Well, my friend, he’s kinda poor he can’t afford some books and some streaming services, so he pirates. He pirate books, audiobook and videos and other stuff. Sometimes he buys books he likes a lot out of loyalty to the author (yeah, I don’t understand it either), he likes to read physical books, but yeah, if he hates the author or just wants to skim through it, he will download the book.
He usually doesn’t like to pirate from small companies or professors who are trying to make a living by selling books, but from millionaires & plenty of mega corps which already have loads of money, he feels like it’s the right move to pirate
Also, have you ever noticed that you have felt that the value of a product has decreased just because you didn’t pay for it, thus you are less interested to read it? i.e., had you paid for the book, you would have more likely read that book.
He says he will buy stuff when his time is more valuable than money, let’s all hope that day is soon.
What are your piracy habits?
Big question.
I started pirating when netflix took down a show I just started a couple of days earlier.
It was so easy and so much better that I sticked to it.
I’ve got hundreds of movies and series within one app. Anytime available. I don’t have to pay a treaming services each month just because I want to watch one movie or series.
The price companies charge for a movie is too high. They make too much money out of it. There is too much money in the industry. Some people earn too much. There’s too much BS production because it’s easy money. They charge more than it’s worth to me. They show ads. They want me to buy something and never use it. They start producing series instead of movies because you can make more money out of it, instead of producing one damn good movie. Their intensions differ to much from mine.
A movie that generates a profit of multiple hundreds of million USD does not lead to better production of the next movie. It does not lead to a cheaper price of future or current movies. There’s simply a market distortion that doesn’t work properly.
There are some people willing to pay 50 bucks per month and there’s me. I pay 0. And the markrt is functioning and the companies still make a shitload of money. Seems alright so far.
I am with you. Long live the Pirates!
I dont have any deep philosophy. I do it because its free.
The last games I purchased are Dave the Diver and BG3. Those games have something in common:
- No DLCs.
- No DRM.
- No external launchers.
- Internet connection is not required to play.
- Those games are polished, not broken and activelly supported/maintained/updated.
All other titles I simply pirate. Here are my reasons:
- Runs like trash on day 1.
- 60-80€ price for a buggy mess.
- Companies usually under-deliver of what’s promised.
- Has DRM (hurts performance) or requires active internet connection (hello steam deck while I am on a plane) or has additional launcher bullshit.
- Ubisoft usually copy/paste games (assassins creed, far cry series). I don’t want to pay 80€ for a game with a new map and new skins, while everything else is literally the same mess.
- Not sure if I’d like the game (for 60-80eur). Companies no longer release trials.
Regarding this:
- Not sure if I’d like the game (for 60-80eur). Companies no longer release trials.
Once upon a time, I pirated Subnautica. Played for 10 minutes and realized “fuck it” and I bought both games. Realised that this is going to be a loooong game for me. No regrets supporting the company - those became one of my favorite games of all time.
For me, paying 20-60 eur (depending on a game) is fine and using Steam is more convenient, but in most cases - piracy is usually more convenient to me. :)
BG3 has an external launcher. At least in the GOG version. You don’t need to sign in though and I believe it still works DRM-free.
You can add a launch param to go straight into the game though.
Really? I changed my shortcut to go directly to an exe rather than through GOG, I still get the Larian launcher come up. Maybe I need to choose a different exe?
No, it is just a launch parameter on the .exe file
It works in steam for certain, maybe it will work as a launch parameter on the .exe. Just add it at the end of
Targetin the shortcut properties, so it should look like this:"game_location\bin\bg3.exe" --skip-launcherMaybe that might work with the GOG launcher shortcut, depends if GOG use the same syntax.
I just checked though and I was running LariLauncher.exe, which is what GOG normally directs to. I guess I just didn’t check, I think there was a shortcut already in the install folder and I copied that and replaced the GOG shortcut. In the bin folder there’s bg3.exe and bg3_dx11.exe, those are the real game files.
Idk, I have the steam version, maybe it is slightly different.
Dave the Diver is published by Nexon so you should absolutely pirate it.
Gabe newell once said “piracy is not a problem of price its a problem of service" after people kept pirating valve game titles. So he made sales more frequent and games cheaper. Piracy is usually frowned upon but it also teaches businesses what the customers don’t like. AE like with adobe and there photo shop suite aswell as the newer unity game engine dispute. As a consumer I have no problem paying for a service unless it is inherently difficult to cancel as discussed by Louis rossman in mulitible videos aswell as company’s nickle and diming the consumer.
There’s nothing morally wrong with stealing from a profit driven corporation as they would (and do) do the same to you at every chance given. At that point it’s just healthy competition.
Right?! The corporation’s already actively stealing labor from its employees to male a few C suite executives rich and to give shareholders the illusion that infinite profits are possible.
My justification: nobody has stopped me yet🤷
My justification: nobody has stopped me yet🤷
I can sense angry Germans staring at your comment
What happens when a German vists a piracy site:
https://www.der-postillon.com/2023/09/wuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh.html
I buy stuff to support authors/artists that I like, and my dollar goes further if I keep as much money as possible out of corporate hands. Oh and if any scum bag puts ads in something I already paid them for I am pirating and seeding the torrents.
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o7
Don’t pay your employees a livable wage, or use creative accounting to minimise profit and therefore tax payable. don’t expect money from me.
(X) doubt
So you are telling me you do an investigation of every company you purchase from? Even the private ones with no data?
