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Forums - General Discussion - In defence of piracy

I defend piracy as something necessary for a healthy industry, believe it or not. It's the best way to preserve software nowadays, plus it's a great way to fight against practices such as mandatory DRM or platform exclusivity. With that said, it's important to be mindful about whose's game you're pirating, if they can take the blow well and/or if they deserve it.



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Sadly, I bought quite a bit of pirated stuff back in my wayyy younger years (early teens). Mainly because I lived in an area where original games were practically nonexistent and the cost of the games were not something a kid my age could afford. I'm not proud of it. I buy 100% original now and don't ever touch anything pirated (be it movies, songs or games). Thinking back, I probably would have dropped the gaming hobby decades ago had I not ever been exposed to the games via piracy. Spent tens of thousands of dollars into the industry since then (consoles, rigs, gaming laptops and peripherals on top of the games themselves) now that I have a well paying job and solid income.

Not defending piracy, but in my case I believe it allowed me to get into the hobby and nurtured me into a solid consumer for the industry. I'm wondering how many ppl actually more or less have the same story as me.



Like many, I would have pirated games when I was younger. Mainly because of the lack of funds but also living in a small town, I couldn't just go buy stuff. Now that we have digital distribution, and I'm an adult with disposable income, I haven't actually pirated* a game since before I made my first purchase on Steam.

My views on piracy depend on the situation:

1. If you pirate a game that you do not own and have no intention of owning, then you are in the wrong, both legally and morally. You're using a product that you did not pay for. The artist got no money from you experiencing the product.

2. You "pirate" something that you already own. This is often in the case of emulation (I own an NES cart but have no means to dump the game, or I own a Wii U game but can't rip the disc, etc.), but is also the case for books. I often buy a hardcover book and then go find an EPUB book to upload to my Google Books account so I can continue reading in bed in the dark on my phone, or if I'm standing on the bus, or any number of situations where a giant heavy book doesn't work so well. In all these cases, I already gave the content creator my money, so while legally, I'm sure I've broken the law, but morally, I sleep well at night knowing I've paid for the content I'm consuming.



Frankly piracy is only done in 3rd world countries so why are we debating it



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I pirate whatever, I don't really give a rats I pay a ton of cash into the movie and games industry and if there's a game I wanna play that's either not on a format I would pay for it on or if it's easier I'll just do it.

Most recent thing was probably cuphead, was on the PC wanted to see what it's about so I picked it up for the friendly neighbourhood pirate bay and played a fair chunk of it, was announced for the Switch and bought it day 1 (well actually day -14 since I had it pre purchased from the point where you could) I buy on average about 5 games a week to add to my collection across a range of platforms, from PS4/PC/NS/GC/3DS/DS/X360/PS3/Wii and many more.... have hundreds of games legit owned (well... it would be thousands by now actually rather easily, between X360/GC and NS I own around 1,000 titles) I have literally zero problem with pirating a game for effectively any reason I want, from shitty dev practices, just wanting to demo the game or simply because I can't be bothered to password locker my CC details and go to pirate bay instead of steam because they remember my CC details there.

I'd wager that I probably pirate more games than most people on this site, I would also near certainly say I spend more on games that 95% of the people on this site per year coming in at 4figures per season at least. Piracy is great.

One thing I will say though! Support Netflix and your local cinema's as long as you have a decent one in your area, if you only have one and it shuts down you missing out on seeing some great movies in the way they're meant to be seen, I've got a home threater projector (1080p just) setup at 130" but still... you can't get things like a midnight release of Endgame at home so support your cinemas and the movie franchises you love! And netflix because they fund the creation of some amazing series (and in piracies defence.... Adam Sandler movies)



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For me, it's the matters of prices. Physical prices are always problematic, i started to buy any console pirated games from 1994 through 2010 and then i downloaded pirated Wii games and homebrew emulations for my Wii as well as DS just at leaaast 3 years later then started to buy legitimate old school games. I was really young boy back then and i couldn't ask my dad to buy me original games cause he would upset(demonically wrath) & think all electronic retailers are rip-off.

Reason? Because games were overpriced, they were like for 80~90 USD from authorized resellers any platform, don't expect N64 cartridges are more expensive than CD-Formart consoles, oh no no no... they were equally priced like this "PS1 games & N64 games = 80 USD" lmao while or compare to pirated games i used to buy were cheaper something might be between 10~25 USD depends how much they want

Note: I'm not from United States. I converted from KWD to USD.



My old PS2 could run burnt games... there was like this disc you ran first, and then you pulled out the tray and put in the burnt disc.
When your a teen and without money, you dont really think about these things that much, you just wanted to play the games.



You are justifying theft based on potential benefit down the road to the company. It is still...theft.

If I steal a car, I'm driving it down the road (thus advertising it), and heck, may even like it enough that I eventually buy more cars of that brand. But that doesn't mean I didn't still steal the original car.

I've heard the argument a million times, and while I personally don't report anybody who is doing this (it just isn't worth my time), stop lying to yourself that you aren't still stealing.

The same could be said about lots of rules. One could murder somebody they deem a bad person, and think they are overall helping society as a result. It is still murder.



Money can't buy happiness. Just video games, which make me happy.

And no, those who don't steal aren't necessarily priviledged, they just live with what they are given. My budget in college was pretty obscenely low, including limiting myself to ramen or macoroni many days.

That doesn't mean Im just entitled to steal things to make up for it. It meant I just found cheap things to do/play.



Money can't buy happiness. Just video games, which make me happy.

Darwinianevolution said:
I defend piracy as something necessary for a healthy industry, believe it or not. It's the best way to preserve software nowadays, plus it's a great way to fight against practices such as mandatory DRM or platform exclusivity. With that said, it's important to be mindful about whose's game you're pirating, if they can take the blow well and/or if they deserve it.

That's one of the reasons why GOG is my main store on PC. Everything is DRM-free, and you don't even need the launcher. You can even forego about the Dosbox emulator on Dos games and just download the game itself, effectively giving you a ROM to burn on a CD and play the game on an old 486 computer, if you like (and have such an old machine at hand, like I do, or did until my S3 924 GPU in there died after 25 years)