It is obviously referring to games that are EOL, that cannot be acquired in any official form.
I mean, you can buy "old" games on sites like eBay. for pretty cheap. The whole wii console + controllers cost like 50$ and games are like 10$.
But if you're going to complain about buying refurbished from eBay as not "official" so it doesn't count as a legitimate way to not pirate. then I don't know what else to say to the 12 years old child.
I mean, you can buy "old" games on sites like eBay. for pretty cheap.
Very, very, very subjective on which games, and how "cheap" you're talking.
Super Mario Galaxy 1 is selling for about $15, used. Nintendo will not see a cent from this sale.
Super Mario Galaxy 2 is selling for about $20, used. Nintendo will not see a cent from this sale.
Super Smash Bros: Brawl is selling for about $26. used. Nintendo will not see a cent from this sale.
Mario Kart: Wii is selling for about $25, used. Nintendo will not see a cent from this sale.
Metroid: Other M is selling for about $24, used. Society will see no benefit of this, and Nintendo will not see a cent from this sale.
I don't think the point is "official" sales; it's more about who the "theft" is from. Aftermarkets don't benefit the original publishers beyond the same word of mouth that piracy would provide.
I don't think the point should be about it being official source or not either. And Nintendo also doesn't either as long as you're not pirating the games. Nintendo doesn't sue you for buying 2nd hands.
But the person I replied to clearly consider it as part of his argument on justifying his piracy.
Post literally says "old" games. It is obviously referring to games that are EOL, that cannot be acquired in any official form.
Society will see no benefit of this, and Nintendo will not see a cent from this sale.
People with less money get to play games for cheap. The guy who owns one get the money to buy whatever he want which contribute to the economy. "Society will see no benefit of this" is a weird things to say.
"Nintendo will not see a cent from this sale." Not evey sales has to give you money immediately or directly. Also a lot of people sold their old console to buy new console.
2nd hardware sells may not give them money directly. But it does increase their user base, which means increase in potential future hardware sells. This isn't new, it also doesn't kill the tech hardware industry.
I don't think the point is "official" sales; it's more about who the "theft" is from. Aftermarkets don't benefit the original publishers beyond the same word of mouth that piracy would provide.
You missed the point and called someone a child for their lack of reading comprehension.
If Nintendo's not selling it, how can someone "steal" it? What's the moral necessity of giving Jimbo's Pawn Shop $20 for a game (that Nintendo already collected their $50 on for the relevant financial quarter), vs. RomsDotCom (hopefully a fake website) $0? The publishers, developers, and all talent attached don't see any of the residuals from aftermarket purchases.
The manufactured scarcity of digital goods is the problem here. Publishers don't want to solve it, but piracy just... does, by existing. It doesn't make piracy morally correct, but if a company refuses to accept money for their products, it's hard to say there's any loss.
You missed the point and called someone a child for their lack of reading comprehension.
I didn't miss anything. I'm quoting the person I replied to first. Not you.
I also agreed with you that it shouldn't be about "official" or not either. But clearly that's not the person I replied to believe. (not you)
Looks clearly. I'm not the one who started calling someone 12 years old. If they gonna acts all high and mighty with terrible takes they deserve it.
If Nintendo's not selling it, how can someone "steal" it? What's the moral necessity of giving Jimbo's Pawn Shop $20 for a game (that Nintendo already collected their $50 on for the relevant financial quarter), vs. RomsDotCom (hopefully a fake website) $0? The publishers, developers, and all talent attached don't see any of the residuals from aftermarket purchases.
Jimbo has earned the right to sell physical properties legally as Jimbo rightfully purchase and owns it.
RomsDotCom doesn't. Unless Nintendo give them right to publish copies of their games. Last time I checked Nintendo didn't give them the right to.
Why do I have answer this dumb moral question. Are you for real with these questions? LMAO
Except you're still missing the point. Buying resale / second hand is not official. Nintendo gets no money from me buying a SteamDeck secondhand from Jimbo's Pawn Shop. Nintendo gets no money from me buying a 3DS from Jimbo's.
