People who keep clamoring that piracy isnt stealing because it doesnt remove an original are just purposefully...

>being such a bitchboi that you willingly defend companies fucking you in the ass in your own free time
oh man my morals tho ;____;

Nice strawman, shillbro.

I wouldn't have bought it anyway, so it literally doesn't matter if I pirate it or don't
>inb4 BUT YES YOU WOULD HAVE!!!!!!!!!!!!
if I'd pay for it I automatically buy it anyway instead of pirating
but 95% of the stuff isn't worth paying for, and I wouldn't kill myself over never having those softwares

increasingly, we have the laws to attack you for doing so. it won't be long before you're unable to do so. fines, community service, and even jail time is being proposed in congress to counter-act digital theft.

>game companies lose money
no they don't

Its the same as "not watching an ad loses the web site no money"

Why are you assuming I give a shit if it' theft or not? I couldn't care less what happens to them.

I agree. I don't justify pirating. I just do it.

>If you don't buy my product, you're stealing even if you didn't pirate it

US Supreme court says piracy isn't stealing. It's copyright infringement and that's different from stealing. What is actually removed from the owner of the 'property' is the right of refusal to copy the product.

If you pay for something that you can otherwise get for free, with no legal repercussions, you're a sucker. Plain and simple.

This.
If I want something bad enough, I would MUCH rather pay money for it to get it from a trusted seller, possibly with return capabilities, and having used product resale capability, including perfect support and current updates
If I want to make some dank beats but don't think a piece of software is worth $600 I'm gonna get that shit for free, from some shady website, with little or late or no future support, and no confidence that I'm getting what I wanted

people who made the game have been paid before it went into release.

you're just feeding millions to gabe "the fat fuck", ea managers, feminist gaymers etc.

in fact it would be better if "game industry" was destroyed utterly and every gamedev company was bankrupted. maybe people will actually start making good games again, then. "industry" that tries to get you addicted to clicks instead of making a game which authors themselves would wanna play is why we get shit games nowadays.

Those laws should not exist at all. You're deluded and retarded. You have been brainwashed into thinking the "intellectual property" metaphor is actually property.

>piracy

I'd like to interject for a moment

What you're referring to as piracy is actually file sharing

I only pirated if it's not available in the stores
Wasted a bunch of money on nintendon't ds games even when they are easy to pirate.
>inb4 online markets

Sorry Walter, but some people actually like professionally made software so much that they would rather have it available to buy than to use buggy shitware cobbled together by fat NEETs.

>have sega dreamcast
>100% of games are burn-n-play
>this is the only console that does this
I still see crazy taxi for fucking eight dollars, sega knew what was up

At the time sega had some of the most advanced anti-copy protections that had existed. Their GDROM shit was nuts.

You don't need copyright for people to write software professionally.

/thread

until everyone is guaranteed a job and minimum wage is enough to raise a family, you can go fuck yourself

It isn't stealing its copyright infringement.
You have to prove that you actually harmed the copyright holder to have any recourse in court.

Copyright wasn't created to prevent the sharing of ideas. It was meant to protect people from trying to profit from your ideas.

Piracy also allow a lot of people to access a lot of different content. Do you think people would bother buying everything they've pirated? They would content themselves of all the shit they see on TV or hear on the radio.

If everyone has access to everything, we differentiate ourself from each other and it lead to social and cultural evolution

It's only stealing if you were going to pay for it.

Pirating if you weren't going to pay for it is inarguably a GOOD thing and should be encouraged. The same goes for movies and music, because then you'll be a member of the community and add to the value of the game or movies / music in various ways or end up advertising for them

I would never pirate a table or a chair because those things actually exist in reality. Games, music, movies, these are ephemeral things that only exist as 'art' they are not really products when people 'pay' for it they should consider it a donation and be grateful

Copyright longer than 7 years from the creation of the work is the real theft and a crime against culture and humanity.

People will eventually be 3d printing furniture.

>He actually paid for his chair instead of just paying for the raw materials and printing it.

I can see it now, some red faced engineer that spent 10 hours designing a chair trying to abuse the copyright system to sue thousands of people that printed it.

Most of the games I pirated were "shovelware" and I'm glad and or indifferent that they were commercial failures. I don't care about your backwards ethics about consumer capitalist industry.

