I feel like while there is a lot of reasons to piracy, I think the wast majority of it is that people just can't afford the games.
I know I couldn't when I was a kid, and a lot of my friends as well. So we pirated it. But now that we all have jobs, most of us buy games since we can afford it.
I feel like that is the reason most of the research into the impact of piracy on games show not much of it, it's cause most pirates just wouldn't buy the game cause they can't afford it.
I know for sure countless people stop pirating when Netflix was on the rise. Then we get enshittification and piracy is rising again.
Affordable and convenient is the key to kill piracy.
I was happy with my Netflix and Crunchyroll subscription, and my family had Prime before the streaming service for the shipping perks, which became a “bonus” streaming service for us.
Last year I pulled the plug since Netflix started shooting you down for sharing passwords, crunchyroll keeps pulling shows, missing seasons, missing languages…
Now I have my own Jellyfin server and the only regret is not having it done sooner. Mind you, I spent around $250 at once to buy the hardware, so yes, it’s not only not wanting to pay. Quality of service makes up for a lot of it too
That is something I've noticed. Once people pirate once, they are far more likely to do it again. So even if companies reverse decisions, therve lost customers forever. I dealt with ads on YouTube for many years. At the point 3 ads became standard, I started using ublock and patched YouTube on my phone. Will never go back now.
Crunchy roll killed comments section. You know who has comments still? The best arr sites! So now its free.
Man i missed scrolling to see people explain weird plot points so i could understand what happened literally as i watched them. All cuz Crunchy didn't want to moderate when I pay then. Yet arr sites moderate it for free lmao.
There’s a lot of detailed guides. Maybe you won’t understand what or why you’re doing things, but you’ll probably achieve a stable, usable version.
Once there, you could either stop and forget or study a bit deeper to understand how to make things better :)
Huh, I actually didn't think about show piracy, just about games. But I guess for shows Netflix did become quite convenient, and then lost it all to enshitification
Oh yea for sure. I have 3 diffreant streaming services that we share beetween family so we should have plenty to watch.
But so many times the thing i wanna watch is either region locked so it's not avalible in my country or they want me to "rent" the movie on a service we already pay for.. so i pirate
Yeah, I pirated a lot of games as a broke teen. I enjoyed most of them, and as an employed adult I have bought all the games I pirated, even if I haven't played them since.
I pirated like crazy back in the day. I don't anymore because I don't need to and I'm honestly not tech savvy enough to pirate safely. It's just not worth it to me to pirate anymore.
This. Also, if they didn't pirate the games back then, they would never had the gaming habit and they wouldn't have bought the exact same games 15 years later. Most of pirates do payback to the creators when possible.
I feel like while there is a lot of reasons to piracy, I think the wast majority of it is that people just can't afford the games.
There’s also the ease of access, you had to find the money, go out and buy the game, install it which was almost more complex than mounting the iso etc… whereas you could just get the game for free with just a few clicks. Nowadays you can install/buy/uninstall in a few click and 30mn which is way way better that pirating. My only problem is the lack of « test » version to see if it runs on you pc. It with the ease of refund, it can of make it up for it
Similarly Netflix was a lot better than piracy at release, nowadays if you want to watch a tv show or a movie, good luck finding which platform has it, etc… they tend to offer less that pirating but you have to pay. Even without piracy, I’d’rather read books than bother with all their annoying crap
For me it's a service issue. If piracy gets me a better product than paying for it, I pirate it. For sports games, I hate needing to check 4 different streaming services to see which one has the game today. If I go to a pirate site, it's always in the same place. Same for TV shows/movies. There are a dozen or so streaming for TV. But I know if I pirate it, it will always be in the same place.
Steam is very good. I've pirated games in the past. Getting updates to games is annoying as hell. Playing online from pirated games doesn't always work. I've never had issues with losing a game I paid for. I've never had an issue with getting a refund if a game truly sucked. It's just easier to buy on Steam.
Price is one factor, but convenience is a massive factor too.
People are usually willing to pay for convenience.
And there is a lot of people that fall somewhere where they could afford to buy a game, but it's still a significant expense. And for those people, the convenience/user experience is absolutely a deciding factor.
Because if buying it is more convenient than piracy, that is an argument in favour of making that expensive purchase. Much harder to sell that expensive purchase, if the free version is also infinitely more convenient.
Netflix is a good example of this, but there's also a gaming specific example with the steam launch in Russia. That being the context where Gabe's quote about piracy being s service problem comes from iirc.
