this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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I will accept my downvotes in advance because what I'm about to say is probably against the mindset of most of the people that come here but:
Piracy is wrong.
I say that as someone that pirates. I'm not sure why people have to justify their actions. I know what I'm doing is wrong, I know I'm taking money away from these businesses that run streaming sites, that make movies, write books(this is the one I feel worst about because this is likely taking money directly from creators). But I do it anyway because I'm cheap, I can't afford it, its easier to pirate stuff, plenty of reasons. But none of them make it morally right, and none of them make it ethically right.
When we pirate things, we're pirating entertainment. Entertainment isn't a right. You don't need this stuff to survive. Plenty of entertainment is provided for free at libraries, online with free movies and books. Hell, you can go outside, grab a stick and a rock and boom! Free entertainment. Sure, there are people that pirate things like Photoshop to get ahead in their careers or to jumpstart them, I'm not talking to those people. Adobe has done research and they know those people buy their products when they become professionals. I'm talking to the people downloading a movie and somehow morally justifying it. But when it comes down to it, you are taking something that someone paid money to make in an effort to make money off of it. In my mind, there's no justification for that. Again, I don't care that you do it, I do it too. But no one is gonna get any points in my mind for stating that somehow what you are doing is right, or that it isn't stealing because you're downloading a copy of something. How silly an argument that is. If you take something that someone else expects money for and it isn't vital to your survival, that is wrong.
I'll get off my soapbox now. I love all of you, have a great day :).
@stappern @Talignoram6571 It's a difficult question. I'm a game developer. We estimate that about 25% of all active copies are pirated.
If all pirated copies would just disappear, would those people go buy the game? I don't think so. They would just stop playing. They don't care about the game enough to spend money, or they really just cannot afford it.
But you could argue that more people are playing the game, and they might buy a sequel in the future.
So, do we loose money? Yes, a little.
@stappern The math is simple. We know through analytics that we have 25% more active copies than we had sales.
So, based on what I said previously we're missing out anywhere between 0% and 25% of revenue. Since the truth often lies somewhere in the middle, I argue that we lose some money. But we will never know how much it actually is, or how much impact piracy actually has.
One thing is for sure: If absolutely everyone would pirate the game, I would loose my job and couldn't pay rent anymore.