Well, I'm glad that Shenzen is happening.

There's only one problem here.

According to science, pirates buy more than other people.

Argument decimated.

>pirate game
>play half of it
>don't enjoy it
>delete it

I'm glad I didn't waste my money, thanks piracy!

(citation needed)

You know what is outdated?
Referring to copyright infringement as piracy and theft.

Citation provided:
theguardian.com/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pirates-buy-more-music

>illegal copying
The fact that this can be said to be a thing is the problem with society at large.
>after pirating software for the first time, it just gets easier and easier
And then you'll start doing even more terrible crimes, like smoking heroin into your eyeballs. Or worse - injecting the reefer!

tl;dr
If it's great, then I usually buy it. Stop whining you fucking pussies, make something I would gladly lose shekels for.

You forgot that copyright infringement finances terrorism.
>also think of the children.

>not being able to pirate it means I will buy it
Dumb shitposter.

>these defenses claiming they pirate because the industry is shit
>still using products they claim are shit

Why can't piratefags see the irony, Cred Forums?

>music
genuine question: do you think this holds true for games? i feel like the price difference would kinda make the source not relevant. you can buy a song for $.99 or an album for maybe $10. i don't really see that happening with games.

i sound like i'm being sarcastic but i'm genuinely wondering.

>Bongistan

Absolutely cucked. Remember keepnyor knives in the kitchen and buy a tv licence.

I never buy games unless they're at least 75% off at Steam Store.

piracy isn't stealing, it's getting a shitty copy of the game that can't do online or updates to the inevitable critical game-breaking bugs

I only pirated games before steam existed
pirating movies and music on the other hand is okay because the people who profit the most from those industries are social engineers and deceivers who are primarily trying to influence culture and not to make a quality product, and since most of the media that exists out there is garbage and not even worth $0 you are probably getting ripped off by pirating it anyway

...

>i don't really see that happening with games.
What are Steam sales?
It makes zero difference. Copyright infringers like to sample a wide variety of whatever they copyright infringe then selectively spend money on what they deem is the best suited to their taste. They know their shit better than not infringers because they sample all.

Fucking finally. Somebody on Cred Forums who finally gets that you don't have to define piracy as stealing for it to actually have negative harmful effects.

However, I come at this from a slightly different perspective. The reason I don't pirate anymore is because there are SO MANY ways to entertain myself these days that I feel like content companies should sell me content on terms acceptable to me. And if they don't, then I can do something else. Pirating gives the creator of the content the wrong message - that they can continue to dick me over because they have my attention and my desire.

This has changed the way I consume content. I never watch TV. I never go to movies. I listen to Spotify for music because it's free and it has a good enough selection of music for me, and the ads are an acceptable tradeoff that I am willing to make. Aside from that, I play video games, program, and watch YouTube. Try it, free yourself from the teat of content companies that don't give a shit about you.

>never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game

Then you wonder why devs abandon your platform to go make games on console

This is a surprisingly good point. Saving it for later use.

And you wonder why PC gets shit ports

Hold my beer cuck, I'm going in dry.

Not only that but they are very vocal about what they like and why it is good and I am 100% sure they influence via word of mouth a lot of sales on their personal sphere of influence whatever size it is.

Piracy is kind of a way to express your approval or disapproval of a game. I would never, EVER, pirate games from my favorite video-game companies. In fact, I always bought special edition for those special games I like a lot.

However, shitty games that I want to play for a few weeks then uninstall, that I pirate. If you want to reduce piracy, then you need to improve quality/service. Living proof of this is Netflix. Normies that aren't poorfags rarely pirate movies anymore considering how quickly they can access movies on Netflix. Torrent for hours upon hours, or just pay 8$ a month to access any movie you like? It's that simple. Steam, Netflix, Spotify, all these good services are reducing the need to torrent, and whatever content that is torrented shouldn't be blamed on the pirates.

>shitty games that I want to play for a few weeks then uninstall, that I pirate
>I'm not willing to pay for this game but it's still worth my time

You need to do something with your life.

I like "Illegal Sharing"

>People who keep clamoring that piracy isnt stealing because it doesnt remove an original are just purposefully subscribing to an outdated way of thinking of copyright and digital theft.

