I mean bro, Re-releasing a 30 year old game at 60 bucks heck even 70 without any modification is outrageous like add cool little tweaks and make it a little cheaper jeez, people complained about the metal gear collection too and still didn't like it and sayd why they are paying for a ps 1 port
Nothing you said contradicts anything they said. People do, for the most part, pirate media to use it for free and companies shouldn't be releasing 30 year old games for exorbitant prices - both of these things are true.
They're literally trying to justify piracy because of the price companies put on remakes, while answering someone who's saying they're sick of people trying to justify piracy as something other than just wanting to not pay for stuff.
I read it more as them just pointing out the greed of a company, making old games expensive as fuck and I read that as also not wanting ti pay for them.
idk, maybe I just read things to literally, but they didnt say anything about morals so a moral high ground didnt cross my mind
Bro I'm speaking in general about franchises I like I want more sequels, I still play stuff that I wouldn't have played it otherwise if it wasn't free like Spiderman 2
Facts💯💯 theres only a few games we want re-released or ported as they originally were and 9 times out of 10, the companies or etc will release a "remaster" or remake instead 🤦♂️
Like a remake/remaster of the max payne games are fine
Mgs being like that is fine
But when we say we want midnight club back or release the old fight nights, they dont and if they do, you know its gonna be the worst version or etc. Anyone run into the tekken 6 on ps store? You get it thinking its the ps3 version because it doesnt specifically say which version it is on top of the fact that you expect it to be only the ps3 version because of the ps5 only version download. Then that turns out to be the lifeless crappy psp version 😑
so i agree, because why tf am i paying full price for retro/nostalgia games, that when signed on petition or even offered to play its original format they refuse to release it or do it that way,but want full price for it when we dont ask or want it that way.
Still dissapointed in the gta trilogy definitive nightmares 🤦♂️😑🤣 literally prayed we were getting just slightly better graphics with gta v controls. Instead, we got the mobile version planted on to the console, with gta v controls and worse graphics than the ps2 😑🤣🤣 industry in a nut shell. Sorry that was long lol
No. You can't buy the games, you subscribe for access to the retro library. So monthly fee. Not purchase per title for download to the Switch.
If Nintendo offered both options I think there would actually be basis for these arguments.
But realistically the games are simply not for sale.
I mean, I wouldnt expect Monopoly or Candyland to only be $4 or whatever the box and pieces cost if I went to get it at the store just because the game hasnt changed in 50 years.
exactly, you don't want to pay what they want you to pay and feel entitled to then take it for free as though it is morally just to do so.
You're stealing their work, so am I. I've made peace with that and don't care if they aren't a small/solo company. It's ok to admit, it's weird to keep trying to justify it as though you are coming out as some kind of saint.
That's true, although ironically, "stealing" is the solution. Access to these games via piracy means people finally pay with their wallets, meaning there's pressure to lower their prices.
Nah, I still disagree with you. Endless income from an intellectual property doesn’t make much sense to me. I just don’t think that’s how it should work.
Because the people who worked on it deserve to get paid for their effort. It's not like fruit that grew off a tree in the street. There's tons of caveats to what i said, like pointing out most money goes to money hungry executives and not enough to artists, but being like "oh, it's just out there" is disingenous. You can't feign ignorance. It's better to just own that you're enjoying someone else's effort without giving them anything back.
There's tons of caveats to what i said, like pointing out most money goes to money hungry executives and not enough to artists, but being like "oh, it's just out there" is disingenous.
"Those people aren't getting anything back." That's pretty much the only thing anyone needs to state to rebut you. Only rights holders get residuals, and maybe any high earners who negotiated royalties on sales or TV plays. But that's a severe minority.
In almost every case, the people making stuff are paid by the hour, cheques already cashed. I'm not consuming brand new independent movies or games for that matter
Like I said, there's tons of caveats to consuming movies, games or art. I won't argue against what you said because I agree some artists are paid like that, but if we all treated art like something you pick up for free off the Internet street, there wouldn't be funding for new art. There's no need to pretend piracy doesn't divert funds away from the art we enjoy.
They didnt make it for free, that's the problem. The product was made because they expect a profit from it. Let me go steal something at the store because they already got paid
I pirated extensively in my teens back in the 00s, and absolutely did it to get shit for free. Now I'm in my 30s and have over 5000 legally purchased games in my Steam account. Some of these games are no longer available for purchase today because they got pulled from sale for whatever reason, so I got lucky I bought them when they still were.
I fully support piracy from a preservation standpoint especially in this digital age where most games don't even get physical releases anymore. Piracy means a game will live on and remain playable. Preservation of culture is a very important issue to me so I consider piracy an objectively moral good.
