We can’t pirate a company into bankruptcy because there are still people paying for the movies and games we download. If everyone pirated content, these companies would go bankrupt, and there would no longer be new content to pirate. Online pirates often justify their behavior by telling themselves a story about how they’re 'sticking it to the man,' but in reality, we’re just freeriders enjoying the fruits of others' labor. We’re leeches with no moral ground to stand on.
Unless "piracy" is your alternative to buying a brand new copy at launch, I don't wanna hear it.
If GameStop can make bank re-selling used games without giving back a cent to the developer, how is doing the same for free, without taking up competitive retail space any worse?
In fact, you're helping them promote their stuff. E.g. everyone is watching that TV show and it's all your friends are talking about. Now you have to do it too.
If instead of pirating you'd be like "I think it's extremely expensive to pay a subscription fee for this low tier content, so instead I've been reading X". Maybe you'd convice someone to join you. But for now you're just reinforcing the media monopoly.
So now i should stop doing everything involving a digital subscription that's fun just to stick it to the corpos? I don't know if I'm misunderstanding your argument
How are you this naive? You know someone has to pay the developers a salary right? How would corporations pay them if nobody bought the game and instead pirated?
If you aren't stealing them they aren't stealing your content or work with AI. This pirating isn't stealing bullshit is tired. Some backwards ass way to justify stealing someone's right to distribute their work and get paid.
I could navigate 8 different streaming services with unique catalogs and awful UIs just to find that my show isn’t available in Canada—not with a clear notification, but by empty search results where it’s supposed to be.
Or I could run a docker container that automatically searches everywhere for me and puts shows in my library minutes after their release.
For my uses it would be more convenient to pirate shows on the services I still pay for.
Yo there's games that cost 80€ for me ($88.60). Even if I could afford that I would not pay that much. And remember that there are a bunch of games that basically don't drop in price at all.
I pirate because I know I won't have it eventually if I don't. Where I can, I donate directly to the creator instead of the worthless middlemen that are going to disappear next year and take my purchase with them.
I pirate because ads and cost. Not that I couldn't afford it, but accepting price increases for the same or reduced quality of service encourages enshittification. Ads are unacceptable, period.
Give me Steam level quality and you'll receive my money. That includes offline capabilities, family sharing, uncompromised content quality, and no taking back purchased items. In short, make me trust your platform. And I will never pay for subscriptions. Netflix was close, but alas.
The best time to start was 20 years ago (again, Netflix). Second best is now.
I used to pirate because when I started gaming, I was poor.
I could afford a game or two, but I was smart enough to know getting a modded ps2 would mean that my money would go much much further and thereby maximize my gaming experience. My gaming budget was the same, but I wanted my money to go to hardware.
Now I’m an adult, work as a software dev and the price isn’t a problem. But now I pirate because as a dev I know, all the hard workers are paid salary/hourly before the game releases, and if it’s a AAA game, all the money goes to investors.
Solution? Being a patient gamer and paying for indie games here and there :D
hi gamer it sounds like you are stuck plateau'd because you are playing on "I'm too young to die" / "normal" mode
you really only unlock true gamer mode once you add the following win conditions: pay solo & indie developers that you follow on Fedi directly or on their best platform; participate in retroachievements so as to directly flaunt your participation in alternative gaming economies; foster a sharing economy among your friends where you hook each other up with copies of stuff you have recently enjoyed on a regular basis.
if you can enjoy normal, you can enjoy true gamer mode. but if your goal is to beat Nightmare gaming mode at some point you have to improve your tech and strats
No, you don't. That's the point of piracy. Corporations extract every bit of wealth from the consumer class to the point that they don't even notice piracy, other than to decry it as a great evil. Nobody is going out of business.
I’ve always wondered - what qualification do we use to decide when a “business” (run by a kind guy behind a counter he built himself from scrap wood) evolves into a “corporation” (evil and scheming, part of the global capitalist conspiracy)?
Like, if the guy who runs my local coffee shop opens a second cafe further down the street, should I start tapping his phone to find out how the YouTube Content ID system works, now that he’s a part of The Corporations? Should I start breaking into his cafe and start stealing scones? Or do we want to wait until he has a third location