Asklemmy

I've been emulating for years, but the first and only game I've pirated is Starfield, because I was certain the game wasn't worth the asking price and I wasn't going to shell out $70 and risk a 2 hour time limit on the refund with a studio that's infamous for long intros.

Turns out I was right, and I've already deleted it. If at some point in the far future the modders make something good of it, I will buy it at a heavily discounted 'GOTY Starborn splappy boom blappy edition Mk VII' price.

I pirate. I don't justify pirating. I just do it, because I want things and have the ability to get them for free, so I do that.

I generally pirate first and buy later if I want to support a game. I think of it as voting with my wallet.

I pirated BG3, enjoyed it even though it’s generally not the sort of game I play. Decided that I want to see more companies making games of this quality in future, so went ahead and bought it.

Same with FromSoftware games, I always buy those as I want more games like that.

Ultimately, if you never buy anything then you can’t expect companies to make the games you want.

I did when I was young and broke. now I don't. 🤷‍♂️

I have no issue pirating:

• any content with massive profits
• any content made by a very rich entity
• any content where the artists, authors, creators, et al get a minority of the revenue (example: scientific journals, college textbooks). I always search for alternate methods of paying the artists directly if they exist.

Not at all. This is not a moral judgement about anyone else. Just answering the question.

I guess I've reached a point in my life where I can easily afford to buy something if I want it, especially in the price range of a video game or book. I used to do all that stuff, not to get back at the man, but because it was the only option that was accessible. Eventually the hassle factor of piracy kept going up while just paying for it became an accessible choice.

When there's no legitimate way for me to rent something. I recently downloaded Joe vs the Volcano and Counterpart because there's no streaming service that has them on offer.

You cannot steal what is not physical. Theft implies removing a physical object from somewhere, creating a loss of an item.

Digital information is 1s and 0s, and you just create a copy. You do not remove the original one. There is no theft taking place.

The value of a product does not go down because I didn't pay for it. If anything, if it's a quality product, the value goes up. If I pirate something and enjoy it, chances are I will pay for it when I can afford to. If I pirate something and don't enjoy it, well, I wasn't going to buy the product anyway so there's no loss. Let's say I watch a movie at a friend's house and absolutely hate it. I do not buy the movie. How is that different than pirating it and coming to the same conclusion? I see the movie without paying money.

I'm not the pirate I once was when it comes to gaming but there's always EGS exclusives, games whose lack of regional pricing make them impossible to reasonably buy here, things like that. I'm a patient gamer for the most part so most of the time I can just get it a few years down the line but sometimes even that doesn't cut it. I avoid doing it to indie developers, but those are usually the few that follow Steam's recommended pricing guidelines so they tend to be fine anyway.
I pirate unbelievable amounts of tv and movies on a regular basis though through the *arr apps and whatnot, mostly because I refuse to pay for a dozen different streaming services with their rotating content and usually terrible apps. I self host whatever I can to avoid relying on the whims of a few corporations, and the one surviving service so far is Spotify.

I used to pirate a lot more when I couldn't afford to fill my media desires. Nowadays I'm a bit more principalled, I'm not paying collector prices for old super Nintendo games for instance. That shit gets emulated and if I've already bought a game on console, especially if I bought a standard and "complete" edition, I'll likely piratd a PC copy for modding and the like.

Though sometimes a piece of art is created by a morally bankrupt company and while I typically just ignore the things they produce, sometimes I really want to try it, so I pirate it. 

My relevant philosophy, if that's the right word, is linked to on my Lemmy bio. Written more than a year ago, it's still defaulted to. Someone on Lemmy told me it's the most socialist-esque thing they've ever seen from me.

About the only thing I pirate these days is stuff that isn't available to legally pay for in my country.

I pirate a lot of movies and series and also a few books.

I also sometimes pirate games but not as often

I don't justify it. I think it's a bad thing but I like cheap.

For me it's usually about availability. If someone suggests I try out a cool game that came out in the 80s, there's a pretty good chance piracy is the only way to play it. Sure, you can pay way too much on Ebay to get a physical copy, and I have a fair collection of retro games, but it's not like the money from Ebay sales go back to the original creators.

Same with movies. The version of Star Wars I grew up with, the one without all the digitally added stuff since the late 90s, isn't on Disney+. If Disney announced a nice blu-ray Star Wars collection that featured the copies without Jedi Rocks and the extra aliens in the cantina and whatever, I'd go out and get it. But they haven't, so I stick to the fan-made 'despecialized editions'.

I don't pirate from the little guy. I buy albums on Bandcamp and indie games on Steam all the time. I want the small creators to be able to eat. But I'm also fortunate enough to have a little disposable income. I know some people pirate as much as they can, and while I don't entirely agree with it, I don't know their financial situation (or the availability of these things in their country), so it's not really my place to judge them.

