fun fact, pirating the game means you actually own it I have repacked drm free pirated versions of games I own just in case i lose access to them or they get shut down
I used to be philosophically anti-piracy in principle, and would often argue online against people who posted disingenuous or self-serving justifications for their actions. But these days the amount of piss-taking by the publishers has destroyed my resolve.
Yarrr.
I am just paying a different entity that provides the same “service” for cheaper at the cost of my sense of security.
Anyway, Nintendo and Xbox have colossal fortunes; I don’t think pirating one of their games is going to bankrupt them.
I don’t follow this as a justification for piracy. Piracy isn’t stealing but, assuming if it was not possible to pirate you were going to pay for the game, you are still causing the person who owns the game to lose money they would have otherwise gained.
My justification is much simpler: capitalists suck, buying games supports capitalists so I’m keeping my money.
assuming if it was not possible to pirate you were going to pay for the game
That’s not a reasonable assumption at all.
Sometimes people can’t afford the extortionate game prices and thus wouldn’t be bying them no matter what.
Other times, such as with the Denuvo DRM monstrosity or draconian anticheat systems on single player modes, pirated copies are better than bought ones.
And, as you say yourself, sometimes you just don’t want to support the capitalists ruining games in order to squeeze every possible cent of profit out of them regardless of what that means for the quality of games and treatment of gamers.
Sometimes people can’t afford the extortionate game prices and thus wouldn’t be bying them no matter what.
In that case piracy is fully justified. If you wouldn’t have bought it if piracy wasn’t an option then I have no issues.
Bottom two reasons: yeah fuck DRM and capitalism. I didn’t say I’m against pirating, I just need to find the logical justification :)
If you want to play a game - pay the owner.
If you can’t afford it - don’t pirate it. It’s not yours.
Upd: Wow, there are a lot of freeloaders in this thread.
If you can’t afford it then pirate it. There is no victim so I really see 0 reason not to.
“it’s not yours” is not valid. Who owns it then? Disney? Why does Disney deserve to own it any more than you? They didn’t put in any work to make it, the actors, directors, vfx artists, writers, producers, camera people, etc etc made the film. How come they don’t own any of it?
“it’s not yours” is not valid.
Huh? The legal system would politely disagree.
Who owns it then?
For the USA look it up in the USPTO database (USPTO = United States Patent and Trademark Office) or in game’s EULA.
You specifically chose one sentence from my argument and anilised that while ignoring all of the context around it.
Do you understand there is a difference between what is legal and what is ethical and sometimes the law can be unfair or unethical?
I still dont see any issues in a victimless crime.
Personally, If its not possible to pirate something I just forget about it until it is
Sonic Frontiers my beloved.
This is me tbh. I don’t value video games as part of my life to the extent that I will pay 70 dollars (or really almost any dollars) for 99% of them. I already don’t do that for games that have/had Denuvo that took years to crack. I just forgot about them and did something else. I’d probably just read more books if I couldn’t pirate games because I’m not spending that much of my income on them.
It’s also the same argument that record companies tried to use for the last few decades when a majority of the piracy stats were from countries you couldn’t even buy their albums or it was prohibitively expensive to do so. Avatar (the blue one) was the most pirated movie of all time at the same time as it was the highest grossing movie of all time. One download = one lost sale has never been true.
Piracy is stealing and stealing is good.
- To take illegally, or without the owner’s permission, something owned by someone else without intending to return it.
It’s hard for me to say weather this definition encompasses piracy or not. Although I would err to the side of piracy not being stealing, since media isn’t physical.
I don’t really care if it is stealing. Steal all you want. The random dude making the modern day equivalent of a flash game is certainly not counting on game sales to make ends meet, and the corporations can get fucked and die.
:)
Watching indie devs make 500k off of flash games 😅
And that’s fine because the assumption behind “Indie” is they did all the hardwork themselves without getting paid regularly. Consider 500k is not a lot if you count how many months of work was put into the games without pay.
We’re not mad about them hitting the nat 20 😂 we’re mad it was assumed they made zero money so it doesn’t matter if we pirate from them lol hungry devs needa eat fat cat Microsoft can suffer the thousand cuts lol
Orrr
Just get games with a free software license.
Then you both own it and did not pay. :)
Better for security too. A game is a full program and can do basically anything on your computer. I don’t even trust games from legit sources to run on my main OS. So if you pirate a game at the very least run it in a VM.
… a better “both ways” you can have.
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It’s 2026 and it’s the first time you seen this meme?
They’re being sarky
nah I didn’t make the meme, and I find it hilarious when people try to nitpick memes as if they were some philosophical treatises
It’s also funny when they’re nitpicked, even with overt hostility, only in the OP post, not the repost.
it’s like there’s a personal axe to grind 🤣
😂
Oh I just fell for it.
you must be that greedy little pig that thinks piracy reduces “potential” sales and hence “potential” profit. If you crave for what is not rightfully yours you are a sinner.
If you crave for what is not rightfully yours you are a sinner.
Are you talking about pirates and people, who use their work?
All games are technically licensed or something like that. I can’t remember precisely how, but software is licensed and pirating is considered “breach of contract”, not stealing. You shouldn’t take my word for it because idk what I’m talking about. All I know is rich people hate it, so fuck’em!!
Pirating is copyright infringement. In other words, you infringed on the rights of the copyright owner to dictate how their “copy” is used. In this case, the term “copy” is being used as in “collection of writing”, not the common colloquial synonym for “duplicate” - copyright was invented before video games, after all ;)
So in other words: no it’s never been theft
So in other words: no it’s never been theft
Yes. It was (and is) the other kind of legal offence. A copyright infringement, as you described exhaustively.
conceptually how can i violate a license i’m not party to? (idk what i’m talking about either but i like pretending)
Because use of the product comes with an agreement.
And no, you can’t “la-la-la, I’m not listening to this agreement, I’m not seeing it” your way out of it.
No, i legitimately bought it. You saying “it’s actually merely a usage license” is not my concern, yell at the shop that sold it with some fineprint somewhere.
