Godwin's law in full effect.

Do stop and think, when it comes to the tales that piracy costs the developer money, how? If you were to steal the game by going into gamestop and literally going behind the counter and stealing a version of the game which they burned to dvd or cartridge, packaged, shipped and stocked and you stole, but... if you have the game files and I copy them... how does that cost a company money whereas when I cloned my steam library from one of my PC's to the other this week that didn't? But the rom folders I copied from one PC to the other did cost them money because it's piracy?

Yeah, but that's the thing... if someone can't afford a game, they won't buy it. At that point, what difference does it make whether they play it ilegally or don't? The only difference it makes is to the enjoyment of that particular person, and nothing else. You can say "oh but that person would've otherwise bought the game when they had the money", and well, that's not always true. There's loads of people who wouldn't buy the game anyway... it's not about feeling "entitled" to play it, it's just about having a good time. I'm not saying piracy is okay, of course it's not. There's a lot wrong with it. But there are good things that can come from it, too.

Of course, in your extreme example, no good would come out of it, but reality isn't extreme.

If you take a game like say.... GTAV and via illegal means it is torrented to an alien planet of 50 billion Klingons, and they all pass it around and play it.... How does that impact the game creator or you?

Even in your scenario of "person A has the money to pay for the item" "Person B does not" Person B never has money... he has the same amount of money as a planet full of billions of Aliens, there is no magic $60s that are in their pockets that are somehow not going into Activisions pocket when they play it, I'll put it like this man... I've worked with and around a lot of people who are on the line of not having anything, and the choices some people have is either sit back and play a few games in their spare time or spend it on things like drink/drugs and honestly I've directed people towards things like a R4 card for the Nintendo DS as a way that they could spend their spare time doing something that isn't constructive but at least would be less harmful than the alternative, and this isn't people who don't have jobs I'm talking about people who either have familys or dependants who consume all or most of their income so yeah, don't jump on the "well those losers should go get a job rather than playing games" There are a lot of people whos savings go to things like medical issues or yeah... the care of loved ones in their families. I'm never going to tell someone who has spent the day minding a family member and not earning a penny for it that they're not entitled to sit down at the end of the day and play a video game because what they done didn't give a remuneration.

Bit of a tangent there... but aye tell me just how does it impact you playing the game if some poor sap in his room is also playing that game but hasn't paid for it.... but would never have been able to pay for it? Does it make you feel worse as you play the game to think that someone else might be enjoying the same title but you're worrying they didn't pay the entry fee... what about when the game goes on sale, do you lose a little sleep or fun of the game if you paid 60 but I pick it up a month later for 20 does that get to you that I don't fully deserve to play it?

But stealing is okay. Have you ever heard of Robin Hood? People love his stories so much that they get retold over and over again.

Yeah... you lost me here, pal. When I buy a game and play it legally, I enjoy it. I don't give a crap whether someone out there is playing it for free or not, that's not part of the equation - if anything, I have a better sense of pride in knowing that I'm doing it the right way. Piracy absolutely shouldn't (and mostly, doesn't) affect the people who spend their money on games, and if it affects you, that's something you need to work on, because it ain't right.

That said, ultimately this is just a case of agree to disagree. You have your reasons to think piracy is never okay under any circumstances, and it's fine to think that way. I think there are good things that come from it, and feel it's also fine to think that way. But it's clear we're not adding anything more to the discussion by this point.

So not only do you have a questionable moral compass, you also have terribly low standards when it comes to game purchases.

But most importantly, I hold a deep grudge against you because a good year ago you said something along the lines of "would be interesting to see how first party game purchases compare to third party ones on Switch" and then could never be bothered to go here. *shakes fist*

Just gonna say 0D0 that I read the first line of your 2 posts and disagree with that so much because it's not true that I figured if that's your starting point it was probably going to go down from there.

Some people feel incredibly strong on this point and I will just point out again just if anyone reads my posts and thinks I'm a fucker that never buys games, in the last 2 years since the Switch launched I have bought around 230 titles for it, math suggests that's a game purchased every 3 days so aye just putting it out there that I've no issues whatsoever with paying for games I also have zero issues in not doing that. I would just say if you do love a game a lot and think it should get more money, recommend it to your friends, there have been a lot of times where I would play some small title and end up pushing it on mates to at least try it out and have them then go on to get it for themselves.

Wait I lied! I seen the end line too... about GTAV not selling so we won't get a sixth title.

the same GTAV which has sold 110 million units and has recurrent user.... micro transactions up the wall to the point where T2 are probably richer than most countries from that game alone. Well okay champ! For the record I have that game 3x as it is fantastic and was a feat of what was possible on the ps3/60 era hardware as well as a beautiful game to get lost in on the ps4.

server not found server not found.... dear me that's gotten old fast I'm going to guess you mean your version of the thread which tracks the games but also the first party ones, I would have a horrific ratio on that since there isn't that many first party titles it would be something like 220 : 10 split in terms of 3rd to first party.

Some games I play I will say... are trash lol, I bought Phantaruk (don't quote) a while back and think I got at most 20 mins outta it, Perception imo was so bad that I felt it would insult someone who has issues with their vision as its depiction of the condition is so terrible I felt bad playing it, not just because it was a bad game but that I had funded someone for making an insult. Then there is some games I play like Jumping Joe and friends where it's a very simple 2 button game which myself and a bunch of mates played for wayyyyyy too long on my projector trying to best each others scores in it, so I do buy tons of games but finding the occasional Gem is worth it imo.