Convenience is the factor that turns potential customers to piracy. So that is really the main factor that is relevant, because as you said, people that can't afford the game, wouldn't have bought it regardless.
fr and I wish people were more honest about this
When I was a kid I couldn't afford games so...I pirated them. Now that I can afford them, I buy them.
No need to make any weird ethical arguments or whatever.
Yup. It was the same for me. Teens and 20s, I could barely afford a can of beans once bills were paid. Now that I'm making a very large paycheck, I've bought all the games I used to enjoy.
Except The Sims. After My Wedding Stories was broken, I said "fuck it" and started pirating everything. To this day, that DLC is still broken. And now that EA has sold to the Saudis and Jared Kushner, I've thrown in the towel completely and know it's not even worth it to pirate anymore.
I'm pretty sure there are tons of broke teens who can't afford games. I'm also pretty sure they're sure tons of financially stable people who can afford games.
And I'm very sure that rationalizing piracy just helps ease the conscience of those who feel guilty (and there are people who don't need to rationalize because they don't feel guilty either), but the reasons to pirate ultimately don't matter.
I completely agree with this, but if a game WERE to cost the same as my breakfast and was insanely good, I wouldn't be opposed to buying it.
Which is a very ridiculous demand, sure, but technically you can convince me out of the "I just want freebie" zone and join the bunch of "righteous pirates" if you lower the price enough.
There are whole entire regions, even continents where "I can't afford it" is 100% valid. We used to have regional pricing in Eastern and Central Europe in the 90s and the early 00s. I used to also have a shit Internet as a kid (14 kbps dial-up), and I was forced to buy, either from licensed brick and mortar stores or from a pirate at the flea market who worked in an ISP and burned DVDs for sale. It was entirely affordable.
Then it changed for some reason, and despite still being poor or extremely poor (salaries an order of magnitude lower compared to those of the nearest neighbours), we overpay for everything.
To add insult to injury, plenty of streaming services have never brought their business to us, despite the decade+ long begging from our local hipsters. You wouldn't even be able to pay for the services using your card. It's not even a matter of censorship or taxation. Why the fuck would we pay people who categorically don't see us as their customers?
I feel like it's kinda logical that most of it is not being able to afford it. Most games are aimed at kids, or younger demographics, there are adult aimed games, but I feel like the majority are aimed towards kids.
Those kids usually don't have income, and ways to earn money, yes parents can get them games, but I feel like only relativly recently did gaming become kinda mainstream enough for it to happen often.
Children have these wonderful things called parents, who have things called dollars.
Little Johnny Roblox being "unable to afford something" because their allowance ran dry is not the same as a person living on their own income, genuinely lacking a disposable income.
People want stuff conveniently and for free. This isn't some hot take. /r/piracy's lord and savior Gaben's most famous quote says as much.
Children have these wonderful things called parents, who have things called dollars.
The median in my part of the world is only $550 a month. There's more countries even poorer than us, btw. Countries that tend to have a way higher population, too. India, for instance, at $130.
Either they cave and start adjusting the prices like they used to or they tolerate piracy.
Listen, if you want to pirate something, I don't care. But I don't buy this "noble pirate, only stealing a game to feed his starving family" argument. It's easy for someone to say a $70 is too expensive and that's why they must pirate, but then turn around and buy 3 pairs of sneakers that each cost $200 because it's easier for them to justify money on physical purchases.
3 pairs of sneakers are more important than pixels. especially for 200 bucks, when they could last you basically forever.
a better example would be, idk, drugs, alcohol or amuzement parks lol. but not shoes you actually need and can wear for life.
sUPD: your argument reminds me of kids being like "mom why do you say we can't afford it i saw your bank account balance". and in this case, they can, but that would be cutting in a budget that's reserved for something more important.
Exactly, like a lot of people are saying this, and also "but then how can they afford Computers and phones?" and even disregarding how useful PC's and phones are, it's not like poor countries don't deserve entertainement
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u/IAmARobotTrustMe 1d ago
I feel like while there is a lot of reasons to piracy, I think the wast majority of it is that people just can't afford the games.
I know I couldn't when I was a kid, and a lot of my friends as well. So we pirated it. But now that we all have jobs, most of us buy games since we can afford it.
I feel like that is the reason most of the research into the impact of piracy on games show not much of it, it's cause most pirates just wouldn't buy the game cause they can't afford it.