Why does it seem like everyone makes piracy out to be a "saintly" endeavour?

[Specter Von Baren]

It seems like any time piracy of games comes up that all people ever talk about is how great it is that piracy preserves games for history and that it gets games to the people from money grubbing companies and past overly complicated legalities.

Look, I'm well aware that this is the case in a lot of cases... buy that doesn't change the fact that the majority of piracy is only done for one person who doesn't want to pay for it. One of the things that hurt the PSP is how much moding and piracy was being done to the system. And piracy doesn't always become such a problem that it kills a system but that doesn't make it anymore right, does it? Someone stealing 5$ from the register once a month probably won't be a huge detriment to the store but that doesn't make it anymore right.

I am glad that games from our history are being preserved by people but everyone seems to deliberately just turn a blind eye to the bad aspects of piracy just because it benefits themselves at the detriment of some faceless company that is easy to just write off as a machine with no people working in it.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

The main thing about piracy is that its done mainly by people who wouldn't buy the game either way. That or by people who legit can't buy the game due to their location not having it available for purchase.


It serves as marketing since even a pirate can spread the good word about a game which can eventually lead to a sale but if that person never bought and played that game to begin with then that good word of mouth is lost. This is proven by the huge success of free to play games due to this factor.


Blaming piracy for the issues systems like the psp faced is misguided. I never modded my psp since I speak Japanese and could import the games I wanted with their original audio but if I ever wanted to install custom firmware it'd have been so that I could have played the undubbed versions of its games that were released dub-only in the west like Persona 3 Portable or Final Fantasy Dissidia (these games had top notch voice talent in JP). If they would have just released the original language with the game worldwide a whole lot of people whouldn't have gone through the trouble of breaking their psps in order to have access to the original audio with english subtitles (like how games are supposed to be).



Also, as far as the devs are concerned, used game sales and renting is the same as piracy since they see none of that profit, and as long as these systems are well in place and are seen as moral, I don't think decrying piracy makes much sense, though of course it's not a noble act either. It's at best murky.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

The only time I can see it being okay is for either old games that are no longer supported by any company, or games deliberately removed, like PT. Like old N64 games or SNES or Atari or like a basic person-to-person Warhammer online. Games that are literally defunct.

If you just don't want to pay for a game, either don't play it or get it on sale/used. If the game you want literally isn't being sold, or the only versions are collectors versions for $10K off eBay...I don't approve, but I don't disapprove.
Keep it to yourself and enjoy Jet For Gemini

 

[sXeth]

On the one hand, with effective access to every offering, you can evaluate them all against each other and without any sunk-cost bias. Then support them as you deem a priority.

On the other hand, yeah, we live in the real world where thats not exactly what happens. More people then you expect will support something they get for free, but also less or less lucratively then if you outright sold it exclusively.


As to the saintly status assigned to the pirates, its a symptom of the industry's increasing turn against providing legitimate options. Methods to determine a good investment like demos or reviews are increasingly rare and restricted. Whether its Nintendo, EA, Disney Konami, or what have you, there's strangleholds on old IPs where they literally refuse to sell the producs, or lock them up on services (Game services at least tend to be globably accessible, actually being allowed to purchase a movie/tv show is kind of a roulette wheel outside the US). Thats the part where the pirates suddenly seem like the good guys, because the content providers are being weird neo-capitalist hoard-mongers who literally refuse to meet demand with supply that they have just lying around.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

I?ve used emulators before, but have gone so far as to buy rare physical copies of the games that are worth hundreds of dollars in an effort to legitimize it. Either that or I?ve owned the games in the past. I can understand the appeal of piracy for products that have been discontinued and therefore aren?t affecting any sales, but the water gets murky when it extends to what is still being sold, even in the digital age of less overhead. Some do it as a statement if a product sucks, but if it?s still being sought out to be played either way then it can appear disingenuous.

Best rule I?ve tried to ascribe to is to support what?s good, ignore what isn?t. Places like Humble Bundle and GOG seem to have the right idea by eschewing the gouging aspect of consumerism, but of course it?s generally limited to stuff that?s far past prime time and costs have typically long been recouped (or written off).

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

The only time I can see it being okay is for either old games that are no longer supported by any company, or games deliberately removed, like PT. Like old N64 games or SNES or Atari or like a basic person-to-person Warhammer online. Games that are literally defunct.