>i cannot argue against your point so I'm just gonna redefine what stealing is to suit my agenda

>But anyone with half a brain thats ready to put aside their emotions for a moment will come to the truth that illegal copying is a new definition of theft that has previously never existed in reality.

Same waffle reworded - imma redefining words yo!

>Face it; after pirating software for the first time, it just gets easier and easier. And from doing so, the more likely you are to pirate software rather than pay for it.

One anecdotal case - me. I'm the opposite, if I want it, I'll buy it.

>Are you stealing all this content though?

No. If it was a physical product I would be stealing as someone's labour went into that product which is now gone. A copy does not remove that one piece of labour from supply.

>Does it remove the original? NO

See? We agree.

>Can the definition of theft change in this crazy digital age we live in? Be honest; YES.

That is like asking "Can the definition of rape change in this crazy hard-left marxist age we live in?"

Well, sure it can. It still does not make it any more legitimate because both are coming from the same vapid intellectual sphere - ideologues with an agenda to push their version of reality.

...

Devs fucked it all up with making a "preorder for 199.99$" so fuck the devs they already got the money.

...

The image is bullshit.
Gamecorp doesn't give a fuck if Gamestop is making money off of used copies. The only thing they care about is their own sales. This is why numerous developers have implemented annoying bullshit ways to milk customers for money with things like day 1 DLC.

Thanks for the laugh, OP!

You're assumin that if I didn't pirate it, I would buy it, which is absurd.

going to college doesn't guarantee you a high paying job. making a book, film, or game doesn't guarantee you make a profit.

hollywood are some of the most entitled bunch of people. your failed business model is not everyone elses problem and doesn't mean everyone should bend over backwards for you.

That's the crux of the fallacy in OP's shitty image. It assumes the developers of a game are GUARANTEED to always make money and never lose. In other words, just because the developers have released the game, they should recoup every single copy in sales and thus, profit. Any lost sale must be a crime (""piracy"")

It is the exact same reasoning as with every other mafia organization - music industry, Hollywood etc.

>itt. Westerners
Yar har.

well yeah. there are a million analogies but agreed it comes down "muh entitled to return on investment". i use the college analogy.

That argument is flawed because it assumes that the pirate would have bought whatever it was if he couldn't pirate it. When a lot of people pirates it and when they see its a good whatever they buy it or the software costs are extremely over what that software is worth which is really debatebale but some of this shit goes into the thousands which is ridiculous.

Also, why is the business created by piracy never brought up. An album may be pirated but you may like it a lot and pay to see them live and buy an album to support that band. Though it wasn't paid for originally the exposure by piracy would lead to a major net positive for the band or other things pirateable.

what about myself? i used to pirate but haven't since years. i used to actually go buy the cd or whatever the fuck it was i downloaded when i actually liked the product. i tend not to buy games or movies/songs anymore as it's all shite. also to re-iterate - i don't download either because its shite.

This. Piracy is campaigned against so hard because it bypasses corporate greed and hype and instead favours actually good software/media, which is a lot harder to do than just marketing the shit out of something.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States

In "Dowling v. United States, 473 U.S. 207 (1985)", the United States Supreme Court decided that copyright infringement was not theft.

If you think that you can prove that copyright infringement is theft, go do so in court.

FUCK OFF MPAA

>In "Dowling v. United States, 473 U.S. 207 (1985)", the United States Supreme Court decided that copyright infringement was not theft.

BTFO

#REKT

I freely admit I pirated stuff when I was in High School and couldn't afford shit. I did buy some stuff but 90% of it was pirated.

Once I was old enough to get a job though, it's a different story. I don't really pirate anything anymore (even TV shows and stuff: largely thanks to Netflix and Google Music).

Mind you, when I was pirating stuff, I fully comprehended and understood I was breaking the law.

The 'piracy isn't theft' meme is just proof that people can delude themselves into anything.

What about cases where the game isn't being sold or distributed anymore through any legal means? The only people left who would be able to play are pirates.

>The 'piracy isn't theft' meme is just proof that people can delude themselves into anything.

Tell me, if I had a company selling recipes, would you agree or disagree that it is piracy if people copied the recipe?

Before you state they aren't equivalent -- they are. Recipe and code are instructions to result a in a final product.

