Discussion What's your opinion on (video game) piracy?

[Nitlott]

I kind of got into steam stuff lately (like, yesterday). I haven't opened steam for at least a year. I've had an account for 5 years I think, but I didn't even add money. But! Apparently there's an offline way to do it that my friend uses, I'm surprised stuff like this still exists. So I've asked to meet up and do it. I'll buy Postal 2 +DLC if you're wondering.

You can't just add money on your steam wallet in my country lately. All games I've ever played were pirated or free. One of the reasons I do it is that most services, especially subscription based, can take content away from you. If a label tears up contract with the music service you use, contract wasn't extended, etc that said service will have to take down the songs. You still pay the same price. The content can also get censored. And I don't want that, nobody wants that. Political context will change, but not the music. Situation will change no matter what, so why should content be affected by temporary circumstances? If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.
I think this post focuses more on video game pirating. A lot of people say that stealing from a huge company is morally right and, well... I guess it is to some extent, but I don't really like that take...Reminds me ot that one line from South Park though. The question is, is it okay to pirate games from small studios? If not, why spend money on something you might not enjoy. Does piracy hurt people involved? I think yeah, someone could have 10 more bucks for their work.
Media, especially the guys from which you're stealing, paints piracy as something negative. But it can keep a series alive. What's left to do if the game got shut down and got off the shelves years ago? I think it's one of the most strong ways to show love to a game and people behind it.
Prices for games are really high too, I can't imagine paying 30 dollars for a game on steam, it's wild to me. But maybe it's because of paychecks' differences. Exchange rate isn't the best one also. It applies to huge games only though, like Baldur's Gate 3.
I think piracy is good for kids. When they grow up, they'll definitely buy it either way. It also keeps gaming from becoming an elitist thing.
For me personally the only games I genuinely want to buy and help the studio out are from Running With Scissors +some others like Lisa. I genuinely want to throw my money at RWS and guess what? I pirated almost all games, 2, 4, BD, that one Akella dlc... What I don't like is how some people think you're ought to act if it's an indie studio. You must spend your whole family savings on it. There's a lot of questions to it though. Like, who decides if you have enough money to spend on a game?

Piracy is like if your car got stolen but it's still in the parking lot the next day. The company which produced your car had one sale less though. Would you steal a car?

 

[scordatura]

There are far worse crimes out there. You're not a criminal for pirating a few games in my mind and most others minds, I'd believe. It's ideal if you do enjoy the games to try and support the developers somehow, but I understand people have circumstances like low income and such, so can't always be helped. Enjoy gaming

 

[dustoff]

never heard that piracy made a gamedev bankrupt. if game's good people will buy it and support the devs anyway. some newer AAA titles is pure slop not worth the price tag like i wouldnt give nintendo 70$ for a game that fucking lags and have empty world (pokemon SV). it's totally ethical to pirate if devs can't deliver a good exp despite being 3A with billions of budget or pirate in the regions where you can't buy it cuz publisher or goverment decided to do so

 

[Nitlott]

...some newer AAA titles is pure slop not worth the price tag...

Same, sometimes I see games like these on steam for 40-60$ and think who the hell do they think their audience is! Like seriously, for that price they better mail me a physical copy or a collectible. And usually it's just the basic game without DLCs. I wonder how the hell do they come up with such prices, especially in this economy. It seems that it has become an unwritten rule for an AAA game to cost >30$ now

 

[dustoff]

Same, sometimes I see games like these on steam for 40-60$ and think who the hell do they think their audience is! Like seriously, for that price they better mail me a physical copy or a collectible. And usually it's just the basic game without DLCs. I wonder how the hell do they come up with such prices, especially in this economy. It seems that it has become an unwritten rule for an AAA game to cost >30$ now

3A modern gaming is cancer and scam anyway. my mom bought me physical copies of skyrim assasins creed II and gta IV back in 2010s and that's worth its money and i had a lot of fun playing it even though she paid a considerate portion of her salary for that. now you get fifa 53 with lootboxes and battlepass for this price and you need 3k$ pc just to handle ai scaled reused assets

 

[Forveleth]

I always try to support indie devs. Their games are usually made as passion projects but small teams of people and I think they deserve some money for their efforts. The giant studios, however, meh. The games are buggy, the studios are corrupt, half of them at this point are just copies of whatever is cool at the moment. I would have no problem pirating them.

