HOT TAKE! Piracy

[Phabe Jewell]

Piracy offers a way better service than a majority of developers who punish their legitimate consumers by requiring an online connection and slowing down their games with DRM!

[ad_victoriam]

Publishers examplify the old world greed and corruption which doomed mankind :P

[lostaname]

I am reminded of this researchpaper from 2014: Estimating displacement rates of copyrighted content in the EU

https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-uploa...ment_study.pdf

[Phabe Jewell]

Pretty justifiable if want the game to work right you gotta pirate it these days.

[decoyOctopus]

I used to pirate games when I was a teenager because I didn't have any spare money to waste on games and they're expensive as F in Brazil (thanks taxes). Nowadays, I use the piracy method as a anti-DRM and "test-drive" option before I decide to buy a game.

[Garrett]

An interesting point about piracy is that some very reasonable publishers actually consider pirates to be outside their target demographic. That's why CD Projekt created GoG. They want to sell games to people who buy games and not attempt to sell games to people who don't buy games. That's really the final boss of the philosophical debate. When you beat that boss, what you thought was "stealing" is now "not buying". It's equally stupid to try to sell to those who steal as it is to try to sell to those who won't buy. Consequently trying to sell to those who don't steal and who do steal despite its futility takes more effort and makes more people angry than trying to sell only to those who buy does. In the end the latter is more profitable because nothing goes to waste.

[Phabe Jewell]

That's a very in-depth way to put it.

[vippy]

Yoshi Selfishness and entitlement? It's not quite so black and white. Yes, many pirates are driven by pure opportunism. But if all of them were, the peer to peer model of pirated software distribution would not exist because nobody would bother seeding or distributing torrents far and wide across the web, or maintain dedicated torrent sites for that matter. Now, what could be the pirates' motivation for being so helpful to their fellow pirates? I'll tell you.

There are many aspects at play, but the foremost three that I will talk about are 1) the nature of theft in psychology, 2) who is subconsciously considered a person and 3) how power is viewed in human society.

1) You see, humans make a subconscious distinction between the physical theft of an object and copying files because digital content is not the same as a physical object in the real world even if legally speaking they are both a form of property. A digital file is infinitely duplicatable, while a physical object is not. While physical theft removes the original object from the possession of its original owner, copying a file does not. And so, when someone attempts to artificially restrict the nature of the digital file proactively through DRM or reactively through lawsuits, that triggers a primal feeling of unfairness in humans because it is an imposition upon them and others to uphold a set of rules which do not exist in natural order and are not in the interest of the people in their immediate surroundings, but in the interests of other people in a faraway place whom they cannot see and are likely to never interact with.

2) This aspect of human psychology is precisely why corporations and other large organizations attempt to humanize themselves in the eyes of the public by having specific spokespeople or central figures that the public can associate with that organization, thereby ascribing human qualities to it. When people think of Apple for example, they think of Steve Jobs or Steve Wozniak, or Tim Cook, they don't think of the shareholders or other executives or managers of the different departments because these people are not immediately visible to them.

3) As a species, we have a pecking order and our sense of who has the right to wield power largely dictated by our personal sense of fairness, which is largely emotion-driven. We don't like the idea of someone calling the shots whom we don't judge as being just or having the best of intentions. Video game publishers in our day and age are incredibly scummy and conniving, their anti-consumer practices almost crossing the lines of legality at times. Hence why their interests are not perceived to coincide with the interests of gamers. As such, they've lost legitimacy in the eyes of gamers and this is why people have no qualms about pirating their games. The publisher's right to control the game and its distribution is no longer seen as justified.

[Phabe Jewell]

Ice-Flame Yeah, the majority of the time pirates do use the right time to crack into games, then most of those pirates actually buy the game if they believe that it is worth a buy.
From what I've been reading here Aidy called pirates "Entitled" even though he's been acting very entitled because he gets paid to work his hobby.

Tbh I believe the cracking groups just put as much work cracking through the DRM for free, and they have stated that they're payment is the satisfaction of being better at the other groups and giving pirates a better service.

[Ice-Flame]

Aidy I'm done with you. You're so high up on your horse that you can't see the flaws in your own logic until you have to squirrel out of them when I show them to you. You said you couldn't write code if you didn't have your job, and when I said people without coding jobs did it your reply was "Not as well." I wasn't talking about the quality of code, no one was. And your blog is just as irrelevant, as we weren't talking about that either. Not until you decided to use it as justification as to why your job allows you to write code. In reality, you have your job because you write code, not the other way around.