Sounds like you actually just make a surface level decision based if you like the company tbh.
So you are telling me you do an investigation of every company you purchase from
No. Indy games I will get legitimately, unless it is the company’s 3 or 4th game where enough info has come out about their practices to make an informed decision. If it is a AAA game with a track record of terrible employee record I will pirate.
I justify it for these massive companies that have been making record profits for years, while the common person is struggling with energy crises, fuel price increases, lack of housing. And these Hollywood exces are chilling in their mansions and yachts.
I don’t pirate games though, as I like them in my library, and they’re not tied to a subscription or a shitty company like Amazon.
yes
- copyright is a deeply flawed system invented by capitalists with moronic consequences for well-intentioned artists today
- i regularly support musicians i like through bandcamp (especially on bandcamp fridays where they get 100% of the money)
- i usually do not pirate indie things (but remember that if your only options are piracy or “key reseller” sites, ALWAYS pirate. you are actively costing the devs money if you buy a stolen key from a reseller (and they are all stolen))
- i’m poor and adobe can choke on my balls
You know how writers get paid fuck all for the movies they write? You know how animators are paid criminally low wages for the anime they produce? At the end of the day for most media it’s the companies that get all the money, not the artists. Therefore, fuck them, I am pirating your content not contributing to your profit margins.
Give me a reasonably priced, accessible way to enjoy the content and I will happily pay for it.
Streaming has become untenable and now it’s neither affordable nor convenient to watch what I want to watch. And with how frequently shows and movies bounce around platforms, who knows if the show I want to watch this weekend will be still available on one if the many platforms I’ve been paying for.
I’m just done with it.
I know people like to shit on Spotify. But it’s the reason I stopped pirating music forever ago and the reason I’ve paid for it for years now.
It’s fairly reasonably priced at $10-11/mo. It’s available on basically any phone, computer, tablet, etc. And nearly every song I could ever want to listen to is just there, seamlessly. You can even download the songs to play locally for when you don’t have Internet access. I will admit there are some rare occasions where a song I want is not available there, but it’s so infrequent that it doesn’t at all impact my listening experience. I can also very easily discover new music by generating playlists based on a song I like.
Now look at something like Netflix. It used to be this way…priced well and had everything you could ever want to watch on it. But now everyone and their mother has their own steaming platform. It’s absolutely ridiculous. It’s become as expensive as cable to get the same watching experience as TV streaming sites used to be. Sure there are people who say “well I just periodically subscribe and unsubscribe to the service I want to make it cheaper”. And sure, it makes it cheaper, but it sure as hell isn’t convenient. I don’t want to have to fuck with all that shit. So I use illegal TV/movie streaming sites instead. Or I just watch YouTube videos or use free services like Tubi and Pluto. Paid for TV streaming services absolutely suck ass nowadays.
If we started having issues with artist and production company fragmentation, I would cancel my Spotify subscription. But thankfully that hasn’t happened and I hope it never does. The trend doesn’t seem to be looking that way thank goodness.
If you have a reasonably priced service that has everything I could want, I pay for it. If you don’t, then I pirate. Simple as that.
The biggest issue to me is that all music services offer effectively the same access to music. I’m not choosing between Spotify and YouTube music because my favorite artist is on one, but not the other. However we are conditioned to think this is ok when it comes to video. Streaming services never should have been content creators, we should be choosing Netflix vs Hulu based on price, app quality, video quality.
I was never conditioned to think it was ok for video and it’s why I hate TV/movie streaming services lol
I still pirate my music, using YouTube music revanced, but the main reason I do it is because I find it to expensive for how often I use it. I don’t use it that often, mainly just when cooking dinner, if there was a way for me to use YouTube music for $5 a month, I would probably pay for it.
Also for me it has to be YouTube music, as alot of the songs I listen to aren’t on other platforms, (song covers, and remixes).
YSK that YouTube Premium can be bought over a VPN for a whole lot less than the regular retail price, it’s a bit fiddly to set up but I’ve got a Nigerian based family account that costs me £1.76 a month.
Ah see I listen to music all the time. When I was in school, it would be hours upon hours every day. Nowadays, I listen to it far less, but it’s still whenever I drive, which is near daily. And when I feel like it sometimes I listen a lot at work.
I’m with you. I’ve had a Spotify sub for more than a decade and have no plans to cancel.
This is how I do it.
I pay for Netflix, Prime (only really for the free shipping), Disney+, Apple TV+ and Spotify, if it’s not on any of these then I’m going to pirate it.
The whole exclusivity stuff is just rubbish, I get the reasoning but if you can’t make your content easily accessible then I just don’t want to pay for it.
I used to pirate everything when I had no money. Now that I have money I buy games - including everything I ever pirated - and I pay for a few other subscription services that are worth or nearly worth their price. I pirate anything else.
I freeload on Spotify by using the web player with an adblock, and instead buy merchandise directly from the bands to support them.
I pirate mostly out of convenience, I just want access to whatever media I’m interested in and if there’s a subscription wall between it and me, then more often than not it’s just easier for me to pirate it than bothering to pay for it
Yep. Netflix removed a lot of my need to pirate, it was so convenient. Then every studio decided they needed their own streaming service and kept increasing prices while quality went down, so now I’m back to pirating.
I’ve always pirated anime tho. For a long time a lot wasn’t available legally and even once it was, I find fan subs to be much better than the official sources.
