If you buy someone’s services, then those services end at a point. You don’t own them or that service forever. That’s ridiculous.
I feel this phrase that took off grossly oversimplifies the issue.
The real argument is that games should be seen and treated as a good, not a service.
Games as a service is a scam.
Users expect to buy a game, a product, not a service. There are enough examples always needing to be online games where local single player stops working when sunsetting the server or just a connection issue.
I don’t think it should be the devs getting angry, rather the execs
Do devs get paid royalties? If not, why would they be mad at something that doesn’t affect them?
Sometimes. Those can get canceled when they layoff the team after release.
Who are the real pirates?
Only if they’re independent developers of the game, which is why you shouldn’t pirate little indie games. Otherwise they already got paid as much as they’re gonna get paid, only people losing money when you pirate a game are the executives.
It depends, small indie games teams usually suffer from this. Big houses that screw over players, those can go fuck themselves.
Have you noticed, nowadays, games from such “big houses” tend to be not even worth pirating?
Just a major waste of time.Yeah, there’s not always a clean separation between execs and devs, even if that’s politically inconvenient.
I’m going to go ahead and say that digital markets are still broken, and the solution definitely isn’t what the big execs want, either, but “everyone pirates everything” isn’t going to work if you like the present variety and quality of videogames available.
Yeah, drm-free storefronts like GOG are the best solution I think. I love Steam and Proton, but if Valve ever goes public that would all change for the worse.
For real most devs are just happy you enjoy their work.
The only ones losing money are shareholders and they barely lose enough to make a trickle of a dent.
there’s no evidence they’re losing money. the assumption that piracy is lost sales is one made by execs and we all know they don’t know their asses from their elbows.
Look for games that are sold DRM free. Those can’t be taken from you by devs or the store after backed up. And usually devs and/or stores that deliberately sell such games also make it clear people can keep their games.
*publishers
Whatever you do, don’t use G2A and other similar CD key reseller websites. Developers would rather you just pirate the game because a lot of those keys are stolen, which cause a charge back that ends up costing the developers tens of thousands of dollars in fees. In rare cases it has even bankrupt them.
Whatever you do, don’t use G2A and other similar CD key reseller websites
For indie games, sure, I always just buy those legit.
But some EA / Ubisoft game; I rather pay $5 on G2A than risk accidentally downloading a malware infected crack
Pointing this out isn’t clever.
Software piracy satisfies the colloquial understanding of theft as the act of obtaining something without paying for it, but not the colloquial understanding of theft as the act of depriving someone else of the thing you’ve obtained. Purchasing a software license satisfies the colloquial definition of ownership as the right to do something after having paid for that right, but not the colloquial understanding of ownership as the right to do anything you want with what you have purchased. Software piracy isn’t theft in the legal sense, and purchasing a software license is not a transfer of ownership in the legal sense.
Memes like this are just pointless quibbling over words (barely more sophisticated than “You’re a doodoohead!” “No, you’re the doodoohead times a thousand!”) and contain zero insight into the morality or legality of software piracy or software licensing.
But while you’ve eloquently pointed out the inherent flaw in the definitions we use in this discussion, i could use your same argument against you, reducing your argument to:
“I don’t like this meme”
Because memes, sayings, chants, etc exist to boil down a nuanced concept into a quick statement of belief, you could nitpick em, all of em all day, and while a little mental flaggelation is fun we’d have spent that day missing the point.
Pedantica aside, do you disagree with the meaning behind the saying?
You do realize you’re in the programming humor community, right?
Fun fact: you can just pirate stuff.
You don’t have to make semantic arguments to justify to yourself why it’s actually moral or not technically stealing or whatever. You can just pirate stuff.
Yes, rejection of ethical concerns is possible. But it’s also possible to understand why something is ok or not. In fact it’s sort of key to having any sort of society.
Ps. Piracy isn’t unethical.
In most cases piracy amounts to at the end of the day taking money and negatively affecting someones life. You can nitpick and tell yourself it’s only a corporation that gets hurt but that’s a lie you tell yourself.
Unless the content is being horded and not available it’s incredibly unethical.
More than a couple of developers disagree with this. I’m sure you also say that stealing from walmart is wrong. Which I don’t think it is, if you’re poor at least.
Sovcits + consumerism == Pirating isn’t stealing because this word here has a certain definition, which invokes this special rule that lets me do what I want.
Both sides are twisting words. Pirating truly isn’t stealing, but rather closer to unauthorized use. The word ‘steal’ is used because they want to imply that it’s the same thing as taking a physical thing that can be lost. It engenders a certain feeling that they’re wanting to invoke. Stealing sounds worse than unauthorized use. Doesn’t mean it’s not wrong to do, but it isn’t the sort of wrong that they’re implying.
Eh, for me, it’s more like: capitalism is a deeply immoral system so we have a moral obligation to avoid supporting greedy, souless corporations that exploit the labor of others. But it is important to note that pirating from small indie companies should be avoided. Maybe download the game to give it a try, but if you like the game then absolutely go buy it or donate to the creators
More like gaming executives
*Game publishers
Let’s not be angry at the Devs, it’s the publishers and other execs we should be pissed at :-(
Devs should be angry as well, kinda hard to get paid when your employer doesn’t have revenues.
Are the devs volunteers? Yeah, the publishers take a lot of money, but if the games are all being pirated then the devs could get 100% and still make less money.
Removed by mod
s/developers/publishers/
Also, not sure how this is programming related 🤷
Is that PirateSoftware?
There are only a few things that will make me buy a game without a second thought.
- a game by Capcom,
- a game by Kojima,
- “Overwhelmingly Positive” reviews on Steam,
- a Bundle with the game and all DLCs for under $10,
- a game with a notoriously large modding community,
- a game that a friend what’s to play in coop.
That’s about it, everything else is pirate first and if it’s actually something I’ll play I buy the game for real. I’m 400+ games deep in my Steam library of which I have maybe 20 actually completed and 5 that I regularly play. That’s literally thousands of dollars down the drain.
In my opinion that’s a pretty generous list of reasons to buy a game without much further questioning or research. I think the last game I almost immediately bought ~10 minutes after hearing about it was YOMI Hustle for $5 in May of last year.
That said, looking through my purchase history I can tell you that the amount I have spent on Warframe, a F2P game, is vile.
When something is available DRM-free on GOG I don’t scrutinize it so closely.