>Copying any information in any context has literally no effect on anyone at all.

t. person whose SS number and all financial details I copied and distributed amongst all my friends, including a bunch of friendly Russians, which is okay because copying information the information has no effect on you at all

I've come full circle.

>payfag from 3 yrs - 12
>piratefag 12-21
>payfag 21-26
>piratefag 26-27

When I was paying for games, I started to get monumental amounts of guilt when I didn't put 500 hours into a 50$ game. I mainly played f2p games, and the occasional indie rpg that cost 10$ on steam.

When I pirate I'm not spending hours and hours researching the product to see if the price / value ratio is correct. When I don't pay I can let myself get swept away with the hype, counting down the days, and running home to play it on release, instead of waiting for reviews to see if the devs face fucked their fans.

And where exactly are you copying these details from? If you release "secrets" to the general public, they aren't secrets.

Not him, the industry is vastly shit with a few chunks of corn. Shifting through the industry dropping your money on products you only know through adverts and what the company wants to showcase is a great way to incentivise shit games.

>buy fallout 4 on sale
>immediately regret it

Next time, piracy

that just demonstrates how impulsive you are

Truth be told is that at least half of the people pirating do not have any legal means to access it anyways, as most of the time the product is expensive, and thus wouldn't have bought it otherwise

But OP, what about people who only pirate games they legally purchaseD?

Or people who legally purchase games after pirating them?

Why are you stealing the idea that piracy is theft?

That's theft and I'm going to sue your ass off.

You can't lose money you haven't made yet, adblock shill.

Now pay me back the million dollars I could have made using the brain cells I lost reading your retarded drivel.

Here's my own take on the whole issue.

1. Most people who pirate stuff are teenagers who aren't in the position to spend money online either way. I know that for me, buying games was always completely out of the picture as a kid. I had no income, so even $10 felt like an unreasonable, even impossible price to pay. As I grew up, I now become more and more inclined to pay for stuff instead of pirating it, because $10 is absolutely nothing compared to even a part time income.

2. When people continue pirating, it's generally caused for reasons other than simply wanting to avoid the cost. For example, many people pirate films instead of buying them because a pirated film can be watched on any device, whereas bought media usually needs extra DRM etc. crap to be viewed, can only be viewed on licensed devices, and is generally a royal pain in the ass. (Ebooks are another good example). When people pirate, it's often because pirating is *easier* than purchasing, regardless of the cost. This reflects nothing except a failure on the part of the industry to meet people's demands. Also, what the industry doesn't understand is that DRM only hurts legal customers, not pirates. By adding DRM to your media you are only making it more likely for people to pirate it (so they can get rid of the DRM).

3. I don't like paying for things upfront. I simply don't. I want to try before I buy. If I can play through a pirated copy of a game, and determine that I had enough fun for me to want to support the manufacturer of said game, I will buy it. Not because I have some moral obligation to, but because I want to see more of that game. In essence, this form of piracy is actually *better* for the industry, because it will only reward making video games that are worth buying after playing through them - while punishing making video games that weren't fun. Up-front payments are basically made on marketing alone, and not the game itself.

>risking five years in prison when you have the cash all along
>implying mass kleptomania

Also, to further exemplize what I mean by #2, I personally only buy games that come DRM-free. (And I will also only buy games that run natively on my OS)

Buy buying games which have DRM, I am essentially punishing myself because the DRM-loaded version is *worse* than the pirated version. Plus, if the developer has the time and money to license a DRM solution, then they're clearly big enough already to have the money to live without my sale.

I want to send a message with my wallet, and in a perfect world others would follow me in doing so. If you make a DRM-free game, I will have no reason not to buy it, because the product I get as a paying customer will be on the same level of quality as the product I get as a pirate. Ergo, I will buy it.

However, if the pirated version is *better* (DRM-free) than the paid version, that actively compels me to pirate it instead of buying it, simply to avoid the pain of DRM.

Finally, I will only buy games that care about my platform (Linux). My doing so I am effectively also sending a message. If you want sales from Linux users, make your game run on Linux. Simple as that.

I won't buy a single player game.
I'll pirate it, but even if I didn't pirate it, I still wouldn't buy it. They're not losing money from me pirsting their game.

Should just be glad I'm playing your shit story based game instead of spending money on WOW or whatever you fags play nowadays.

