A new piracy discussion

Oh I definitely agree. As a kid I did my fair share, perhaps more at times, of navigating the seven seas. But as I've grown older with more and more ease of access to multiple kinds of content at affordable to semi-affordable price, the need to do so has drastically fallen for me.

I used to pirate literally everything until I abruptly stopped some 3 years ago because three things happened to me around the same time:

• I wanted to play modded Skyrim and it's difficult with pirated game.
• I started earning money (and noticed how cheap older games are on Steam)
• I moved to Germany and got afraid that piracy here would get me in real trouble.

Like our lord and savior GabeN has once said: Piracy is not a price issue, it's a service issue. Even if your product is a bit expensive, if the service is great, people will like it and will buy it.
Think of the movies for example: why would someone spend 10-15 bucks ($/€) to watch a movie instead of just watching it on the computer (piracy, or even legal streaming)? Because going to a theater will be a great experience. Large screen, comfortable seating, high quality immersive audio... And the atmosphere, people watching with you etc (although not everyone agrees on this - I personally highly prefer going at uncanny hours to be alone, or close to, in the screening room).

About games, the reason why people would rather buy a game on Steam than have it cheaper on a different launcher or even free on Epic is because of the better service. And that includes piracy, which goes back to my opening sentence.

All this to say... Yeah, not always, but companies can often be blamed for piracy.
Not always, because, sometimes people just can't afford, and sometimes they simply don't want to.

As a kid, even if I wanted to I couldn't find games to buy legitimately, we only had pirated copies so I had no choice. Not much of a choice when you are very young and have no money as well :P

The rise of Steam made it quite easy now, I haven't pirated much since (except Nintendo games which sadly cost me like 25% of my monthly income). Also since I have too many games to play right now, when a game I really want to try comes out I feel like I could just wait for a good price down the line.

There's also the side of art preservation, which seems to be more important now than ever, with games, movies, music, and so on, where the owners don't consider worth to keep supporting for whatever reason, and if there's no way of getting legally, then there's not much of a choice.

i do not pirate games, i do actually use some app that immitates youtube premium and alows me to download songs off youtube besides that i dont pirate anything and i just buy everything in sale or bundles from sites like fanatical. i even buy soundtracks for certain games just to show support and love for the game and developer/s (some are actually good tho)

Your "piracy/gaming" etc story is actually 1:1 the same for me.
The only other thing i did was to copy games for playstation 1. I got it cracked and borrowed all the games from a video library i wanted to copy all of them, so i only had to pay for the discs and to rent them. (was a teen back then and worked (newspaper delivery) but could hardly afford the games i wanted so i bought from the store only every now and then.

But yeah, from floppy discs, VHS, audio cassettes etc to not pirating anything at all for.. actually idk... maybe even 20 years?
Oh, actually im watching sometimes illegal streams (sports) and few years ago sometimes a series as well.

View attached image.

never once paid for a single subscription of any kind, not something i can afford
every streaming service only has one show you want to see anyway.
think ive used all my 1 month frees

In a perfect world, everything would be available everywhere, at all times, for one set price.

Realistically speaking, I only pirate things I can't get my hands on legally where I'm located (anime and retro games come to mind immediately). Heck, in my mind not even that is worth it when I have a Steam backlog so big I can't see the end of it. (There's no better way to prove that it's easy to save a lot on buying games if you know where to look.)

If anything, I wonder about the people who complain about all kinds of subscription services being "bad". I've spent a good few months subscribed to Game Pass and PS+ here and there, and I'm still not nearly done playing everything I'm interested in. Same with the Netflix account that I share with my mom - she's got her crime dramas, I've got my silly romcoms and B-list animated movies, and neither of us have ever ran out of things to watch. But you can't say things like that when discussing the services themselves, 'cause you'll get called out for "being a shill" >.>

Wow! If i'd written this, it'd be almost 100% the same experience!

I used to feel embarrassed about piracy, but also came to the conclusion it's often the fault of the publisher and greed.

Indie bundles saved me from my pirating ways, and i also just listen to music through a streaming site rather than waste time pirating it.

You lost me on the streaming services though...

I was THRILLED to have Netflix in the aughts, and getting multiple discs per month to watch. This was the start of the push of utility of the services offered, that had me stop pirating, soon after they replaced their disc rental service with streaming.

But now all the big players have been pee'd off that Netflix did something they could have, if they were a little less greedy. They then release their own competing services, and of course in turn increase how much they charge Netflix. Which then causes Netflix to drop their shows.

So now we're back to having to spend over $100 a month for 4-7 streaming sites, Same BS as back in the 90s/00's of cable TV, where even after spending that much, you'd still have to spend more for specific channels, and popular events.

A similar thing has happened with Steam, but for some reason, Valve generally gives better deals for games from other publishers, then then those publishers do on their own platforms!