I'd also add, for me personally, an exception for fan translations of otherwise classic or noteworthy foreign (read, Japanese) games that, for some reason, their developers/IP owners are hellbent for leather on never, ever localizing to the US. Like the good Front Mission games, half the Shining series last I checked, half the DQ series (up until ten years ago as remakes), and SD3.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

The only time I can see it being okay is for either old games that are no longer supported by any company, or games deliberately removed, like PT. Like old N64 games or SNES or Atari or like a basic person-to-person Warhammer online. Games that are literally defunct.

I'd also add, for me personally, an exception for fan translations of otherwise classic or noteworthy foreign (read, Japanese) games that, for some reason, their developers/IP owners are hellbent for leather on never, ever localizing to the US. Like the good Front Mission games, half the Shining series last I checked, half the DQ series (up until ten years ago as remakes), and SD3.

The fan-translation of Persona 2: Innocent Sin's ps1 version is also miles better than the censored and dub-only psp rerelease they gave the west, and it was available a good 5~ years before it too. That game has Hitler as one of the enemies so it's not as though it was sexual content or something that people like to defend the censorship of, they actually changed the identity of the character cause Hitler hasn't been in any game released in the west, that's for sure! X.x

 

[meiam]

There's a ton of game on the SNES that were never release outside japan, the only way to play them in english is with fan translate pirated version, I really don't feel bad about pirating those since even if I wanted to pay for them I couldn't.

Also piracy is usual talked at the same time as DRM, and DRM is a straight negative, it only inconvenience the people who legitimately payed for the game and sometime makes the pirate version straight up superior. Heroes of might and magic 6 will literally quit in the middle of a single player game (without saving first) if you lose internet connection even for just a few seconds. The pirated version doesn't have to deal with that BS. I bough the game (and regretted it when I lost hours of progress) but if I ever wanted to actually play it, I'd get the pirated version.

 

[Majestic_Manatee]

Because it's God's work.

 

[CaitSeith]

If the companies had spent less time punishing their customers with intrusive and game breaking DRMs (other than Steam), maybe the public wouldn't be so much in favor of the pirates. Companies also have been quick to blame piracy for low sell numbers (instead of the company having unrealistic expectations or, you know, the game just being bad), so the public grew pretty skeptical about their complains. Finally, you can say anything you want about people "dehumanizing corporations", but corporations are the first ones to dehumanize consumers (actual human beings) into mere revenue sources to predate on (and they treat them as such).

The companies in general don't deserve to be treated as anything but machines designed to make money; and only those that have actual human effort dedicated to not have them follow the easy path of predatory practices deserve recognition of being something better.

 

[Hades]

The main thing about piracy is that its done mainly by people who wouldn't buy the game either way. That or by people who legit can't buy the game due to their location not having it available for purchase.


It serves as marketing since even a pirate can spread the good word about a game which can eventually lead to a sale but if that person never bought and played that game to begin with then that good word of mouth is lost.

I never really bought that argument since the guy could also just have bought the game legally and THEN spread the word.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

The main thing about piracy is that its done mainly by people who wouldn't buy the game either way. That or by people who legit can't buy the game due to their location not having it available for purchase.


It serves as marketing since even a pirate can spread the good word about a game which can eventually lead to a sale but if that person never bought and played that game to begin with then that good word of mouth is lost.

I never really bought that argument since the guy could also just have bought the game legally and THEN spread the word.

The point is, there's some who wouldn't have bought the game legally. So your two options are either they don't touch the game at all and you still don't get a sale plus also no word of mouth advertising, or they pirate it. Again, if this type of marketing didn't have an effect if done by people who don't spend money, games like LoL or fortnight wouldn't have been so huge.

 

[Something Amyss]

I don't think I've ever seen it treated as saintl...

Because it's God's work.

Okay, then, moving on!

But seriously, I rarely see defended in any sort of glowing terminology. I see the historical preservation thing, and...okay, I can sort of see it, but that doesn't make it saintly, just debatably necessary. The most common defense I see other than that is the removial of DRM that breaks games, introduces malware, and so on. And the thing is, most of the time I see this, it's from thew people who purchased the game and would just like to play it. And as someone who has been in and out of the PC market over the years, I find that understandable, not saintly. It shouldn't be an heroic act that people need to come along and fix a game to make it playable. Yes, one of the strengths of PC gaming is the modding community. No, that's not an excuse for releasing a game that won't play.

