Piracy Shaming in Retro Gaming Culture

[Sinmenon]

To play Devils advocate, you should consider at least buying some of the games to support the devs. If you don't, then the industry is going to 100% pivot to free 2 play games with ads or some other means of extracting money, usually to the detriment of the gameplay.

I respectfully would like to disagree for a number of reasons.
When the game is released, the devs have already been paid for their work. Usually, there is a percentage of bonus in their contract that can be granted to them if the game has good sales. However, we have seen cases like Fallout New Vegas and Subnautica 2 in which the devs got screwed over of their bonuses.
In fact, I've lost count of how many times the games sell blockbusters and the layoffs are still massive.

Thankfully (or not) Europe is coming together to regularize loot boxes, harshly punish dark interface practices and also ask for games created from now on to have a sunset plan so people can still enjoy the games they purchased, so free 2 play games might have a sharp pivot sooner or later.

(yeah, the video starts talking about Pirate Software (the dev) but the dude from Stop Killing Games says a lot of stuff that is completely unrelated to that guy)

There are so many games out there now, many which go on sale multiple times a year. To me, the appeal of pirating a game because gaming is expensive doesn't hold water like it did several decades ago. When I was a teenager, Steam Summer Sale didn't exist and there way no way of me to find older games on sale for 90% off unless there was a clearance bin a bunch of random games were dumped in.

But today, you could wait a few years and find a game on sale for 50% off, sometimes more. DeadSpace remake is currently on sale at 90% off and it came out in 2023!

I'm from the time before Steam. I'm from the shareware time, before even BBS became more widespread. Hell, I learned how to read and write by using MS-DOS.
There was shareware, which was kind of "demo" that contained parts of a game and if you wanted, you could mail the devs to get the full game. At the same time, anyone would go and copy a floppy disk and share their game with their friends. There was a time in which some game magazines would share full games on CD-ROM.
It might not be common for consoles, but piracy was absolutely a part of the pc gaming culture, both for computer games and the AMIGA for the European people.
Back then, the games would cost 15 USD. Not 60.
So, to me, the "the gaming is expensive doesn't hold water" isn't valid. I'm not from the USA and Silent Hill F costs 350 bucks in my neck of the woods and I earn 19 per hour as a teacher. Witcher III costs 130 in its full price but in Summer Sale it costs 13. Kingdom Come Deliverance II? 300 bucks. Monster Hunter Wilds? 280. The next GTA is going to cost 400 here.
Dead Space remake? The one you mentioned? Oh, it is just 250 in its full price.
And it is even worse that, again, the money goes to Electronic Arts. You know, the company was recently bought by Saudi Arabia and Trump's son-in-law. I'm not going to go into the politics route, but I don't think either of them need my money.

I don't have an issue with people pirating games. I did it when I was young and broke, so I would be a hypocrite for telling people in similar circumstances not to. But I would like to say that, when you can, support the devs, especially the smaller ones. You may have to wait a year or so to find it on sale (resist FOMO), but eventually you will see the game you're interested in come down in price. That way you get to support a dev that makes games you like, and the devs get a least some compensation for their work and hopefully continue working on making the types of games you enjoy!

But if everyone pirates games, then eventually the indies will die out and all we are going to get from the bigger companies will be free 2 play slop.

I'm absolutely against pirating indie games. And let's give some facts.
Steam has released data, and they revealed that big company games, the AAA ones, have been performing very poorly in recent years. Gamers have refused to pay 60 to 80 USD for a game, but the games under 20 have been striving --- you know, the indie games. Hollow Knight Silksong crashed steam, Expedition 33 swooped all the accolades, and people are thinking twice about pre-ordering games that might come out broken.
Big companies will keep producing what they think gives money. That is why live service games are crashing. Just look at Concord, Avengers, High Guard, Marathon... Well, the guy who made Heavy Rain made a live service and it died and nobody noticed.

but eventually you will see the game you're interested in come down in price

Say that to the Zelda and Pokemon games on Switch

 

[Appiplyer]

'>' i can't really blame them for judging piracy since ermmm technally it's illegal.

But well if free access of games wasn't a thing then the gaming culture in my country won't grow like at all heck even the age of computer, even movie watcher, won't even came if piracy wasn't a thing in here.

Like realistically speaking low to mid level companies in Indonesia barely use a genuine version of windows they mostly uses pirated one. Some college even uses pirated software to use on laboratory or their studies. Heck they sell a fucking pirated software here and people buy it like wtf.

So atleast around here piracy won't be judged but it's also a problem since they don't wanna pay for the game they want, like if you really love the game you should've got the drive to buy it and get it legally.

 

[Sfjeov]

Should I?

 

[sandogma sandogma]

When the game is released, the devs have already been paid for their work. Usually, there is a percentage of bonus in their contract that can be granted to them if the game has good sales.