Honestly, though, I do not mind just playing retro games. We have 40+ years of gaming history available and I like playing older ones.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

I'm stupid and it's too much effort. I remember when I tried to play the unofficial fan translation of Ace Attorney Investigations 2 and it crashed on the 3rd case and when I tried to ask for help everyone just told me "oh yeah you downloaded the wrong emulator version it wasn't supposed to be the latest one also even if you get the right version you have to do this hyper specific thing that requires elite IT knowledge otherwise your computer becomes completely unusable".

Great to know that if I pay less than a single pump of gasoline (in California at least it costs like $80 to fill my car), I can just put the game in the console, boot it up, and let it run without many issues that require me to do extra work to fix.

 

[PanaxMan]

It's like media piracy for me (not like I have time for games anymore) truly the dystopian world we live kn

I kind of got into steam stuff lately (like, yesterday). I haven't opened steam for at least a year. I've had an account for 5 years I think, but I didn't even add money. But! Apparently there's an offline way to do it that my friend uses, I'm surprised stuff like this still exists. So I've asked to meet up and do it. I'll buy Postal 2 +DLC if you're wondering.

You can't just add money on your steam wallet in my country lately. All games I've ever played were pirated or free. One of the reasons I do it is that most services, especially subscription based, can take content away from you. If a label tears up contract with the music service you use, contract wasn't extended, etc that said service will have to take down the songs. You still pay the same price. The content can also get censored. And I don't want that, nobody wants that. Political context will change, but not the music. Situation will change no matter what, so why should content be affected by temporary circumstances? If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.
I think this post focuses more on video game pirating. A lot of people say that stealing from a huge company is morally right and, well... I guess it is to some extent, but I don't really like that take...Reminds me ot that one line from South Park though. The question is, is it okay to pirate games from small studios? If not, why spend money on something you might not enjoy. Does piracy hurt people involved? I think yeah, someone could have 10 more bucks for their work.
Media, especially the guys from which you're stealing, paints piracy as something negative. But it can keep a series alive. What's left to do if the game got shut down and got off the shelves years ago? I think it's one of the most strong ways to show love to a game and people behind it.
Prices for games are really high too, I can't imagine paying 30 dollars for a game on steam, it's wild to me. But maybe it's because of paychecks' differences. Exchange rate isn't the best one also. It applies to huge games only though, like Baldur's Gate 3.
I think piracy is good for kids. When they grow up, they'll definitely buy it either way. It also keeps gaming from becoming an elitist thing.
For me personally the only games I genuinely want to buy and help the studio out are from Running With Scissors +some others like Lisa. I genuinely want to throw my money at RWS and guess what? I pirated almost all games, 2, 4, BD, that one Akella dlc... What I don't like is how some people think you're ought to act if it's an indie studio. You must spend your whole family savings on it. There's a lot of questions to it though. Like, who decides if you have enough money to spend on a game?

Piracy is like if your car got stolen but it's still in the parking lot the next day. The company which produced your car had one sale less though. Would you steal a car?

 

[Green Destiny]

I think it's a good thing to support game studios if it's possible. However I also believe that there are some game studios like EA, Infinity Ward and Blizzard that deserve to have money swindled from under them for not making quality content games and are trying to milk money from their player base. There's a huge difference between showing respect to your customers and trying to take their money through shady practices like loot boxes and under developed games that clearly needed more time but were rushed out.

 

[Hystearical]

(Speaking in general, not directing this to anyone in this thread lest someone feel attacked)

I think people who pirate current games should at least own up to it and say they don't have a problem with theft instead of hiding behind specious rationalizations and sophistry.

The big budget studios are not forcing you to buy their products. Video games are not a necessity. They are laying out the terms openly and clearly. Our games for this price. If you think they're so horrible trash quality then don't purchase them. But if you justify pirating something because it's trash quality, then the "trash quality" clearly wasn't enough to quash your interest and that interest should come at a price.

Buy used if you don't want your money to go to the companies. Or at least wait a while before stealing a current game.

No, this stance isn't overly rigid or moralistic. And yes I know people will continue to do it regardless.

 

[killawithme]

3A modern gaming is cancer and scam anyway. my mom bought me physical copies of skyrim assasins creed II and gta IV back in 2010s and that's worth its money and i had a lot of fun playing it even though she paid a considerate portion of her salary for that. now you get fifa 53 with lootboxes and battlepass for this price and you need 3k$ pc just to handle ai scaled reused assets

yeah you do I paid 2k for my pc and still I feel like I have an fancy console with some extra programs also most games don't really run in 4k yes 1080p and 1440p run fine but if you want to do 4k gaming you need a pc the price of a small car

 

[Bitterly_Nostalgic]

Out of all the things that I don't care about, video game piracy is pretty high up there. I'll admit though I used to pirate games fairly often when I was younger just because I didn't have much money, and later I switched to buying once I got older and could pay. But sadly these days I don't really find joy in video games anymore.

