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image:
screenshot of a Tweet from Running With Scissors reading
"We've been told our games are too expensive in some countries but we've been using Steam's recommended pricing for a while. We trust Valve enough to not change this. If our games are still too expensive for you, you can pirate them until you have enough to support us."
I have to imagine a comment like this does absolutely nothing to their sales figures. People who were going to download a cracked version of their games anyway remain unaffected now that they have a blessing, and I doubt people who weren't going to pirate would now feel more inclined to do so.
This seems like good PR and frankly it should probably be the default position for games studios.
If anything, it probably encourages more real sales from would be pirates who like their message.
Yeah, the whole piracy crackdown situation is so stupid.
I pirate a lot of media, if you added it all up it would be a lot of money (if I was to buy everything). The difference is, before I pirated I barely bought any of the media.
If you were to objectively look at the value of the pirated media, it would seem that i've "stolen" or studios have missed out on lots of revenue, but the truth is I pirate a lot of media, just because I can.
It's the streaming part for me.
Few years ago there was Netflix and Film1 in our country and an ISP with TV that also had a movie service.
That was about it.
Now there's Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max, SkyShowtime, Apple TV+ and ViaPlay added to it.
It's impossible to have have just 1 and view what you want. Ofcourse you can keep on switching but some of them but it's all just making it more complicated.
Solution? Pirate it. One source and everything available even stuff that isn't on any on those services.
Also some movies can't be bought digital.
IMO all movies and series should be available on any platform and let the streaming service decide if they want to have it in their portfolio. Only the "originals" should be locked to a platform to keep stuff unique.
And make every damn movie and series available for purchase.
That's just cable though. Not sure that'll be any better. The second a company sees a revenue stream or thinks they're missing out. They monetise it to the detriment of the customers.
Just adding on to this, every game I've ever pirated I ended up buying later on. Or I bought in the past (this applies to the games I emulate)
I would say 80% of the games I pirate, I put less than 30 mins into it.
Before this tweet, they also mentioned piracy over grey market keyshops, which seems to be a lot more of a valid reason to endorse it. This seemly links to that tweet.
Some games you dont even need a crack or anything, just access to the files.
For example with KSP, you can just clone the game directory anywhere and run it from there. Doesnt even need steam. Heck i copied it over to an M1 macbook once just to test the Macbooks performance....
Thats also how the mod managers like CKAN work with the game.
It won't have a large effect, but in previous examples of companies doing this, comments would lead me to believe more people who pirated end up buying the game to support the devs after trying it. It makes sense too, but same pirates are unlikely to buy anything that had denuvo and stuff shoved into it.
I was going to say, all artists should share this position, but I'll do one better: if you don't have this position, you're not an artist. Feels bold to make any absolute claim about what makes an artist, but I feel safe on this one. If making sure you're fairly compensated is higher priority than sharing your art, then you're not an artist.
Artists, like all laborers, should be fairly compensated for their work. The idea that love of art should necessarily come into conflict with fair compensation is a primary vehicle for continuing the exploitation of creative labor.
That is somewhat orthogonal to the issue of piracy, though. Some of the most strongly anti-piracy platforms out there are also absolutely terrible in terms of labor rights (hence the current strikes in Hollywood, for instance). It's notable that in this case, the studio seems to be saying fairly explicitly that piracy is indeed not the main obstacle to fair compensation, such that no conflict between their stance and labor rights needs to exist.
If you think I'm arguing that artists should not be compensated for their work, then I've completely misrepresented myself. Is that what you thought I meant?