>impulse
But thats exactly what they rely on to sell most games. Ever wondered why they dont make demos anymore? People lose the impulse and decide for themselves if they should buy the game or not after playing a demo. Thats why they instead pay sites like ign to dish out good reviews nowadays.
Pic related marketing budget of a few games compared to their developement budget.

Why are you playing their game if it's so shit?

This post right here is what I meant by #3 Fuck buying games based on marketing. The only thing that encourages is a development culture based on marketing instead of gameplay.

I honestly don't care if the software industry, the video games industry and the entertainment industry are hurt by this. They are shit and piracy didn't make them shit. All piracy did was affect end user license agreements and DRM, which have no bearing on the quality of the product.

The moment spyware and limited usability in the name of design stop being a thing, I'll start giving a fuck about the software industry. The moment video games stop being soulless cinematic cash grabs on one side and pretentious hipster art cash grabs on the other, I'll start giving a fuck about the video games industry. The moment Hollywood comes up with an original idea for a movie that doesn't involve agenda pushing and nostalgia milking, I'll start giving a fuck about the entertainment industry.

whats the safest (no malware) torrenting site to use now? i want to get some gog games but every time i even click on pirate bay something pops up.

I use gazellegames.net for gog games. They have pretty much everything.

Also, you should really buy gog games after playing them if you enjoyed it. They deserve to be rewarded for what they're doing: Making DRM-free, hassle-free games a reality.

Damn, you should get off the Internet then.

If it weren't free, would he? An important question.

You're right, that is the only relevant question here: Would he have purchased the game if he was unable to pirate it?

I know that for me, the answers is very clearly no. I've only ever spent money on games that I was able to play beforehand for free. Including multiplayer games like world of warcraft. (I tried it out on private servers before paying for a subscription)

To use Blizzard games as an example, the only Blizzard game I have not played or purchased at all is Overwatch, because Overwatch is the only Blizzard game I was not able to try before buying. (Everything else is either pirateable or has a free trial version)

I have since stopped playing Blizzard games altogether, but the point still stands that Blizzard probably would have made an additional sale off me had they allowed me to try out Overwatch for free.

how hard is it to get into gazellegames? i saw the signup a little bit ago, seems intimidating.

I don't know how to evaluate hardness. I've gotten into every single private tracker I applied to simply by being honest.

I don't know what kind of retardation it takes to have a signup rejected, but if it applies to you, then it's probably for the better that you don't have an account?

No actually, you're just trying to redefine theft to include copyright infringement.

btfo

Stop sucking corporate cock and thinking you pathetic gestures will be reciprocated. They're sharks and want to fuck you in the ass as hard as they can.

As for garage indies, people pay them anyway. No big indie game of the past decade has had copy protection, and they all sold like gangbusters.

Copy protection for companies is a business and marketing decision. Will they sell more or less if they degrade usability to stop pirates? That's it.

Making it a moral, or worse, legal issue is misguided, even if you're opposed to it, because unenforceable illegal stuff is a magnet for rebels with something to prove, and ruining people's lives over something so petty is corporofascism.

>want to fuck you in the ass
literally. for every celebrity there are 1000 more on rodeo drive doing exactly this.

Stealing.
Music: 90% of record sales go to RIAA.I buy merch from shows and their personal stores to support them.
TV:I wouldn't watch their ads anyhow,most commonly when i am watching a show and im lazy to torrent it,i just set it to record on the dvr,so i can watch them at my leisure and i skip ads, yet again.
Games:Most commonly now, games arent finished when they are released, both AAA and indie. Why would i pay for a product that is not even 50% done? Plagued with glitches/bugs preventing playing. Why should i have to wait a month to get a 75GB "patch" to attain acceptable playing standards?

>Effect
So shitty media is shitty and will fade out. While media that is not shitty will succeed. Its basic marketing.

>digital
>stealing
Did you know right now you have infinite illegal material on your computer? Its just 0's and 1's.
ARREST YOUR SELF

>extremely obvious bate
>115 replies in 8 hours

well done Cred Forums

this truly is the most autistic board

AAA games industry's contracted Hollywood's cancer, so who gives a shit. Oh, I'm really sad that producer CEOs will have to go without rolling their imported tobacco in 100 dollar bills off the backs of their slave developers. Boo hoo, this might mean they won't make a Congealment of Degeneracy 8.
You pay indies if you can if you're not a sack of shit because they work hard with no promise of a comfy living just to make great games.
It constantly confuses me that piracy of Hollywood movies might be a problem considering I'd usually rather 2 hours of rough ball flicking over than sitting through that money grabbing horse shit.