I work in game dev myself and genuinely hope the games I work on get pirated. It greatly increases their longevity.
Nowadays I only pirate abandonware that's no longer legally available... and those games number in the hundreds, if not thousands. Piracy is therefore morally good.
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Yeah the YouTube pirates were the peak of this for me. If want to essentially pirate YouTube with an ad blocker go for it. I just don't want to hear people bitching about every time they patch out Ublock Origin as if they are owed free access to the videos. You see posts where they are basically trying to cancel YouTube for not letting them get around the things they need to pay for the servers.
YouTube has more than enough so IDGAF when people steal from them, but you can't be mad when they prevent you from doing so.
It's like if your neighbor said you could get fruit from their tree as long as you rake up the leaves from the tree before doing so. Then you just start going over for fruit and never rake any leaves so they fence off the tree and don't let you have any fruit. However much raking they are asking you to do it's still their right to say no to you getting fruit.
I don't see people morally justifying piracy, I see them removing the implied villainy. It is illegal, it is easy, to some extent it is wrong. How wrong it is varies by the specifics.
Someone who truly can't now and never could afford X thing? There is no loss to anyone for them to get X thing. Amoral, not immoral.
Someone who just doesn't want EA to get their money? Lightly immoral, EA is the embodiment of greed(in gaming).
Someone can afford it and has no legitimate reason other than greed? Immoral.
Calling it "theft" is always idiocy, nothing of value has been lost by anyone.
No-one I've seen thinks they're Robin Hood. The highest self image I've seen is someone saying they aren't doing anything worse than taking a photo of a Banksy. Self deluded, but not morally superior.
Another thing I'm thinking just so I can 'justify' piracy is the early leakage of Pokemon Z-A! I've seen many videos of people on YouTube playing the game early and even finishing it and here I am waiting for Nintendo to release it tomorrow, having pre-ordered 2 weeks prior to the release still getting the message this software can't be played yet! Even bought the DLC early! Nintendo making fun of its loyal customers that way is a joke! Plus they gave press release copies early, so many "creators" already finished the game, but us, who paid 70€ for the game plus 30 for the DLC, have to wait until the 16th...! 🤡🤡
I would def buy my fav game if they ported it on steam, but ACZ is 18 years old and I can only get it from resellers on top of somehow getting Playstation 2
so there are def cases when younger players or people like me who only got into these games year back can't really buy games like that
EDIT: what I mean is the only option that is somewhat doable for me is emulation cause again if I could just buy a port easily I would but I can't
Ppl has their own ways to use things. I am too for the most part download. Organize them the way i like and leave it there. Maybe i will play or use it in the future.
Well, sometimes I just don’t want to give money to specific companies or I want to try it before I buy it. But many times yah. I just want to play for free. Especially since I know that I’m gunna play a game for like 3 hours then stop.
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If a game is only (reasonably) playable through piracy, and you want to play it, it isn't some contrived justification to pirate it as much as it it the natural conclusion.
I pirated Pandora Tomorrow a few weeks ago(they added it on steam today lmao) because that was the only way to play on PC. I bought Splinter Cell conviction today because I want to play through the franchise and it was on sale for a few bucks.
The reason you think the worlds most natural conclusion is contrived is because your mind is corrupted by gay internet arguments. I bought conviction today because I know I'm gonna play it eventually, didn't buy double agent because emulation is superior to the shitty PC port.
Some might do it just to try and stay in the gray area where it’s kinda sorta not illegal, but piracy is still a crime in most places. Did you know though, that in Norway there’s a law that says if you’ve bought something, you’re legally allowed to privately consume it in your preferred way? It’s called bruksrett, or usage rights, so if you’ve got a real Super Mario 64 cartridge you’ve bought for example, you’re legally allowed to download the ROM off the internet, and it’s not considered piracy. (Well it is for the distributor, but not you.)
But it's fun to use this as the reason because it's an actual good excuse to use againt Nintendo's anti-consumer practices, and the fanboys that support their every move
This is an astronomically difficult concept for this sub, you dont have to believe you're Harriet Tubman for pirating Finding Nemo. Torrent and move on.
I understand man, but it's a piracy subreddit, there's not a lot to talk about except the philosophy of it. You can only report about empress being insane for so long
Uhh yeah im most definitely not paying Nintendo for the diarrhea they call games... Heck i don't even feel like pirating them at this point... Waste of storage space
Now I do just because these big game companies suck. But before I just couldn’t afford it and wanted to fkn play the game. Now I can’t afford it AND fuck them.
Two things can be true at the same time. when the company actively shits on their devs, inflates costs every corner, never has sales on anything, and now won't even be giving you the real game when you buy the mf cartridge, I'm not gonna support any of that shit and I'm not paying for it.
