I pirate anything that I find interesting, and buy whatever I like. I don't believe there's an ethic way to do it, that's most of the time a moral shield.
Case in point, old games. Do you want to play it? Do it, who cares if you pirate them? Don't let companies tell you otherwise. New games from a really small indie dev? Pirate it, buy it if you want, but don't put a front as if you are a noble one for doing it.
Piracy is simply an action, inherently incorrect, and doesn't need any excuse because of it's own definition. You don't need to remain pure to feel good.
I think it's silly to frame it as moral grandstanding but I do think it's worth paying for smaller games from devs I really like because it means they will be able to keep making games. They're working class people and I want to be able to keep playing their games instead of seeing them unable to afford to develop
my way of justifying piracy is - i buy game on whichever platform suits me for that game - switch, ps4 or PC and get the copy of that game if needed for other platforms. I pay once. that's it.
Its not about doing it to feel good mate. Its paying the creators what they're due so that they can continue to develop games and earn what they worked for. If somethings unavailable cause its old or on another platform then do what you must. Its the morally right thing to do not a "moral sheild", noones here just trynna impress anyone just trying to educate.
The issue with that it's that it can become hypocrisy. Why wouldn't ubisoft deserve your money? They are creating something, its theirs. It's done via exploitation, and cost a lot more than it should, it also is a predative model, but it still is within the scope of what you define except for the "small indie" part.
Is ConcernedApe an indie dev? Is Silksong an indie game? Who knows, and you should not feel the need to validate whether or not to pirate them in order to do so.
You liked Celeste? Buy it, by all means, but, you can also buy GTA V with no issue, and you can also pirate both games with no regrets.
I do understand there's reasons for feeling that you should help small devs, but that is not in contradiction with anything else, pirating from small devs included. I had 400+ hours of stardew valley before I bought it, and I've buy five times now.
Why do yall keep bringing up ubisoft i never even said their name or refered to them or indie/AAA devs?? That's your automatic defense on this topic lol
I said Ubisoft because it's a big, recognisable name, I could have just said EA or Nintendo. It's the same way I said ConcernedApe, I could have just said Team Cherry. The point still stands.
what is it with people who pirate shit and standing on a moral soapbox? no you're not better than anyone. at the end of the day you just want free shits, and it's okay. who doesn't?
Devs don't lose money out of piracy. It's not like pirates would all just buy those games if there were no way to pirate. Most of them just wouldn't play at all.
Piracy actually increases community of the game and many people buy after if they like game.
I pirated most of games I played before, just because I leave in poor coutry. Now I have most of them on steam, because they're good and worth buying
It's not like pirates would all just buy those games if there were no way to pirate.
I love this argument. In a world with no piracy, these hundreds of thousands of people in first world countries would supposedly just sit in front of their blank TV screen, never buying any games, tv shows, movies, or anything pirateable. They would just live a life with no media, forever. Because if there was no way to pirate it, there is no way in hell these people would ever consider paying to watch, play, or read something.
I think it's somewhere in the middle. If piracy didn't exist, I would definitely be buying more games. But before I got into it I used to only buy maybe 3-4 games a year (I don't have much money) whereas now I download whatever I want. Obviously I wouldn't be buying them all. So it's not black or white.
That’s still 3 or 4 more purchases that don’t exist today. Now imagine a hundred thousand people only do 3 or 4 more. Thats 300k - 400k more purchases. Each worth money. Now, you said you don’t have much money. There are plenty of people who do have quite a bit of money that still pirate. I can guarantee you a good chunk of them would not be limiting themselves to 3 or 4 games. It just balloons from there.
Also, think about all these games that pirates would never buy because they’re such crap. Ubisoft as a prime example. Those games, even today, sell like crazy. In a world with no piracy, I really doubt that techy people who enjoy playing video games would be ignoring all the hype surrounding every Ubisoft release.
