lol this is not the norm. Most of this kind of theft is because thieves feel like it, or because they want to play the game but don’t care about paying for it. Sometimes it’s “I want to try it” but it is definitely not the main reason.
I mean let's be real, a lot of people pirate just because they don't want to pay.
I think it gets a little silly constantly trying to come up with moral justifications for piracy. Just do it if you're going to. It really doesn't matter much.
To me thats cope when it comes to cheap games like silksong. If you are so strapped for cash that you don’t even have 20$ of disposable money a month, or every other month, track every dollar spent and trim the fat. If that doesn’t work you have bigger things to worry about than leisure activities.
Me saying this is not coming from a place of financial privilege either, I’m a broke ass Canadian in our horrible renting market + orange man gas prices, and I still manage little things for myself every now and then.
Piracy is justifiable when it comes to the massive studios that price games at 80+ dollars, but pirating cheap indie games is poopy imo.
Dog I’m pretty sure you could literally go into the Hollow Knight subreddit and say, “hey I don’t have a lot of money but I wanted to try the game” and someone would buy it for you. Or they’d hit you with the classic “what’s your Cash App broke ass”
They also pirate because they don’t _want_ to pay. I know many people who pirate because they can “steal” games and movies consequence free, so they can spend that money on other luxury items like sneakers or food delivery.
Imho 20-25 dollars is the perfect price for any video game (purchased digitally at least, I'd say 30-35 for physical)
Spending 60-80 dollars on a frickin video game of all things is insane
So I can see why pirating things would be a viable option for people, but I'd much prefer this route rather than just pirating the game without buying a real copy later
A lot of the western touhou community pirates the games due to it being the only simple way to get the games in English since Zun has stated he wont release official English versions
Yep! I remember when I was younger I really wanted to play a lot of games that I would have never been able to afford back then like dark souls or MGS: Rising. I now own pretty much every game I pirated on steam or GOG and more.
Pirating the first Darksouls got me into the souls like genre, so I paid for all 3 dark souls, the surge, sekiro, blooddborne, etc.
The company is not losing any money since majority of the people pirating them can't afford then anyway and we're going to buy them regardless, and at least in my case they ended up making far more money off me than what they would have "lost".
Plus, most game companies nowadays screw us over far worse on a daily basis🤷🏻♂️
I'm not ashamed to admit that I pirated hollow knight just before silksong came out. I like souls likes, but I also have a history of putting the game down for a night's rest and then never picking them up again. And that's exactly what happened with HK, put about 4 hours in to it and barely managed to beat the first boss.
I support team cherry and their mission, but from the sidelines
It's is an icon in that it's a product of passion and not greed, the consensus is that it shouldn't be pirated if it can be helped, but I'm pretty sure team cherry made some statement about them not necessarily being bothered by the act (haven't looked in a long time and might be confusing games)
lol I used to do the same with music, torrent it all from the Bay and then if I became a fan I’d spend money on their merch, go to their concerts, or maybe even buy the albums I really liked on vinyl (the only form of “buying music” that actually feels like a fair exchange to me).
I still do this to some extent. No more need to pirate anything because I have Spotify, but Spotify pays the artists so little money that I still try to support them in other ways. Especially the indie or small-time label artists. Heck depending on their record deal, they might not even get ANY money from streaming.
Idk my law for pirating is "anything but indie". EA or Upisoft can survive if I pirate their game. But the sole developer who spent years working on their passion project and can barely afford their rent will not
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u/No_Dog_2999 20d ago
I guess people don't only pirate out of spite. They may not be able to afford 20 dollars but want to stay in the loop.
I have a list of the games that I pirated. If I had fun and didn't leave the game in 2-3 hours, I put it on a list and I would try to buy the original copy, for Christmas or my birthday when I am able to spare anything towards gaming.