Always pirate every video game you can/never support any developer

[Rand]

Comics were also huge. Every Marvel comic was selling 100,000 issues PER month, and they were sold on newstands at the local store where mom and dad could see them. Now? Dead industry in the West, where Marvel is lucky if an issue sells 5,000 copies, and they are sold in some comics shop run by a fat smelly guy in an alley on the bad side of town no parent would ever want to drive their kids to. Marvel Comics and DC are propped up to extract IPs from for use in making movies.

And yet, as far as I know, the manga industry is booming despite automated translation and file sharing being easier than ever. The state of current year western comics is well known: they've become wordy leftist propaganda pieces that nobody wants to read. This tells me that the problem is the quality of the product, not piracy.

The root problem is allowing women into your industry.

The root problem is allowing women into your industry.
(And the soy beta's deference to them in the eternal pursuit of pussy and love from mommy.)

[A Chinese opium den]

And yet, as far as I know, the manga industry is booming despite automated translation and file sharing being easier than ever. The state of current year western comics is well known: they've become wordy leftist propaganda pieces that nobody wants to read. This tells me that the problem is the quality of the product, not piracy.

The root problem is allowing women into your industry.

yeah, like the famously woman-free manga industry

No, I agree for the most part, but terrible choice of example!

No one reads anything made by women.

[jcd]

I used to think that years ago but now I think that if you even look at the prices of videogames you must be poor.

[monkeyfist]

I used to think that years ago but now I think that if you even look at the prices of videogames you must be poor.

Only poors play games. Musk even pays ***** to play for him.

[Tweed]

The only things I'm even thinking of paying money for right now is the DLC for Bloodstained because I'm gay for Iga and Songs of Syx.

[Oyster Sauce]

The root problem is allowing women into your industry.

yeah, like the famously woman-free manga industry

No, I agree for the most part, but terrible choice of example!

No one reads anything made by women.

iconic niche low-rated series, fullmetal alchemist

[Demonic Fate]

I understand the sentiment and I even used to be more inclined to do so in the past.
But nowadays, I'd much rather support someone or something I like through crowdfunding than "buying" the privilege to copypaste a folder from a storefront's servers to my PC.

This is my feeling exactly.

Whether devs are good or bad, I feel gross paying for a "service" that is 100% artificial scarcity, since torrents don't even require a server to distribute the files. I do the same for music, which is perhaps a better example because it's a lot easier to be sure that a musician is a cool guy you'd be happy to support. Paying for a concert or a t-shirt? I am exchanging money for goods and services, that's fine. Paying to download the MP3 that - if you're actually an artist - you wanted to create yourself? No thanks.

Now, yes, creating a game in the first place costs money, and for that reason I think crowdfunding is great - you're pooling money to create something that would not exist if someone didn't put the money into it. But once the work has been completed, any further payments are just artificial scarcity, and you should pirate if they try to charge you. "Intellectual property" is a nasty concept, but even if you choose to accept it, the game is the "property" of the crowd that funded it, not of the devs who got paid to make it, at a price they themselves set and accepted.

Imagine building a statue in an ideal high-trust town square. A sculptor proposes a design, the townspeople mostly like it, so they pitch in various amounts of money to pay for the marble and for the sculptor's effort. Maybe the guys who really liked it and pitched 20 times as much as others get their names on a small plaque at the bottom or whatever. Anyway, it's cool, the statue gets built, everybody is getting a fair deal.

Then the sculptor says "Thanks for the money! Since the statue is my design, I'm now going to charge 5 gold pieces to everybody who walks through the town square and looks at my statue. Forever."

This is how art gets "sold" in the era of digital, zero-cost reproduction.

Back when reproduction was mechanical - not yet zero-cost, but already indistinguishable from the original - that old **** Benjamin tried to preserve the artificial scarcity, value, and prestige of art with his ******** talmudic wordplay around "aura". It's been 90 years since then; we should have learned to see through those Jewish rhetorical tricks.

[Valter]

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[Vergil]

Bomb *** thread can't believe I missed this one.

[Vergil]

No one reads anything made by women.

I almost exclusively read things written by women unfortunately

[DemoGraph]

We live a time where because entertainment is so easily accessible, people undervalue art and the amount of time and effort required to produce it.

