I don’t think it should be the devs getting angry, rather the execs
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.
It depends, small indie games teams usually suffer from this. Big houses that screw over players, those can go fuck themselves.
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.
Have you noticed, nowadays, games from such “big houses” tend to be not even worth pirating?
Just a major waste of time.Well because they’re built to hook you up with their storefront where you can buy a my little pony gun for a third of the price of the game. And then play a fps asset flip game in front of the poors.
Do devs get paid royalties? If not, why would they be mad at something that doesn’t affect them?
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.
Sometimes. Those can get canceled when they layoff the team after release.
Who are the real pirates?
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.
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
s/developers/publishers/
Also, not sure how this is programming related 🤷
I hate this phrase because it assumes that copyright infringement was at one point the same as stealing - it never was.
Stealing is a crime, where you take with the intent to deprive. Copyright infringement is a civil offense where the original owner loses nothing.
I don’t think that that’s necessarily true. Let’s say someone designs a rucksack because they find the existing options on the market uncomfortable. They produce them on a small scale and they get fairly popular. Then Amazon sees it, copies it, mass produces it for less than the original designer could, and makes sure that any time someone searches for a rucksack on Amazon their version appears first in the list. I think it’s reasonable to say that the original designer lost something there
That doesn’t mean copyright can’t be or isn’t abused, of course
They’ve lost potential revenue, but that is not the same as if amazon would come to their house and had stolen their only rucksack prototype.
Potential revenue is not your property.
It still sucks though.
Potential revenue isn’t, but intellectual property is. At least in most current legal systems, it is
And that’s why copyright infringement is a crime, just not the same crime as theft.
You’re saying that like it isn’t already rampant. IP laws are a textbook example of classist disenfranchisement. It’s a rule for which the capitalists are protected and not bound by, but which workers are bound by and do not receive those protections.
I chose Amazon and a bag design as the example specifically because it’s a real story (although not a rucksack, I misremembered that part)
And what was the outcome of this IP theft? A video mocking a multi billion dollar corporation? They took down the specific product called out, but they still make extremely similar dslr bags to peak Design and they’re definitely still copying other companies designs. This is my point. IP laws only benefit the billionaire class and fuck over everyone else.
Ah, but they didn’t lose the exact item that the thief gained. For legal purposes, that’s important; nobody could be charged with larceny.
IANAL
deleted by creator
But see you’re thinking about it the wrong way… Every one of those pirated copies is 100% a potential sale lost.
Won’t you think of the shareholders?
/s
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.
How’s this programmer humor?
More like gaming executives
*Game publishers
*publishers
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.
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.
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.
Games as a service is a scam.
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.
When something is available DRM-free on GOG I don’t scrutinize it so closely.
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.
Is that PirateSoftware?
I work for a game company, the only reason I would tell you not to use a pirated version is because it probably isn’t cracked properly and will throw client-server errors. You’ll want to crack it in a way that will still receive the playlist updates