I think we should both clarify that there are two kinds of "indie" devs. There are indie devs that receive funding (Dave the Diver and Stray) and thats where I agree with you, as they are already paid for their work once a game is released.
And then there are self-funded indies, that consist of a few people and survive off of every game purchase until they make their critical hit (think Undertale and Stardew Valley).

You are also make a good point about my comment regarding pricing as it is not applicable outside the US, where additional taxes/tariffs over inflate the costs of games, making pirating a much more compelling choice. That truly sucks and I'm really sorry to hear that. Its not fair that there are people who have to pay higher prices for the same digital product purely because they are on a different location on this planet. Its madness!

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

I've made this argument before; follow me if you will:

Pirates seize goods and then sell them for profit.
90% of "pirate" sites aren't selling any goods. They don't make a dime. A lot even operate in the red. So... then, how are they pirates, jah feel?

Cats is more like Robinhood than Captain Hook, IMO and I stand by that stance.

I love pulling that one out on the nay-sayers, lol.

I like that!

I personally just tell them the following: "Stealing something means that the other person no longer has it — is that what is happening here? Does me having this game prevent you from owning it? Have I taken it away from you? No? Then shut the fuck up and let me live".

 

[SeventhSon]

 

[Phage]

I'm old enough that basically the entirety of home gaming consoles were part of my childhood, excepting Atari. I used to have a collection of physical games that I had just kept because I played them all the time. Over the years though, I amassed a pretty large collection spanning multiple generations, and some I never even got around to finishing, or even playing at all, simply because I was good at finding deals. I got rare stuff used from gamestop, or traded in games I didn't like and picked up something new for free. I could find well-cared-for copies of games on ebay for reasonable prices. Games were simply more affordable used and there were plenty of them.

I hit a point where I had literal paper crates full of games that I didn't have room for, and after a few years of having to climb over them to get to stuff in my home, I realized that I was not going to go digging through all of them to find a specific game I already owned to play it when I had a PC that could emulate them, make them look better, and could utilize save states. I ended up offloading most of my collection, only keeping the ones that had sentimental value to me. I've never regretted it, and made a a few thousand off the lot while reclaiming my space.

Fast forward several years and now retro gaming collection is ridiculous. PS2 games that I bought for $15 used off of ebay several years into the PS4 life cycle were suddenly going for $60, $100, $200. It was ludicrous for a PS2 game. Mind you old does not mean bad (I'm a retro gamer after all), but let's be frank: A lot of PS2 games can feel a little janky today, and some specific ones only have about 10-15 hours of gameplay to give. Older stuff like the SNES/N64/PS1 might have far less. It's simply not intelligent to pay hundreds of dollars *just* to play these games.

If you want to collect them then that's one thing, but even then, I simply can't justify it for myself. If I want to play a classic game that I've never experienced before, I promise my PC will run it, and run it better than native hardware, plus I'll be able to get my hands on it in seconds and start playing immediately, instead of buying it from some online site and having to wait a week for it to arrive, or going out of my way to travel to a store that sells retro games and hope that they have a copy in stock for a reasonable price (which it won't be.) We've hit a point where it's simply too easy to pirate/emulate and the experience is objectively better. Slap a good CRT filter on and you're golden. Spending money on something that you can do better for free is just ridiculous.

Meanwhile, I see streamers talking about playing on original hardware like some kind of badge of pride, and swearing that it just "feels better". Tell yourself whatever you need to sleep at night, I guess, but really? It feels better to use an old, uncomfortable controller to play a game at a quarter the resolution of your screen with stutters and slowdown? Sure, Jan. I grew up on those games. I remember when PS1 was the bleeding edge. My childhood favorites look objectively better in full HD with no slowdown and a good CRT filter to smooth out the graphics as they were meant to look, and allowing me to save state and quit when I need to, instead of frantically hunting for a save point or having to leave the game running while I go do what I need to do. That's to say nothing of fan translations of games that were never available to me before or patches that fix bugs/improve outdated gameplay to make them more enjoyable.

If I won the lottery, sure, I'd probably rebuild my collection and have a super nerd gaming room with physical copies of complete console libraries, and fancy light-up shelves for the actual consoles themselves, but I'd still be playing emulated versions from a PC. If you're a collector, good on you, but being an original hardware snob and looking down on people when you're actually the one doing it the worse way is some crazy mental gymnastics.

 

[Don Patch]

...Then shut the fuck up and let me live".

Lol, yas!

 

[Graw]

I barely consider most emulation piracy. If a system a game is made for is discontinued it's abandonware. I don't care if 20-30 years later the company that owns the games decides to sell a subscription service to emulate them on some modern console.

 

[Stingy Perry Stingy Perry]

They say piracy is stealing. May l ask, what is it we're stealing again?

For every ROM download for a retro system is not an equivalent loss of sales on their part. How can they lose money from something they're not selling anymore?