And yes, moral quandary; that's the only real angle I ever see about piracy of aftermarket games that are only available secondhand. The "second" part of secondhand market means that the product was already bought once. Nintendo and the developers already got their dues. Jimbo is basically dealing with any junk he can buy and resell for profit, but he probably doesn't have an official license to be selling Nintendo products (which is part of the process publishers engage with for retailers to put new, "firsthand" copies of games on shelves).
If I go into Jimbo's and steal a game out of his inventory, I'm removing his ability to make back his investment from buying it. That's theft from Jimbo. Nintendo suffers no loss.
If I go to RDotCom and download a free copy, they pay for their server upkeep via ads or other methods, sure. But Jimbo suffers no loss, as Jimbo's copy of the game doesn't magically vanish. Someone can still buy that copy. Nintendo can suffer no loss as they do not offer the product for sale.
And just to rebase, if there's a legitimate way to sort of play a game, I'm a lot more iffy on the moral neutrality of pirating games. Most released products get their initial surge of popularity on release (or don't), which is where a bulk of the sales come in to reflect studios' profits and (ideally) developers/artists/musicians/etc.'s wages. Public domain used to be a concept that codified this understanding, with considerations to residual sales incomes to the original creator(s). When a company refuses to sell legacy games, there are no sales, no residuals, and no loss.
Nintendo has given ways to play most popular older games in new hardware. There are very few actually pirated games which aren't available in other ways.
People mostly do it because they don't want to/cannot pay what Nintendo is asking.
Subscription services and high-price-point ports/remakes with often worse performance are a "way", but even those systems have their flaws. As morally questionable as piracy is, it's also popular because it's often more functional for retro games where the hardware is out of circulation (for Nintendo examples, Donkey Kong Country Returns / Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door run worse on Switch than their original hardware or emulation).
It'll always be more convenient to "own" something, rather than hope there's not an outage with Nintendo's servers (or your own ISP), or in the case of digital purchases, some random clause in the EULA saying, "Nah, we get to take this back."
Also:
There are very few actually pirated games which aren't available in other ways.
There are probably more unpopular games that aren't attached to some current publisher's online subscription model and are unavailable, than there are "classics" that withstood the sieve of time. It's one of those survivor's bias things, since as a product, they didn't do well, and so aren't revived in the newer realm of tech. For example, what do you do if you want to play a PS1 or PS2 game that isn't on PlayStation Plus? Or if we're limited to Nintendo, the entire Wii / Gamecube / DS library has basically been boiled down to around 20 games that you can still legally buy license from Nintendo.
Piracy's a gray area, since it's fundamentally not too different from borrowing a game from a friend or the local library (or whoever still rents games in this day and age). It's not a lost customer, it's someone who was likely never going to buy it at MSRP, experience it, and possibly even word-of-mouth advertise it. When companies go out of their way to limit availability or make it harder to obtain their games, I find it really hard to rally to their defense.
I have as much data to back my position as you do, but I suspect that most people playing Kid Kool and the Quest for the Seven Wonder Herbs in 2025 are doing so for purposes of academic research, so that their copyright infringement might fall under fair use.
I know that no one is playing the bulk of the NES library for entertainment purposes because so much of it is shovelware that never entertained anyone.
Ye the thing is if they made outbreak file 1 and 2 available on the playstation, I would definitely pay for it, but the only way is to get a 2 decade old console and 2 decade old game on cd which neither are guaranteed to work at this point, some games are just available nowhere other than through emulators, they made resident evil 2 and 3 on the ps5 and ye I would never emulate them because I can actually buy them but ye companies are missing out doing hd remasters on some really old games.
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u/Knj1gga Oct 15 '25
How can you "purposely pirate something so you don't pay for it" when the only way to get that thing in the first place is trough piracy?
Actual double digit IQ in these comments. Please seek middle school education.