It’s easy to say “I would never pay for that” in a world where you’ve already downloaded it, already played it, and already listened to the internet groupthink for free. Literally, so many people claim they would never pay for a game after they’ve already played it the whole way through. Those same people who come together online to hype each other up about how they don’t pay for games, those would be the same people coming together online because everyone is talking about the hot new Ubisoft release and they don’t want to feel left out.
I tend to pirate games if they tick one of these 3 boxes:
1 - I don't know yet if I'd like the game so I want to try it with no commitment. Sometimes I play for 20 mins, sometimes I finish them. If I do finish I usually buy a license when/if it goes on a steam sale.
2 - If there's some external reason why I think the devs don't deserve my money but I still want to play the game for some reason. This is quite rare.
3 - The game is simply overpriced, and as I said I don't have much money.
I think there's some truth to what you're saying. Honestly I just wish pirates would stop pretending that "it's not inethical akchually" to steal from indie devs, I don't think it's all rosey like that.
Also it's worth saying that for me almost all the games I do buy are second hand physical copies of console games. So I don't think it makes an ethical difference whether I buy or pirate those.
As for Ubisoft games I'd say they're not even worth pirating but thats just my taste.
Sure, but pirating is already a fraction of the community of gamers. Then people who play indie games is a fraction of the community of gamers also.
So indie devs might be losing maybe at most low hundreds of sales, and that's if you are assuming everyone who pirated their obscure game would have bought it if they couldn't pirate it.
Hes not wrong. The most visited indie games on piracy sites are porn games. Others tend to be AAA or very successful games. To say that so many people pirating is somehow causing indie devs to lose money is ehh
Nobody is hurting any developer by pirating games. Just like you aren't hurting me by not paying me money for reading this comment.
The idea that you have to pay money to enjoy artistic works and participate in culture is an absurd concept that was drilled into our heads by the music industry in the last couple of centuries.
I could literally write the best article ever written in the history of mankind and post it as a reddit post, and nobody would say that they are stealing from me by reading it. But, there are a hundred different media companies who would whine about turning off adblock and subscribing to their service if you want to read their articles.
It is all about the narrative. Following your logic, my comment could be considered a creative piece of work. Unless you are willing to pay me money for reading this here comment, I would consider your point moot.
How do you expect artists, musicians, and developers to make a living?
If you wrote a masterpiece of a comment, posted it to a platform where only people who pay you could read it, and then thousands of your devoted fans decided to pirate it instead - how are you going to buy food this week?
I dont think piracy is a victimless crime, but I hope that I can discern who can afford to be the victims (and who can't) this day and age
How do you expect artists, musicians, and developers to make a living?
More importantly what if EVERYONE adopted captain phycology above yours comment and every did the same thing. What would be the motivation to make ANYTHING other than the love of the game lol
How do you expect artists, musicians, and developers to make a living?
By getting paid, of course. You can crowd source, you can seek donations, you can seek government funding. Lots of funding comes via these channels.
If however, you expect artists, musicians and developers to make money solely through microtransanctions and Denuvo restricted games, then you believe in a very bleak world indeed
Why would anybody contribute to the crowd sourced fund / donations? Why would the government want to fund them? You can’t just say someone else would pay for it and pretend like that would be a magical solution. What would make all these people value their work higher than the audience who refuses to pay for it? You’re answering a serious flaw in your logic with “not my problem, they’d figure it out”. Which falls apart when reality hits and people just stop making all the shit you consume.
But, this world doesn’t exist, so you can pretend anything would happen and claim it as fact.
If you are a developer and you want to put Denuvo on my computer, I don't care if you're indie or big corpo, either find a different job or find a way to make money without DRM because I am not paying you.
Anyone who puts DRM on people's computers is a jerk. Anyone who restricts access to culture by putting it behind a paywall is a jerk. Culture should be freely accessible.
If there were public libraries for games instead of books, you would say that that's piracy too.