>Legally / technically
It is not theft

>Morally
Nobody knows, the ramifications of such actions are unclear as the intent of the person would piracy not exist need to be determined.
Furthermore, as much argument you can make about money can be made about the cultural benefit it brings, or about how artificial markets shouldn't exist.

It raises a valid and topical point of discussion.

Sorry if it's not another smartphone/battlestation/desktop thread.

>illegal copying is a new definition of theft that has previously never existed in reality.

then it isn't theft

>Can the definition of theft change in this crazy digital age we live in? Be honest; YES.

no actually, at least nothing you have posted has convinced me so. just because some random user says so doesn't change a definition, to change that you need widespread use of the new definition within the populace, or at least within a tight-knit smaller group.

>but muh subjective irrational "trends" and opinions with no evidence

nope.

...

When you get paid for every single copy - the quality may not drop at that very moment, but it drops long term.

If you make too much money out of thin air (copying and pasting pixels) gives you too much power to drop the quality of products - EA is a prime example. Piracy is why we have such amazing software/games/movies today.

If you want to monetize your model, there are better ways. So go and fuck yourself, and let me choose the lowest price of purchase at my own will.

P.S. I've donated to 10minutemail and Protonmail but would never pay for some pussy charging me for music or whatever.

Don't really care if authors, publishers, record labels, etc get less jewgolds than they wanted because some people that likely weren't going to buy whatever it is at all or for the amount they can make worthwhile money from anyway.

There will always be legions of computer illiterates, moralfags, and normalfags to pay for these things even if they can be gotten for free easily.

Non-fiction books and writings should be free by law. Scientific journals shouldn't exist, and money for research into things or writing textbooks should be provided by government or private grants.

Reselling a game is not giving money to the copyright holders.
But if a lot of people are really into the product, the company makes money.
Do we have a single case where a game was pirated on a large scale and did not make a profit because of that?

You can argue that the reason games are so bad now is because of fear of being hurt by piracy, but they never planned to make things better.

"no actually"

Are you suggesting language, society, and law don't evolve at all?

It changes based on what large corporations want. That doesn't mean anyone has to accept the changes.

Illegal downloads aren't theft. They're illegal downloads. I don't care if large corporations lose the "opportunity" to make even more money.

Videogames and non-free software is a scourge upon society. By pirating these things, we can help discourage these terrible practices. Videogame companies are pushers of virtual crack cocaine, anything that cuts into their profits helps put a damper of the production of these vile time wasters.

Games are contributing to increasing unemployment:
washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/09/23/why-amazing-video-games-could-be-causing-a-big-problem-for-america/

obviously piracy saves lives according to this ad.

Tell me where I can buy media affordably and I'll stop pirating.
Of course by buy, I don't mean buy the complete rights to a song. Of course I'm not gonna be able to make profit out of it.
But I want the file, in good quality, on my computer, permanently, DRM free.
This is also one of the advantages of piracy. You actually get the goods. Not a temporary acess to them under the owner's reserve to retract it without refunding you.
I fell for the kindle meme and had some of my books disappear.

.>JCDecaux outside of the francophonic world.
Quelle bande de cocus.

>Games
gog.com

>Music
No idea, but apparently there are some websites for this. I don't buy music

Kill yourself, no one is entitled to anything you disgusting example of human.

yet you believe content producers are entitled to sales

>certain orders of numbers cost money
2016, everyone

>certain combinations of atoms cost money
>certain combinations of atoms have rights
>certain combinations of atoms are huge faggots

So, if someone, say, a pajeet in some shitholia doesn't buy the latest call of doody, the developer loses money?

because that's what pirates are - people who don't buy your product. they're not part of your sales equation. so fuck off.

the number pi infringes my copyright

Lol I don't give a fuck about content creators though. If I could hurt then more than I currently do I would. My 1gbs seed box needs more things to seed. I really wish I could hurt software creators more though. Foss4life.