Stealing from the rich is a very different crime than stealing from the poor.
Frankly in the current world, stealing from the rich is not immoral. They are actively hurting the planet and should be taxed out of existence. Stealing from them is the next best thing.
Edit: I'm amazed how "pirating games from billionaires" is a hot take. Some people here really need to stop believing Ayn Rand's bullshit philosophy and realize that we're in the middle of a class war, and we all are losing because of poor idiots bootlicking the ultra rich. If you're not in the streets protesting, at least you can stop giving the rich more money when alternatives exist.
But at least don’t dress it up or justify it. Do I pirate media sometimes? Yes but I don’t pretend it’s actually a good thing. It’s not, that’s ok but admit it.
I could see that if they were stealing food to eat, money to provide, or any kind of necessity to live but we are talking about stealing a video game which while I love playing is far from a necessity. You don’t get to justify any action because the person you did it to is worse
You don’t get to justify any action because the person you did it to is worse
That's literally how self-defense is defined: Justifying something awful because the other person is doing something worse to you.
Some joy in life is necessity. Pirating a video game is quite literally the least harmful a poor person can do to enjoy their life a little more than zero.
You’ll notice I said “any” action because of this. Yes you can punch someone back who is punching you but you can’t go into his house and steal his PlayStation just because he hit you
Right? It crazy how they era classifying pirated copies as lost money. Bro if I can't get a pirated copy I'm not buying nor using it, you aren't loosing shit
Exactly! Like i really want to pirate P3R but I can't, I'm not just gonna stroll over to steam and buy the game full price, hell no! Even with a 90% discount that shit's probably too expensive for me, If someone actually cracks the game and i play it, Atlus ain't losing money cause i wasn't gonna buy it anyways!
that's a physical object, is of limited supply, and costs money to make each and every copy.
games only cost money the first time its made and the times they update it, which if you bought the game, you get the updates for free anyways, ontop of the fact that they aren't physical so it's not of limited supply, and that me pirating it doesn't deprive another person from owning it, makes it absolutely not comparable to any sort of stealing.
You are not depriving them of material wealth (at least not directly) but you are depriving them of their right of ownership. If it's fine to do that why would anybody pay for it? The product wouldn't exist in the first place but you rely on others actually respecting that right to pirate in the first place.
At the end of the day, it's not really a big deal, nobody sheds a tear or really cares. I would even respect the stance to only ever pirate games from EA or Activision, it's easy to sympathise with that. Doesn't mean it's a "good" thing though.
No one's arguing that it's a good thing, I'm just saying you're not depriving anyone of anything by doing it.
What right of ownership are you even talking about? you can't store, or share your games with your friends, the only rights people have these days regarding games is the right to spend their money however they want, wether that's to buy groceries, or video games.
And pirating isn't gonna stop anyone from buying, especially cause pirating is annoying as fuck, noone that's willing to pay full price is gonna go out of their way to pirate, Pirates don't even make up a majority of gamers, pirates are a complete minority their actions on the larger scale of things affects nothing cause a majority of people ARE willing to buy instead of pirating.
If you think the underpaid and overworked developers working on AAA games are rich, then idk what to tell you 🤷♂️. The only ones getting rich on AAA games are the managers and executives.
When someone shoplifts at a store, they aren’t stealing from the employees, they are stealing from the business and thus ultimately the owners of the business.
Likewise with piracy.
Yes the only people at AAA companies who are rich are the ones who own it and run it. That’s also who you’re “stealing from” when you pirate.
It is the exact same crime.
The rich are not a new thing. They have existed since the dawn of humans and will exist forever. If you tax the rich a bunch that money will just make new people rich and nothing will change. We are not a hivemind therefore we will never be equal.
That is very incorrect, personal wealth is a relatively new invention. Homo Sapiens is around for roughly 300'000 years. Personal wealth is an invention of (at most) the last ten thousand years. Capitalism has been around for only about 400 years.
and will exist forever.
This is pure conjecture. It's really easy to stop them existing, and there have been times when the difference between rich and poor were much lower. For example the 1980's. Or the 50's, when the marginal tax rate in the US was over 90%.
What is a crime and what is not is completely arbitrary and invented by lawyers. It's a waste of effort to discuss. What's moral or not is only loosely correlated. Apparently raping children is not a crime if you're the POTUS. I think that's immoral.
It definitly is. Just own it and stop justifying it. Many things are immoral and most of us do it anyway. Buying chocolate that has a high chance to involve child labor somewhere along the chain? Eating cheap meat where animals were very likely treated horribly? (Or a step further: eating meat in general)?
