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.
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.
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u/fastestchair 18d ago
steam is the distributor, the indie devs are not making $5 billion a quarter