Well, historically, the majority of people were so poor that the only art they could access was the interior of their local church.

The root problem is allowing women into your industry.

Like the industry of breeding and baby upbringing?

[Tangerine]

Like the industry of breeding and baby upbringing?

Breeding is not an industry. Outsourced baby upbringing is a horrible industry staffed primarily by women, so yes.

[Havitner]

image0-43.webp

[LemonDemonGirl]

Apparently the FnF devs are ok with their game being pirated

[sheet]

You can get corporate excess hard drives on ebay for cheap.

There's always more TV shows to binge, more movies for movie night, if that's your thing, they don't take much time. However there's enough classic games with long enough playtime to fill a lifetime, so with no improvement being made, there's zero need for anything new.

[DemoGraph]

Like the industry of breeding and baby upbringing?

Breeding is not an industry.

But all of us are its product.

[rusty_shackleford]

Unless a developer is willing to post here so I can use it as blackmail to force them to not add gay sex scenes to their next game they will get exactly $0 from me.

[Vaako]

If most games still came physical and they would work without patches yes. But thats not the case anymore. And I already regreted purchasing cyberpunk and kcd1 at fullprice, even if I "tested" kcd1 before and only bought the fullversion with all dlcs. I would support japanese stuff more, but this stuff is just too expensive. I recently thought about buying the dragonball series on dvd physical for my nephew but 25 episodes cost like $60 so the whole thing would cost like $300+ or same for the berserk movies the prices are also tripple of that what I am willing to spend on a movie. ($15-20 max) And the 3 movies cost like $120 new. Even used at $100. Then I rather spend my money on other stuff which isnt entertainment.

[Dract1969]

I understand the sentiment and I even used to be more inclined to do so in the past.
But nowadays, I'd much rather support someone or something I like through crowdfunding than "buying" the privilege to copypaste a folder from a storefront's servers to my PC.

This is my feeling exactly.

Whether devs are good or bad, I feel gross paying for a "service" that is 100% artificial scarcity, since torrents don't even require a server to distribute the files. I do the same for music, which is perhaps a better example because it's a lot easier to be sure that a musician is a cool guy you'd be happy to support. Paying for a concert or a t-shirt? I am exchanging money for goods and services, that's fine. Paying to download the MP3 that - if you're actually an artist - you wanted to create yourself? No thanks.

Now, yes, creating a game in the first place costs money, and for that reason I think crowdfunding is great - you're pooling money to create something that would not exist if someone didn't put the money into it. But once the work has been completed, any further payments are just artificial scarcity, and you should pirate if they try to charge you. "Intellectual property" is a nasty concept, but even if you choose to accept it, the game is the "property" of the crowd that funded it, not of the devs who got paid to make it, at a price they themselves set and accepted.

Imagine building a statue in an ideal high-trust town square. A sculptor proposes a design, the townspeople mostly like it, so they pitch in various amounts of money to pay for the marble and for the sculptor's effort. Maybe the guys who really liked it and pitched 20 times as much as others get their names on a small plaque at the bottom or whatever. Anyway, it's cool, the statue gets built, everybody is getting a fair deal.

Then the sculptor says "Thanks for the money! Since the statue is my design, I'm now going to charge 5 gold pieces to everybody who walks through the town square and looks at my statue. Forever."

This is how art gets "sold" in the era of digital, zero-cost reproduction.

Back when reproduction was mechanical - not yet zero-cost, but already indistinguishable from the original - that old **** Benjamin tried to preserve the artificial scarcity, value, and prestige of art with his ******** talmudic wordplay around "aura". It's been 90 years since then; we should have learned to see through those Jewish rhetorical tricks. If you do want to pay and support creators in a secure way, using reliable online payment systems is key. They make it easy and safe to exchange money globally, ensuring your contributions go directly where intended.

I totally get where you're coming from. Once a digital product exists, the marginal cost of distributing it is basically zero, so charging for it after the fact can feel like artificial scarcity. Crowdfunding makes sense because it helps fund the creation of something that wouldn’t exist otherwise, but ongoing payments for completed work can feel less justified.