I used to quite a bit, for random, hard to find songs. I also did it to get in digital format, what I owned on vinyl. A few older classic movies here and there. I can’t remember the last time I pirated anything, but I still use torrents for bootleg concerts.

I used to pirate like crazy in my youth. Now since Steam and Netflix I don't pirate, recognizing that creators deserve to get paid and also by paying them that supports making more content.

I pay for music because it is easy. I don't pay for video because there is no avenue like spotify for video

I do, movies and TV shows. Occasionally books, but I buy them much more often than I do pirate. When I was in my teens and early 20s I also pirated games, but I'm too lazy to do that anymore. Movies and TV shows are too fucking expensive for the value they provide. I also pay for a few streaming services, so I only pirate stuff that isn't there.

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.

Not really, with books and movies I only buy/download when I want to watch/read. With games I buy a lot more than I play, but I don't pirate those, so it's not relevant.

It's only piracy if you grab a cutlass and storm the local shops. It's time to call it what it is = digital theft / running unlicensed software / whatever. If someone hacks into your accounts, I doubt you'd call them a pirate for stealing all you personal videos and pictures, taking over your steam account, 'borrowing' your netflix, and so on. The whole thing is deeply uncool.

Personally I wish the laws would change to make copyright non-transferable from the original artists, who deserve reward for their efforts but shouldn't be a meal ticket for others. I'd also like to see abandonware legitimised - if folk can't buy it then it should be fair game.

I just don't earn enough money to justify paying for movies, games and books, i can use those money to pay my bills and what little left after paying my bills, i save it for future

I don't pirate video games. Steam, Gog, or even epic are easy and not too expensive. Steam's refund policy isnt terrible.

I don't pirate music. I buy stuff from smaller artists on Bandcamp, and use free Spotify/YouTube/old stuff I ripped myself from CDs (I'm old). Though honestly I don't have a problem with pirating music that's like 10+ years old. Copyright law is too long.

I don't pirate books. I get them from the library.

I may have downloaded some RPG books because I wanted more of a skim than I could find online, didn't really trust reviewers to have my exact set of preferences, and didn't want to pay the whole amount for a game I wasn't sure I'd like. The ones I did like and use I bought.

I don't really watch anything so it didn't even occur to me to list it.

I will pirate it if it's old (tv series from the 80's, for example) or if I can't get it legally. I live in a country that falls through distribution loopholes moderately often. Like right now, I can't watch the latest season of Lower Decks on prime even though I could the previous ones. Some kind of licensing thing. If it's not resolved soon, I'll be taking to the high seas for it.

Only thing I've pirated was a show with no reasonable means to access it legitimately in my region. Hell, I couldn't even access it via VPN because the services it was on didn't accept my card due to region.

Normally of the mind that if it isn't worth my money it isn't worth my time, but in this case I just wasn't allowed to pay them for it. Hardly my fault when they've gone that far out of their way to block me buying it.

If i don't see the value i'm pirating.

Money is tight, don't expect me to pay for a play button that you'll take away the second i can't spare the money. It means there is no value delivered for my money so i don't have a reason to spend my hard earned money.

Especially when the amouny is as significant as 10/15€. Fuck i would've bought a cd for each month i could spare that money.

If its not multiplayer, why care.

Yes. Because I can't afford either.

I don't care about copyrights, and although I'd agree that I'm not entitled to someone else's work, I'll counterfeit it without a single qualm. I'm poor and would rather not have to choose between being well fed but bored as death, or hungry but entertained/educated. As much as possible, I try to support the little guys though; concretely, I'll eventually buy a game made by Octavi Navarro or Unspeakable Pixels, but Activision won't ever receive a kopeck from me.

I only pirate when the company makes it extremely hard for me to pay for the product or I would be paying for a worse product than if I pirated.

For example, I watch a lot of hockey. The NHL has an idiotic system where I would need to pay for like 4 different services - including cable TV - to watch every game of my favorite team. They would all be in different places, so I would need to figure out where each game is being broadcast, then go to that service. Depending on the broadcaster, the quality may be finished (lower resolution or framerate). If I pirate the games, every game is on the same web page. Every game is 1080p at 60fps. I just click my bookmark and hit play when the game starts.

I'm in a good place financially, and I want to financially support things that I like so I can get more things that I like. But if a company isn't going to make a game available for me to buy, then it's getting pirated (Nintendo, I'm looking at you).

Yes to movies and shows that aren't available on Netflix, Disney, or Amazon. My kids watch a lot of shows on those, so they're worth it, but I refuse to pay for others.

No to everything else.

I don’t pirate at the moment but my philosophy is that if something is not available to buy, it is free to pirate in my book.

Otherwise, every company that makes a game and rakes in more than 100% profit from it is fair game imo. (That would be revenue devided by the engineer’s salaries, machines and office related stuff times 100. explicitly leaving out ceos overinflated salaries. They should not be tax deductible anyway.)