You're argument about this being a moral question is bs, since it's only bad depending on the perspective of the would be victim and not on the outcome of the situation. And even then you say one party knows they won't get paid when everyone who has ever released a game knows it will get pirated. "They did something I don't like" is nowhere near as bad as "My company is gone because nobody gave us money."

And when you show me a way for everyone to buy any game in a way for money to go to the developers, then I'll say piracy is wrong. But until then, I'll go back to my previous statement. There is a right time for piracy and a wrong time for piracy, more often than not, people are using it at the right time.

[Aidy]

Indie games and free games are two very different things.

I think they're fairly synonymous but it's not something I feel passionate enough to argue about.

It's called the "slippery slope fallacy." It is the bad logic that since something is taken to an illogical extreme, it must be entertained as a logical argument.

I'm not making an argument based on the fact that one day everyone will be a pirate. What I'm doing is posing a moral question, a thought experiment, so my comments are not a logical fallacy.

There will never be a time when everyone pirates games, so we don't need to think about a world where everyone does.

So piracy isn't bad because there will never be a time when everyone is a pirate? Murder isn't bad because there will never be a time where everyone is a murderer?

Tell you what though, as that negates your argument what you should do instead is focus on how pirating is not as bad as murder because that really refutes the point I'm making. Your argument of "Not everyone will be X so being X isn't bad" is only valid if it is valid for all possible instances of X.

You're not in a position to write free code because you work with code

Yes, I am. Let me give you a specific example only because it is recent. A company had a problem that involved customising some stuff so in order to do that I spent literally days reverse engineering code, looking for hooks I could use to inject my own code, making sure it worked for all scenarios that I could think of. That code was then peer reviewed and released to testers whose job it is to come up with scenarios developers haven't thought of. It was examined by the product owners to make sure it met their requirements. Any bugs were fixed and put through the same process. When it was all said and done I thought "I should blog this so others wanting to do the same thing can use this code" (it was an amended version obviously). If you looked at that blog you'd see about 20 lines of code and probably thought that took an hour to do. The reality is that it took weeks and the input of numerous professionals with numerous skills. There is no chance in hell I could have developed those 20 lines of code had I not been paid for my time, and everyone else in the process not been paid too. Those 20 lines of code probably cost £10k when you divvied up all the time of all of the people involved in the entire process spent on it. So I then take those weeks of effort and I use what I learned from it to help others, something I can only do because someone paid me to learn that in the first place.

If you worked a different job that paid the exact same with the exact same hours, you could still make code.

Not to the same quality, no.

If you can't see how a company not making money for giving away their product is just as bad as a company not making money because people won't pay for a product, I have to strongly question your logic.

Because one is knowing they won't get paid and the other is expecting they will.

[Ice-Flame]

You said about fan made games, mods etc and I paraphrased that as "indie games". You didn't say indie games, no, but I don't think my paraphrasing of what you did say as indie games made much difference to the argument.

Indie games and free games are two very different things. Though they are both made by independent developers, one is a commercial product made to exchange for money, and the other is not.

You can say that all you want but it doesn't invalidate the original argument.

It's called the "slippery slope fallacy." It is the bad logic that since something is taken to an illogical extreme, it must be entertained as a logical argument. There will never be a time when everyone pirates games, so we don't need to think about a world where everyone does.

No, it wouldn't. Who do you think are making these games for free? I write all sorts of code for free, I spend a large portion of my time writing free code and the only reason I get to do that is because I'm paid to write code as my job. That has given me the opportunity to hone my craft, and it also gives me the privilege to dedicate a portion of my free time to doing for free what I get paid for until it hits 5pm. I do this because I enjoy it, I get to write things I don't get to write as part of my job, and I get to "pay it forward" in a way. If my job disappeared because people didn't pay me for the work I do because they feel entitled to things but don't want to pay for them, then I wouldn't be in the position I'm in now to write all that free code. I wouldn't have the skills I have, I wouldn't have the motivation I have, I wouldn't have the opportunity I have. The people writing all of those indie games are in the same boat, it's an overflow of the passion they have for their paid jobs.

I work as a fraud analyst for a bank. I don't write code at my job, I don't do graphical or musical design at my job. I still make little games as a hobby, I still play guitar as a hobby. If I ever wanted to upload those and release them into the world I could. Just because you write code for a living doesn't mean you are any more qualified to make independent games and release them than anyone else with a computer and internet connection. You call it "paying it forward" when really your just stroking your own ego because you make money with something closer to your hobby than others. You're not in a position to write free code because you work with code, you're in that position because you have a computer and internet access. If you worked a different job that paid the exact same with the exact same hours, you could still make code. If you were flipping burgers you could still write code. You could even make code if you lost your job, because you don't need a job to write code. If you think the only way people make games is because they are already making code, than you are gravely mistaken. And I can't believe that someone in your position is unable to even fathom something like a basement or hobby coder.