I think it comes down to how you view the relationship between creators and the audience. Supporting artists or developers voluntarily, buying merch, attending events, or even donating can feel like a fair exchange, whereas paying for something purely because it’s artificially scarce can seem exploitative.

It’s definitely a tricky ethical area in the digital age, and I can see why people feel frustrated with traditional models of digital distribution.

[rusty_shackleford]

@Stack of Turtles I know

[Acrux]

I also know that post was written by an LLM.

[WhiteShark]

You can't buy something digital in the first place. It's a donation, always has been. I'm not wholly against donating to devs, but it's safer not to for the reasons given in the OP. I'm not even really against donating to devs who silently hate me as long as they don't air their political views and keep making good games, but I understand wanting to draw the line more strictly. It's all academic for me anyway because I don't have any spare money to donate.

[Oyster Sauce]

You can't buy something digital in the first place. It's a donation

@rusty_shackleford thoughts?

[rusty_shackleford]

You can't buy something digital in the first place. It's a donation

@rusty_shackleford thoughts?

You are purchasing a very valuable non transferable HQ Platinum, this is not a donation, we are not a charity.

[Norfleet]

There is only one reason to spend money on something if you're not otherwise forced to do so: Control. If you are not being forced to spend money on something and spending money on it does not grant you any control over it, then you should never. It's that simple: Apply this logic to every financial transaction, period. If you buy a physical item, you gain control of that item. If you hire a lackey, you control that lackey. If you buy a game (and you certainly don't have to, as a man of the sea), what do you gain control of? Nothing. Therefore, never buy.

Control is the only thing that matters.

[methoxetamine]

There is only one reason to spend money on something if you're not otherwise forced to do so: Control. If you are not being forced to spend money on something and spending money on it does not grant you any control over it, then you should never. It's that simple: Apply this logic to every financial transaction, period. If you buy a physical item, you gain control of that item. If you hire a lackey, you control that lackey. If you buy a game (and you certainly don't have to, as a man of the sea), what do you gain control of? Nothing. Therefore, never buy.

Control is the only thing that matters.

For a split second since Control was capitalized I thought you were saying you should spend money on the game Control, I was going to say giving Remedy money is a bold strategy for someone who doesn't want to support faggy devs

Solid advice though

[Vaako]

There is only one reason to spend money on something if you're not otherwise forced to do so: Control. If you are not being forced to spend money on something and spending money on it does not grant you any control over it, then you should never. It's that simple: Apply this logic to every financial transaction, period. If you buy a physical item, you gain control of that item. If you hire a lackey, you control that lackey. If you buy a game (and you certainly don't have to, as a man of the sea), what do you gain control of? Nothing. Therefore, never buy.

Control is the only thing that matters.

Correct, but if everyone did that you would also never see sequels to games you enjoy. So pirate and give good word of mouth so others buy it I guess...

[Norfleet]

Correct, but if everyone did that you would also never see sequels to games you enjoy.

Codswallop. You act as if games would stop being made if there was no commercial market for them at all. This is obviously *********, since in the Good Old Days, games existed even though NOBODY ever got paid to make them, and this is still the case. You wouldn't see AAA slop, for sure. But **** would still get made.

[WhiteShark]

Correct, but if everyone did that you would also never see sequels to games you enjoy.

Codswallop. You act as if games would stop being made if there was no commercial market for them at all. This is obviously *********, since in the Good Old Days, games existed even though NOBODY ever got paid to make them, and this is still the case. You wouldn't see AAA slop, for sure. But **** would still get made.

They would be made, but not necessarily the ones that he specifically wants made. There are specific devs whom I want to keep making games in their specific styles, and i assume the same is true of @Vaako.

[Vaako]

Correct, but if everyone did that you would also never see sequels to games you enjoy.

Codswallop. You act as if games would stop being made if there was no commercial market for them at all. This is obviously *********, since in the Good Old Days, games existed even though NOBODY ever got paid to make them, and this is still the case. You wouldn't see AAA slop, for sure. But **** would still get made.

You would probably only see more AAA slop then. Since the fanboys/normies who buy **** like every call of duty or fifa would only keep that industry afloat. They dont play anything else and never learn.