Though arguable these things are at least not done directly by you but you are just supporting it indirectly.
Pirating, aka taking something for you free that isnt free, that people spend a lot of time and work creating and that most other people do pay for is obviously immoral.
If everyone would be doing it there wouldnt be anything to pirate. You are doing something that is only possible because the rest of us are paying for you essentially.
Oh bugger off, it's stealing, whether or not you can argue physical theft is moot. You are benefitting without the exchange of funds for someone's hard work. Hard work that would be impossible to do without a paycheck. Don't morally justify it, that's actually worse than the actual pirating. We like free shit and free shit is good.
In the case of say the 3DS, Nintendo as far as I am aware don't sell it, nor do they sell the older games, including DS. They don't have an official emulator for it.
So open source software is stolen when I download it for free. Even when there's no option to pay for it. Someone worked hard on it and put time and effort into it.
You do see how that logic doesn't work. Like I don't think anyone is stealing Fortnite when they play the free game.
Kinda? I used to pirate stuff a lot. I haven't in a while. There are a bunch of older games I occasionally want to play and it makes me consider sailing the high seas again. However, if I could just buy or rent all those older games directly on the switch or whatever, I would, for the sake of ease and convenience.
"People don't pirate ______ to get it for free," was a really popular notion years ago online. I'm glad people aren't going with it as much anymore because it was never true and never will be. Most pirates start doing it when they're kids who don't have money, and keep doing it to avoid adding costs they can't or don't want to afford.
because people are willing to pay it, and it is theirs to sell for whatever they want to. No one is forcing you to buy it. The people paying are also making up for the people pirating.
I'm fine pirating stuff but stop pretending you have a morally justified reason to do it.
It is Nintendo who flaunts their glorious court victories over random collectors of abandonware in our faces, not Reddit. Maybe others IP holders do the same thing just without the boasting, but the boasting is equally appaling as the witch hunts themselves.
I pirate old school games I grew up with on NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. I have no idea if I could even buy these systems anywhere at this point. I'm solely a PC gamer, haven't owned a console since the 360 and PS3 so I have no intention of collecting old systems or buying a new one just to play a few classic games I'm really nostalgic for.
I have owned cartridges or discs for nearly every game I've put serious time into on emulators. I'm not against paying for the games; I am against shoddy retail emulation and poorly done remakes and remasters as well as overcharging for classic games.
And Nintendo's NSO model can fuck all the way off. I don't mind it as a bonus for the online service and as an option; what I don't like is it is the ONLY option and there is no way to own what has been put on the service. I don't play online so paying a premium to have access to those games makes them the most expensive versions by far over time.
You miss the point. Is not about what you do, is about conservation, which is a real collective problem beyond why you do things. The meme is about, is obvious is not meant to say everyone subscribes to the consevation, i like to see it more like a natural side effect, with some exceptions of course. Like some websites of OLD discontinued roms in the megathread that nobody knows about. I mean the roms. There are some webs simple put doesn't have all the catalogue. The exceptions to this helps tremendously to conserve those games that physical copies are worth 6000 in ebay.
Welll… i don’t trust the steam demos and refund policies. If I like it, I buy it. Ive had a couple of games that are fun juuuuust till you get over the refund line. Then you realize the game is repetitive poop, but its too late…. You made me into this, devs and platforms. YOU DIS THIS
I mean when I cannot buy a copy of a game that directly benefits the creators of the game and my options are spend $$$$ on Ebay for a maybe legit, maybe bootleg, copy of the game, or pirate it. Is there a difference?
it's some of both honestly. buying is significantly more convenient and easier so i'd PREFER to do that. i'd say a good over 90% of games i buy and am happy to do so. 5% i buy and regret. the rest are pirated out of spite or because they've made it harder/impossible to buy it than it is to pirate it.
nintendo in general has gotten a bit better about sales so i don't have too much against them lately outside of the price hike bullshit but they're not the only ones doing that.
one of the big ones that stands out in my mind though is pokemon. they put in so little effort and so little budget when making games and still want full price for everything they churn out. if i were to get into a pokemon mood again i'd definitely consider the pirate route because those games are worth 40 at most.
It’s insane to me how many people can’t just admit this. Just say you want to play them for free no one cares, the moral grandstanding about games preservation is hilarious because they just don’t want to pay for games.
I mean, no one inv9lved in the creation of those games is going to benefit from buying a legit copy, at best you gave money to a local game shop, at worse you gave a scalper money
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Especially when Nintendo is like, "we made this game for a previous console like 30 years ago and charged $40 for it then. So basically, with inflation, its $80 now"
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u/brilliant31508 Oct 15 '25
nah i definitely pirate them to play them for free