No, because the people who do Print and Play know they won't get money from it and so have accounted for that. Companies that hire hundreds of people and spend millions making a game kinda expect that people are going to pay to play that game. Again if you don't see the difference I can only strongly question your beliefs.

If you can't see how a company not making money for giving away their product is just as bad as a company not making money because people won't pay for a product, I have to strongly question your logic. One is saying "They'll play our game then give us money" and the other is saying "They'll give us money then play our game," yet no money is exchanged. A person who bleeds themselves dead for mosquitoes is just as bad as a person who is drained dead by mosquitoes.

[Aidy]

I could be like you and claim that your argument is irrelevant because I didn't bring up indie games

You said about fan made games, mods etc and I paraphrased that as "indie games". You didn't say indie games, no, but I don't think my paraphrasing of what you did say as indie games made much difference to the argument.

Besides, you are the one who is saying that the industry would be destroyed if everyone pirated, I just brought the conversation back to the world we live in where only a relatively few people actively pirate new games.

You can say that all you want but it doesn't invalidate the original argument.

These are all parts of gaming that would still be around in the game industry (indie and AAA) went down

No, it wouldn't. Who do you think are making these games for free? I write all sorts of code for free, I spend a large portion of my time writing free code and the only reason I get to do that is because I'm paid to write code as my job. That has given me the opportunity to hone my craft, and it also gives me the privilege to dedicate a portion of my free time to doing for free what I get paid for until it hits 5pm. I do this because I enjoy it, I get to write things I don't get to write as part of my job, and I get to "pay it forward" in a way. If my job disappeared because people didn't pay me for the work I do because they feel entitled to things but don't want to pay for them, then I wouldn't be in the position I'm in now to write all that free code. I wouldn't have the skills I have, I wouldn't have the motivation I have, I wouldn't have the opportunity I have. The people writing all of those indie games are in the same boat, it's an overflow of the passion they have for their paid jobs.

Also, you say that print and play is fine since the creators gave permission, but if everyone did print and play then industry would collapse

No, because the people who do Print and Play know they won't get money from it and so have accounted for that. Companies that hire hundreds of people and spend millions making a game kinda expect that people are going to pay to play that game. Again if you don't see the difference I can only strongly question your beliefs.

[Ice-Flame]

Because what followed the "but" was irrelevant to the arguments I was making. If you want to agree with the argument I am making, and then add a rebuttal to arguments I'm not making, then that rebuttal is kind of irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.



I made no comment about that. Not saying your opinion on it isn't valid, but it's not a counter argument to anything I've actually said which is why I didn't address it. I'll address it now if you want though...how much piracy there is is irrelevant. The point I was making was that if everyone did what the pirates are doing then the system would collapse, ergo it's not hard to come to the conclusion that piracy is wrong. If the AAA industry vanished overnight you say you'd still have games due to indie developers. But you wouldn't...because whatever caused the AAA industry to collapse (I assume you mean piracy?) would then cause the indie industry to collapse, or at the very least stagnate and die, because the same problems would infect that industry too. I haven't heard of Print and Play but from what you are saying the makers of the games are giving permission for the game to be copied\duplicated so it's nothing like piracy at all. If you genuinely think making a copy of something that the makers wants you to copy and has given you permission to copy is the same thing as copying something that the maker doesn't want you to copy and has not given you permission to do so then I have to seriously question your ethics and morality.

I could be like you and claim that your argument is irrelevant because I didn't bring up indie games, but I won't do that. It would be rude. Besides, you are the one who is saying that the industry would be destroyed if everyone pirated, I just brought the conversation back to the world we live in where only a relatively few people actively pirate new games.

As I stated before, there are fan games (unofficial games made by fans of an existing IP) mods (adds to existing games) and freeware (games made and release for free) none of which actually make money. These are all parts of gaming that would still be around in the game industry (indie and AAA) went down. Also, you say that print and play is fine since the creators gave permission, but if everyone did print and play then industry would collapse, which makes print and play bad by your logic. Just because something could be disastrous if overused, doesn't mean that it is inherently bad.

[Aidy]

DRM has never once stopped a game from being cracked.

I believe some Denuvo games haven't been cracked? Happy to be proven wrong, but that's my understanding.