This still doesn't make piracy good or right, I'm simply explaining the arguments Ive generally seen and why i wouldn't think of them as approaching saintly.

 

[Satinavian]

There was a time when it was completely and utterly legal in certain countries because the laws treated computer code the same as mathematical algorithms and fomulas and did not allow to trat any of that as property.

Personally ? I buy my games because i can. I did pirate some stuff in the 90s when i couldn't, but that was shared via diskettes between friends. But i don't feel too bad about it. There was no lost income because of that and if a game impressed me, i did make me buy the sequel later.

DRM ? I had nearly all problems with DRM in the 00s and all with legal games. It made me actually question my decision to not pirate any games anymore as the pirated version clearly worked better. Thinking about it: Everyone warns about malware you might get with pirated software. But some of the DRM i had should better be discribed as malware with how deep it dug itself into the system, basically impossible to uninstall and with the sole purpose to block other software that might be able to pirate or reverse engineer anything, potentially breaking your complete system.

There sure were games i was interested in that i did not buy because of their DRM. That is how bad it was.

Nowadays ? Most of remaining DRM is Steam or one-time online registration. That is fine because it doesn't break stuff.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

The main thing about piracy is that its done mainly by people who wouldn't buy the game either way. That or by people who legit can't buy the game due to their location not having it available for purchase.


It serves as marketing since even a pirate can spread the good word about a game which can eventually lead to a sale but if that person never bought and played that game to begin with then that good word of mouth is lost.

I never really bought that argument since the guy could also just have bought the game legally and THEN spread the word.

The point is, there's some who wouldn't have bought the game legally. So your two options are either they don't touch the game at all and you still don't get a sale plus also no word of mouth advertising, or they pirate it. Again, if this type of marketing didn't have an effect if done by people who don't spend money, games like LoL or fortnight wouldn't have been so huge.

The thing is, word of mouth works when people buy the game too.

 

[Yoshi178]

the only time i've ever used emulators was when i was a teenager in middle school sneaking in some quick N64 multiplayer sessions with my mates on my school's library computers during lunch time back while the teacher wasn't looking back in the day.

Good times. :3

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

I have a whole bunch of retro consoles and games, but I don't actually use/play most of them, because hooking up a dozen systems is a pain in the ass. So I emulate what I can. That said, I don't emulate anything I don't legitimately own. But I won't pretend my motivations are anything as noble as historical preservation for the good of mankind or anything. It's about me. My convenience. Preserving my collection for me.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

I guess my problem is that so much of the rhetoric and talk around this has gone from defending the specific cases of people doing this for good from the blanket shut down of anyone and everyone that can be considered to be maliciously pirating games. People will talk about this matter and get so hung up on the cases of it being something beneficial that they will pay the barest of lip service to the fact that the good are specific cases and that pirating is not something that should be encouraged for its own sake.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

I guess my problem is that so much of the rhetoric and talk around this has gone from defending the specific cases of people doing this for good from the blanket shut down of anyone and everyone that can be considered to be maliciously pirating games. People will talk about this matter and get so hung up on the cases of it being something beneficial that they will pay the barest of lip service to the fact that the good are specific cases and that pirating is not something that should be encouraged for its own sake.

I remember hearing from a friend that someone saw a user online defending piracy VERY firmly because he disliked the big corporations that made the products (Movie companies were the topic, but I assume games could count too), saying they have all the money in the world and take enough as is, and don't deserve more for their shitty practices. But of course, the moment it was indie movie makers and indie devs, suddenly piracy was not ok to him.

Was a very idealistic (And in my opinion, stupid) argument to make. Piracy was bad on both cases

 

[Squilookle]

I just see it as the same as any black market. Illegal, but inevitably exists because of the utter failure of official channels to provide what is in demand. I don't really care about piracy- I'm more interested in the system that enabled its perpetuation.

Also here in Australia, piracy was the direct cause of forcing our free-to-air TV to start showing foreign shows at the same time they are aired in their native countries (instead of 6 months down the line), so it definitely true that piracy has had a positive impact on the accountability of media in the past.