EGS has been an outlier, as their offer a 'free game a week for a year' has now steam rolled into a regular weekly promotion. Because they know the truth behind piracy.... That simply getting your name out there for free, will often generate enough interest, that you will get many times that many coming to you to make a purchase.

Piracy ends, when the service offered is worth the uninflated price. Companies have a hard balance to maintain between their shareholders need for increased profits, and how much their customers are willing to pay. The regular price increases in ALL of the streaming services, is just like what made me nope out of Cable in the 90's and go straight to unlimited internet ONLY! Which was rare and somewhat hard to find at the time for a decent price.

Instead of "pirating" as i see it, now i use free streaming services, and sometimes will toss some money at Amazon or Netflix to try their platform again for a few months. But sadly the good times are gone, and the price point is just not worth it most the time.

Thankfully game bundles and Steam sales are still a regular thing. Which makes me wonder about why game publishers, and show/movie publishers act so differently from each other? They both want to make a profit, and both can have a similar overhead for production costs. So why no decent bundling of shows or movies? Why charge me $80 for a single season of a show, where i'd unlikely buy it for even $8?

Only answer i can think of, is their addicted to their greed and profit margins back in the 90s. Now with todays population and international streaming, they feel like they can push for ever greater profits, while basically ignoring the user experience and product their offering.

So now piracy has returned thanks to their greed, and lack of ability to learn from experience. They feel their monopoly on their IP, gives them the right to forever increase the price... and they're right! But that doesnt mean i'll be willing to pay. As i often have more fun just playing one of the many free games Epic drops me each week, or get something for free from the library, as they have a collection that easily rivals Netflix(although you may need to wait for it to be delivered to your local library)

I pirate and used to pirate a lot of stuff,I have my private torrent site account since I was 9(btw the quality on the site is pristine and has been since then).Pirating is what allowed my country to develop its internet infrastructure,what allowed me and hundreds of thousands more to learn how to use a computer,learn english,learn programming,learn of other cultures. Even the Windows on the school computers were pirated,Microsoft office basically everything .
Gaben said Piracy is not a price issue,here I disagree with him,it IS a price issue,take for example my country Romania where the min wage is 500 euros,I pay the same price for a game as a german or french,I understand why(EU market) but I still find it bullshit.

Ya'll better hope MDK25 isn't a fed-bot cuz you all just outed yourselves! Fish in a barrel baby, fish in a barrel. Time to scrub those HDD's boi's, you've been burned and the door kickers are en route!! 😜

PS - you know the internet is forever right? The AI overlord of the future will use this against you in your "do you get to live as a slave to the system or do you get expunged" trial! Chat GPT 15 has already signed the death Warrent, lol. "All dissidents and undesirables will be purged from the AI utopia" 👀

You forgot about libraries.
Get book for free in library is OK.
Scan your book or even 80-year old journal and give it to other people who want to read -it's "piracy" 😂

I used to be 100% against piracy, but my stance has changed quite a bit since then.

For one, the industry has priced itself out of what would be considered reasonable, and pricing, at least with AA and AAA studios, is based on industry pricing consensus ($69.99 for example) rather than the actual cost of games. To make it seem more reasonable, studios increase their spending to ungodly levels, and with zero oversight. And profit margins have also increased at the same time, which is insane. Record profits, but we're gonna have mass firings and studio closures regardless, because these top heavy companies gotta feed their greed.

Additionally, game companies (Sony) increasingly ignore certain areas of the world, refusing to even take your money to begin with.

My opinion is the way to break that cycle of greed and callousness is to pirate. Do I think you should be pirating Indie games? No. But AA and AAA are fair game IMO.

I used to pirate, knowingly and unknowingly. But since i have amassed tons of games from free promotion years ago, my backlog has been growing ever since, so i dont buy as much. Nowadays i just buy cheap games that really interest me or games that i pirated years ago that i really liked (to support them to make more of those games).

Quality wise, cheap game usually dont stand much towards games from big publishers (not gonna say aaa since it is not my cup of tea), but sometimes those games also go on sale for cheap so i can still get my fix if need be.

Mostly for games I just buy them. Sometimes for VNs I find it more convenient to pirate them, since they can be very expensive, or they have content removed from the Steam version, or they aren't even published on Steam at all, or they are just a bit too cursed for me to spend money on (though I do own Summer Memories, one of the most cursed anime games, so IDK. To be honest though I didn't really know what the game was actually about before I got it, I thought it was just a life sim lmao).

But for just Steam games generally, you can often get good games for cheap, especially in bundles and splits. Why bother pirating something when there is so much to play for cheap?

I proudly pirate anime though. When anime pirate sites have arguably better UX/UI than the official sites, and are sometimes even faster with uploading new episodes, and I can have everything in the same place even though any anime may not even have an official release (RIP Girls Band Cry ;_;) why should I get a subscription for a worse service?

I thought there was a more recent thread.

I am surprised it's all still so open with all the things they tried to against piracy, but i think a time will come when it's not so common anymore.
But also not everyone can afford their spotify/netflix etc etc, which slowly are banning account sharing, increase their prices, i rather have free will, free choice, whenever i want to listen something, watch something or play something.