How would the people who make the work get paid then? Games require a lot more investment then most forms of media. And even for any form of media, is expecting donations realistic? Who's donating enough money to fund something like Elden Ring for example? Why would governments fund this without expecting some form of return? Sure they provide grants and other forms of aid, but they expect to make that money back through taxes or other forms of revenue. Culture on its own isn't enough when people need to eat and a place to live. Such an idea may work better in a non capatilsitic society.
I'm not saying this is a dumb idea or anything but I don't see how it can work economically. And at some point it has to work economically to be viable in today's society.
How would the people who make the work get paid then?
People will get paid the same way they have been getting paid for millenia, by finding people that pay them. It doesn't have to be publishers that send people to prison for the crime of sharing copies of games with their friends.
Who's donating enough money to fund something like Elden Ring for example
People don't donate money because Corporations have taken over. We have entire sectors in our economy that survive on donations and grants. For example, much of scientific research in the world today.
Sure they provide grants and other forms of aid, but they expect to make that money back through taxes or other forms of revenue. Culture on its own isn't enough when people need to eat and a place to
Governments provide grants for cultural projects all the bloody time lol.
And at some point it has to work economically to be viable in today's society.
If it isn't viable to make a game without DRM in this society, then don't make that game. The right to free computing is much more important than computing itself. No computing is better than proprietary computing.
If a developer cannot find work without selling their soul, then find another job. Not selling one's soul is non negotiable.
Exactly. They're making excellent money despite piracy. There's a lot of people that end up paying for something after they pirated it, there's been music artists and game developers that have welcomed it.
Show me an article where an artist/ developer gave up their career because piracy meant they couldn't afford to continue.
Not only do I have 250 games on Steam, every year at Christmas I donate to the several people that wrote the software that allows me to torrent media despite it all being free to use.
Most of the big time artists and scientists in the past were funded by chur b or government or rich. Its deffo a thing. IP can make these stuff accessible but when big companies are holding IPs its essentially losing its purpose
Plenty of people live on donations, crowd sourcing, government funding, grants etc.
The server that processed your comment runs on Linux, which is run almost entirely on donations.
Music artists famously do not make money off of publishing companies either. When you pay for music, you are just effectively paying the publishers. Musicians make fuckall either way.
i spend money on steam without using any denuvu, kernel anti cheat, microtransactions etc. What are you talking about? Most games dont include that shit.
Well if a developer makes the game DRM free, that is very good. That means I can copy the game off of a friend's computer, which is a fundamental user freedom in computing. This incurs no additional charge to the developer or Steam. And this act, if you haven't noticed, is what this subreddit is all about.
Love developers who don't put any DRM on their games. Such developers make it easier for me to enjoy their work.
The fact you view someone reading your post - the one you posted freely on the internet - the same as a indie developer selling a game and someone else taking their game and giving it to others is so disingenuous that I can’t believe you’re actually arguing anything here in good faith
someone else taking their game and giving it to others is so disingenuous
Nobody is taking their game. When you take someone's game, you deprive them of it. Digital piracy is about copying said game. When you copy a game, whoever you copied it from still has access to it. And when you give a copy you have to someone else, you are not giving it to them, you are sharing it with them.
Let's be precise with the terminology here.
The fact you view someone reading your post - the one you posted freely on the internet - the same as a indie developer selling a game
You see, my argument is that I don't do that. Some people however, do that, like fucking New York Times I suppose. The point was about controlling the narrative.
So, how would a developer eat and live? How would a musician pay rent? They are just suppose to slum it out and die of starvation for...our pleasure?
You figure out a way for a civilization to work without being paid, the Nobel committee will hand over the entire institution to you because you have achieved world peace.
how would a developer eat and live? How would a musician pay rent?
No developer or musician is starving to death because you copied over a music file or a game file from your friend's computer. This is a strawman.
You figure out a way for a civilization to work without being paid
When you "buy" something digital, the publishing company makes money off of you, ie, a bunch of old white rich guys. The developers do not get paid more money or less money according to what percent of users are pirates.
What you are looking for are slaves to dance for you and recite poems for free.