 

[killawithme]

Out of all the things that I don't care about, video game piracy is pretty high up there. I'll admit though I used to pirate games fairly often when I was younger just because I didn't have much money, and later I switched to buying once I got older and could pay. But sadly these days I don't really find joy in video games anymore.

I feel the same these days video games have just become boring

 

[stripey]

i feel like piracy is 100% okay in the following two situations:

- the game cannot be obtained legally anymore / buying it won't support the devs
- you don't have the money to obtain the game legally, but you'll do your best to promote the game so that others who have money buy it instead
(examples of promoting it: telling your friends about it, posting online, wearing self-made merch, etc.)

anything else would probably be a bit more gray to me

 

[ginko0]

I'm more of a retro gamer myself (ps2, nes, snes). Buying original copies is virtually impossible in my country, money-wise. So I feel no shame in buying bootlegs or downloading ROMs.

When it comes to modern games, if they come from an indie studio, I'm not pirating, ever. EA, Ubisoft, Activision? I refuse to pay for their overpriced "games".

 

[Scythe]

I always go by pirate first pay later. Most of my steam games was pirated then bought. I always buy the game if I like it or at least buy it for a friend. In some cases if it's on itch.io I give a bit extra to support indie devs.

If you straight up can't afford or can't buy it like in ur case then it's not a big deal cause you can't pay the dev even if you want to.

 

[TwistedNightmares]

I mostly just pirate games from big companies that are known to have a bad reputation as they don't deserve to have anymore money. I prefer to support smaller indie game companies.

 

[Alcoholic Teletubby]

Fuck the big corps, but support the small devs. Pirate from those with too much money, if a game is being censored, or if you do not want to support the game's creator because they have committed acts you believe to be morally bankrupt (ex. I'm never giving money to the creator of Cry of Fear).

 

[echoINTHEMIRROR]

I pirate most all of my games but support in other ways (official merch, etc.) Any of my official games are gifts or bought on impulse (We have awful impulse control aha).

 

[jw_sisyphus97]

Pirating probably reduces the chances games keep getting made, so I support the ones I like. I may change my tune depending on how much GTA6 costs though.

 

[buriedinmyhead]

I've done it before, there are worse crimes

 

[DistraughtWolf]

Demos are long dead and considering how much underbaked slop gets pushed out these days, I usually pirate if there's any doubt about the performance like engine level stutter, bad optimization etc... to test out if it's worth my money.

Develop a good game that runs like it's supposed to? Sure, i'll buy it.

Steam is still killing it 20+ years later just by not doing stupid shit.

 

[sla_porra22]

I am extremely in favor of piracy. I mean, in my country a single game can cost up to 16% of your salary... For most of the population, if you don't pirate things, you don't have access to nothing. Even here, although it's supposedly a crime, absolutely everyone pirates things and there's no problem at all. Most follow the logic of "if I like it, one day, if I have the money, I'll buy it to help the developer." We're faced with the choice between pirating something or having no access whatsoever to any kind of gaming-related media. However, something that is almost universal is that people VERY RARELY pirate indie games here. They usually focus only on AAA titles, since indie games have more accessible prices, but when they become too expensive, they end up being pirated as well. So I'm in favor, but only because of the context we're in here. If it weren't such a poor country, I might be against it, And I say "might" because in some situations I think it's a valid reason. People who pirate to test the game and then buy an official copy, for example.

Oh, and I also don't think piracy actually harms the developer. Those who pirate are usually the ones who wouldn't buy the game anyway; they don't lose money, they just miss out on what they never get anyway

 

[iguazo falls]

i love piracy how else am i gonna play old pokemon games without spending a dumb amount of money, probably more than what i would have spent when it was just released. i can also do what i want to the game which is fast forward grindy crap. piracy has led to actual purchases for me as well. i pirate my music and buy off bandcamp when it is affordable for me. for non regionally priced things also why wouldn't you pirate. another good thing about piracy is it preserves media which wouldn't be accessible to newer generations if not for the effort of pirates. i'm very grateful to those who upload and maintain releases of media. who TF even gets my money for a movie that released in 1950? everyone involved is dead and has been paid their dues way long ago. there are free games i support financially on occasion just cause they haven't treated the userbase like crap. i don't even care if some scientist pulls out the dichotomy chart and calls me scum, while another calls me the next saint whatsalot, i love piracy.