Really though how can I hurt them more than I do now? I already always use ublock origin and seed tons.

piracy is fair as long as companies keep purposefully gimping products and services, overpricing and arbitrarily limiting everything, selling complete shit to people who dont know better, using filthy psych tricks to cheat people out of money (treating customers as bags of money), etc. I will stop occasionally cheating as soon as companies stop cheating by default. The market needs to stop being a place for greedy assholes to make a quick buck at the excessive expense of everyone else and become a place of reasonable, fair trade.

Piracy is not the problem. If you want me and others to buy games stop making shit games.

>I wish pirates would just be more honest about the effect piracy has on software development.
it's positive you idiot
read some research next time

I stopped caring once I realised that since I buy all of my video games and movies pre owned anyway, the developers wouldnt be getting my money even if I bought their product.

Yet people who dont exclusively buy things brand new at full price convince themselves that its better than pirating. It isn't, not for the dwveloper at the very least, which is the whole argument against piracy, the dev/creator gets no money so they cant make more.

too many children and gamers in this thread

>Game is sold on Steam or GOG
>The current owner of the IP keeps making money for decades from people who weren't even born when it was made

>Game is released with impenetrable always online DRM
>Paid customers get fed up and demand a refund, or start boycotting the company for their bad decisions

>Game is released by the devs themselves as a torrent without DRM
>It's so good that the extra publicity and word of mouth triples their sales

>Popular game is released for free with cosmetic microtransactions
>It makes fifty times as much as a regular paid game would, with a fragment of the effort put in by the devs

>copies
>illegal
Well meme'd goy

copying books isn't theft
it's illegitemate copying.
This is simply a naming issue.
If it doesn't remove the original it's not called theft.
Copying books has existed for 100 of years so this isn't something new to the digital age, changing names isn't necessary.
Please don't go around trying to change language pointlessly. Thanks.

>But if you're a company making money off the product than piracy isn't okay. Pirating Photoshop for a photographer is not okay.
Neither is abusing a monopoly and driving up prices however much you want.
Yet companies do it all the time, Photoshop is a great example.

And? That's completely irrelevant to this discussion about piracy. Feel free to return to if you want to continue along that tangent, though

i only stopped pirating music because the only way i can bring music into work on the high side is if i bring an OEM read-only audio CD of the album, and i practically spend all of my time there anyway.
>tfw no kpop on spotify

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>Popular game is released for free with cosmetic microtransactions
>It makes fifty times as much as a regular paid game would, with a fragment of the effort put in by the devs
fucking this

I've spent so much on stupid skin microtransactions it's not even funny anymore. I don't know why, it just makes me want to do it.

f2p with cosmetic microtransactions is *the* most successful model for online multiplayer video games, hands down

This. The digital economy exists only by leeching off of the actual economy.

Plus, when art is not made to please the ignorant masses it can be more interesting, because the creator(s) can have more freedom of expression without worrying about catering to the piles of money.

>People who keep clamoring that piracy isn't stealing
>because it doesn't fit the definition of stealing
>are just purposefully subscribing to an outdated definition of stealing.
George Orwell was right about everything.

With the exception of my college Napster days, I have never pirated something that was reasonably available for purchase. Have I downloaded games to try out? Yes, if it was worth playing with for more than 30 min I would then buy it. Have I downloaded movies? Yes, but only if they were not legally available on a paid streaming or digital rental service. Sorry I'm not sorry for refusing to pay $30 to buy a movie to watch one time or $60 on a game only to find out it's not worth $3. Anyone with half a brain will realize that forcing people to pay 6X+ the value of a product is the root cause of piracy.

If we're being "honest" and "objective," explain to me why it costs $839.88 (not including tax) per year for Adobe Creative Suite, when they barely make any changes to the software if any, and when the new version is complete shit and you don't even want it? Or explain why it costs $20-$30 for a DVD of a movie that came out 66 years ago and has sold millions of copies?

I can honestly and objectively say that before pirating became mainstream, companies charged way more than what their product was worth. If companies charged a fair and reasonable rate, piracy would be less prevalent. Like Netflix is garbage, but it costs about 1/5th of a monthly cable subscription. Meanwhile, cable companies charge money for channels that they get for free.

As long as corporate greed exists, pirating will exist.

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what