Post

While I am by no means generally against IP protections, it is in fact the guardians of it who more closely resemble traditional marauders, which just kind of illustrates the inherent incompatibility of intellectual production with the mechanisms of capitalism

information wants to be free

Yeah, "piracy isn't a lost sale," obvs. But all the "piracy is good, actually" logic is people (ironically) platforming market economics, marketing, and supply/demand priorities, when what we should be doing is destroying capitalism altogether.

yeah i'm looking into how to get my own games on torrenting sites even as a safer way of keeping it accessible. Itch goes down every so often and steam only sells licenses to games

I remember someone else saying the same thing some years ago when asked about why he allows free streaming of his music on his personal website (pre-spotify) and he said "the people that don't want to pay for it won't, but having it freely available means more people will hear it"

I do miss TB, but sometimes he really kinda missed the mark on some subjects.

I recently saw a post from Bruce Sterling, who'd been approached by a publisher to reprint an old story about Russian data pirates. He didn't have a copy anymore to send, but Russian data pirates did and were thrilled to help him out

I did this too for my recent launch and one of the pirates actually interviewed me for a Russian online games website afterwards (he had since bought the game) and it was 100% the right way to go. Always better to lean into it.

Hell triangle service did this for the Dreamcast version of trizeal and it worked too.

i wasn't quite aware of that until this very thread, so you're not the only one

TB had a lot of good takes, but he sure had some real stinkers too. Still died way too young while a lot of genuinely awful people face no hardships.

I remember when Hotline Miami came out I went to pirate it and found the devs in the comments of the torrent confirming bugs they were aware of and indicating when they were likely to be patched. Bought the game as soon as I got paid next.

Honestly its why i love indie games where they have in game messages that are like "hey so im cool with you pirating the game but I'd appreciate it if you supported me in other ways or buy it when you have a chance

DRM is made by people who have no honor, and project it onto all users.

I've had the opposite of the "grody older brother" one. My copy of Fallout 2 (from a magazine) got a crack in the disc from playing so much, and my cousin burned me a copy of his so that I could still play. I still have both discs, of course.

I pirate when I can't spend money on games. So I wouldn't be spending money if I couldn't pirate. When I have money though, I buy plenty. There are many games I go back and buy because I love them so much. I have almost 1500 games on Steam. I can't really buy games atm, but I'm sure I will again.

I saw this game a bit ago and you woulda already had my money if it would run on my current setup. Sadly, current setup is MacOS.

Oooooh ty, I definitely will.

Ah totalbiscuit. Misogynist, homophobe, general bigot extraordinaire. Pity Twitch let him be the LUL emote.

One time someone tried to gotcha me with "if you are making a game critical of capitalism why are you selling it FOR MONEY?" so I told him to pirate it and see if I cared :P

His usual position then

he professionally sucked

Wasn't that the British guy that was experiencing frequent abdominal pain and bloody and black, tarry stool and didn't think to go to the doctor for a year then it turned out it was too late to treat his bowel cancer?

The idea that you have *lost* millions of dollars because that many (mostly unverifiable anyway) instances of piracy allegedly occurred is just insane...wait til you hear from the Stats Genie the total number of sales you have failed to make in general, you're gonna Flip Out

I feel people who work in marketing tend to think only from that perspective and consider what they do to be contributing greatly to some large and noble cause, forgetting the fact that marketing/advertising are draft in the wake of other creative endeavors that seek to make/express something new

wasn't that the guy who had a huge youtube channel / stream of undisclosed native advertising

He sure was a dude

lol really

Your little message has me thinking of the copy protection spiel found in the readme TXT file on the SimFarm CD: ia801602.us.archive.org/view_archive...

You can also create open-source games For instance, I'm working on one There are good games out there

that's a good point. you're not even helping to pay the wages of the people that made the game anymore, which is literally the only reason I *ever* would have decried practice piracy. if I'm only paying the wages of the CEOs, then fuck it. Yo ho yo ho, me mateys

I think about this sort of thing sometimes. On the one hand, I don't believe that someone is entitled to the fruits of my or others' hard work just because. But on the other hand, I remember when I was a kid and didn't have money for stuff. Free and "free" games exposed me to a lot of new ideas.

This is essentially Patreon, before it's time. Both work on the honor system.

Some real impressive "I consent, I consent, I don't" energy to that annecdote... and everything else I can think of involving that particular individual come to think.

Helped out way too many people that literally were taking pictures of themselves beside their day one copy of a game we'd released that was failing on copy protection for some reason and seeds were planted.

Often countries get reputations for piracy because it's impossible to find software that's region priced fairly there so they pirate everything. GOG got their start trying to sell fairly priced physical game media in Poland because they saw the potential market.

I always say steam is the most anti-piracy thing out there. "Anti" as in opposite. Piracy is when you play games you didn't buy. Steam is where you buy games you never play.

Back around 2000 when Napster was big, it was so easy to search for a band I loved, and find the accounts hosting that band's entire discography. I'd go to their profile and see what other bands they were into. I discovered SO much new music that way. Never spent more money on music before or after.

the very few games I was able to pirate back in the day cuz i had a mac, I have bought again, and again for every single console ever since cuz of my love for those games and their developers. I was just a poor student at the time lol