Also they say everything is on the internet, not. Try to find that particular genre or artist on spotify and you can't, or that old tv show from the 80-90's you want to rewatch, or that game that just isn't there anymore. That's why redump.org is a good cause in my opinion, preserving games that otherwise be gone in oblivion. Take for example simon the sorcerer 4 and 5, a game barely 14 years old, and how difficult that is to get (beside some ebay).

I used to download mostly new point and click adventures, and then eventually get them on steam (and replay them just for the achievements) but now i am like why not get them there in the first place?

I'll download games that have no demo and I am on the fence about, I'll play it for a bit and if I like it I buy it, if not I delete and walk away. Free weekends on steam are also great for this.

Otherwise it's pretty simple, if I can't afford it I don't need it. If something is too expensive I'll wait for a good sale (50-75%) or for it to be bundled.

Gabe Newell's take from many years ago is still true:

We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable.

All I can say is that Adobe piracy will always be morally correct

This is a great question to pose and should generate a lot of different answers.

I think creators should get compensation for their efforts. Be that their book was purchased by a library or was a best seller or that it gets stored in a vault for humanity to ever remember. If a work is popular it will get pirated even if nobody wants to steal it, because that's the price of being valuable.

The censorship, or deletion, of works is where piracy becomes a useful commodity. The moment that Amazon deleted copies of George Orwell's 1984 from people's Kindle's due to a clerical error in copyright ownership at their end or the rather difficult to cite mass censorship of events from humanities' history (Covid is a good example) makes independently archiving a useful effort in documenting what has existed - however unsightly it may be.

Piracy is useful in this context as it allows the metaphysical immune system of human thought to identify markers of meme infection which could be toxic to the species overall. Some might scoff at the idea of a copy of Windows 98 (First edition) being dangerous but why there was a second edition which was so successful might be worthy of note to someone in the future for reasons unknown. There is never a fire until there is.

Of course piracy comes with its own dangers because a new copy of whatever is popular might harbour some parasitical infection of its own which may lead to disastrous consequences (The recent Crowdstrike outage is a prime example) and so like any infection it is a problem which needs to be addressed, but how to address it is the question itself.

So if you like something buy it, share your like for it. Be that a mixtape or a ticket for a friend to a concert to attend together. Steal it if you feel the risk is worth it but be as honest as you can if you get a virus. The amount of time I spent fixing people's computers who simply wouldn't admit to their pornography or gambling habits (Which were eventually found out) is time I won't get back and so admit what you know as soon as you can.

If anyone gives you grief for admitting to piracy tell them to read up on Socrates' writings on the matter.

That all said and done do make sure you compensate creators for their efforts. Not just with money but with valid criticism. Nobody gets a free pass (Even if they think they do).

I pirated until I moved to the UK in September 2018. I simply could not afford it. Ever since then, I have bought almost everything I once pirated because I never wanted to do it in the first place, but my lack of money pushed me into that position.

As you mentioned, before piracy was so common, nobody in my circle of friends viewed it as something bad back home. It was simply the way to acquire games you could not buy.

I am still looking for games I once pirated to buy, but two game franchises, in particular, are too expensive: Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 1 & 2 and The Amazing Spider-Man 1 & 2. A few other games I remember and cannot find anywhere because they are delisted include The Punisher, which I hold close to my heart, and Empire Earth 1 & Empire Earth 2, which I would love to buy via Steam. Additionally, there are The Suffering and its sequel The Suffering: Ties That Bind, Rage of Mages, and last but not least, Warcraft 3 and Frozen Throne.

I don't think we'll ever see some of them make a comeback, so I'm left to either go with GOG or just accept that I'll never own them.

I´ve been a landrat for about two decades now, but sometimes, when I see the anti-customer practices from some publishers coughUbisoftcough, I can still hear the high seas calling out to me.

"What killed the piracy for me personally, was the combination of getting the same content for reasonable price, and in a convenient way."
Thats was basicly Valves business idea for Steam right from the start and damn have they been proven right!

If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.

I pirated a lot of games when i was younger, so won't blame those who still don't have money 'cause they're young, poor, deprived country, etc. But then with Steam it's all much easier as you explain. What won me over the most : no more risk to get a virus, the automatic patches, and the easy possibility to remap a controller. All of that it's easier than piracy and a luxury, for sure those who pirate if they had the money would prefer buy on steam just for the service, so you can be sure if they don't... they really don't have the money (but maybe one day they will, first thing i did when i had some money was to buy on steam the games i had pirated in the past).

About some editors malpractices, i would have thought the same than Andrewski but with so many games, it's less time-consuming to just ignore the anti-consumers editors, and to just buy and play something else.

I still pirate movies, but music and games I'm 'clean'. I have three big subscriptions now and bought a movie ticket for this Friday. So yeah, I did bad in the past, I still do, but less.