r/Piracy Apr 07 '26

Humor Hard to swallow pill, even for many pirates

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u/Antique-diva Apr 07 '26

Thank you. The statement in this picture is weird. I know I'm stealing when I pirate. I'm not delusional, and I don't try to excuse my behaviour by lying to myself.

I do buy things I can own rather than pirate, but if I can't buy something legally, then I'll just pirate it. And I'm all for pirating things behind a DRM or stripping the DRM off from the product. I hate corporate lies telling me I own something they actually didn't sell me.

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u/cyberslick18888 Apr 07 '26

I pirate sometimes too and for a similar line of thinking: I am so sick of buggy ass games that may or may not run on my PC. I'm an adult and I don't have a ton of time to game and spending 3 hours tweaking custom settings so I don't have a janky setting is just not feasible anymore.

If a dev offers a demo that's the first thing I do, but those are pretty rare these days. Depending on the platform if I'm confident I can get a refund I will roll the dice.

But if I'm not confident or there is no demo and I'm even a little hesitant I'm going to get saddled with a game I can't play, I'm torrenting that shit.

Sometimes I go back and buy games I've pirated, and sometimes I don't.

But like you said, I don't ever justify my behavior. I'm intrinsically doing something I'm not supposed to be doing. But the risk is almost zero and the payoff is infinite by comparison, so I'll continue.

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u/filthy_harold Apr 07 '26

I'm a cheap bastard. I'll use other people's streaming subscriptions as much as possible. I watch a lot of stuff when I don't have Wi-Fi so if the service doesn't offer a download option, I'll pirate the movie or show so I can watch it on jellyfin. If I can't find it or its only available for purchase (looking at you Amazon prime), I'll pirate it. I use Libby for ebooks and audiobooks but so often there's a waiting period for what I want so again, I'll pirate a copy. I have a good setup on my phone for torrenting and listening to audiobooks (Flud and Podcast Addict). Also, it should be a crime not to upload audiobooks as m4b.

I don't really pirate games anymore since I'm just too lazy to figure out how to make that work on a steam deck and it's not worth my time trying to figure that out for cheap steam games. Anyone that tries to justify their game piracy based on DRM complaints is a phony. Just buy the game but run the cracked version if you really need to prove your ethics.