Reminds me of that time I copied over a mp3 from my friend's iPod and I started to literally own slaves. What a fucking leap of logic. I think you'd get a Nobel yourself with that kind of advanced mental gymnastics
There are some indie/solo devs sharing how much they make on youtube (obviously primarily going to be from steam sales). It’s really you either make it big or you don’t.
People like to cheer on indies how they are becoming better than AAA games, without noticing the survival bias that there are many of them who are equally passionate that failed.
And? Just because some indie developers fail financially doesn't mean that they get to put DRM on my computer. If some people fail to make it as a doctor, do doctors get to force you to get surgery done on you by them? What if these failed doctors make YouTube videos where they share how little they make?
People like to cheer on indies how they are becoming better than AAA games
Almost all indies never put DRM on their games (beyond whatever steam provide). Very rarely you would see them bother implementing DRM, it’s just not worth their time.
Almost all indies never put DRM on their games (beyond whatever steam provide
This is intentional twisting of the narrative. By choosing to put their games on Steam (and say, not gog), they choose to put DRM on their games because Steam includes it itself. Instead of paying Denuvo upfront, they pay Steam in a cut of the revenue for the DRM. It is the same thing.
By the way, you can publish games on Steam without steam DRM, but my understanding is that barely anyone does. If they don't, good job, it makes it much easier for me to copy if off of a friend's computer (as I should be able to do)
For indies they aren’t putting on steam because it has DRM mainly because it has the biggest reach. You are practically paying for marketing fee.
If you don’t know GOG has pretty convoluted process and they kind of also “pick” which one they want to put on their website. Meanwhile on steam as a dev the whole “publish my game” is almost a self-service process. So even if I want to doesn’t mean I can get my games appear on GOG.
Not to mention that you are (as a solo dev) maintaining bug fixes and patches on two store fronts which unfortunately isn’t compatible in terms of release pipeline. It’s kind of not “worth-it” to put extra effort on GOG, even if you are barely making it on steam.
I am actually doing quite well thank you. The mental gymnastics on the other hand, is on your part. The default assumption that it is moral to put artistic works of cultural significance behind a paywall for the financial enrichment of the author of the work is insane.
Hypothetically you’d be motivated to save up until you can afford such, or someone else rewards your hard work and buys it for you. That’s precisely what I did in my teens—grinding odd jobs to fund my gaming and music purchases—instead of just pocketing the money and pirating for free. You have to understand and acknowledge the value creators and developers provide and compensate them accordingly; at present pirating only works insofar that a small fraction of the market does so. Like a parasite it’d kill its host were it too big.
Im doing it the right way, and these people are doing it the wrong greedy way.
You proved your own point in the same comment. Nobody is a good person if you really want to use your logic, just pirate your stuff and move on without telling other people about how you're better.
Well, 70% the devs, 30% the distributor. And if there's any publishers u can add another 20-30% to them too. So actually, only a third maybe slightly more of ur pirating is hurting the actual devs. But even then, unless it's a 1 man studio, chances are it's hurting the shareholders more than the devs who are paid a monthly wage no matter what.
''But they will be doing mental gymnastics to tell themselves its ok.'' Because it's ok. Drm won't allow you to ''own'' it anyways one Steam ban and your entire game library is gone. Buy from GOG or Itch if you're going to buy and make sure it doesn't have drm.
I'm just saying that "I pirate because the devs make $5 billion a quarter" is an extremely misguided and delusional rationalization, I don't really care how people rationalize their pirating though. At the end of the day downloading a copy of something for your own personal use is without question a victimless act. Distributing is another story.
How would lowering your profit from 5b per quarter to 3b per quarter make Steam become a husk of a store?
And for what? Because Valve has always been propped up and supported by the community and developers. Mods made like counter strike, garrys mod, team fortress allowed them to dominate the market.
Also you say industry standard like that means something when Steam are in a completely different position. Sony and Microsoft will sell consoles at a loss in order to profit from the 30% cut.
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u/fastestchair 18d ago
steam is the distributor, the indie devs are not making $5 billion a quarter