IDK why ppl keep hating on this site for "piracy"

[deactivated1923712893210]

Recently, if I even bring up the name Moriya Shrine DOT org to my friends that play Touhou, I recieve hate for it. I understand that it can be considered piracy, but what if I simply can't afford the games?? Plus most of the Steam versions of Touhou are entirely in Japanese! The other day at school, I mentioned being a member of this site to my only IRL friend that likes Touhou and he immediately got mad at me and switched the topic to the Touhou wiki. Why are people mad at us?! Again, even if there's a chance we are pirating, we can't afford the games in most cases!! If you're mad about that or at me, for not giving any money to ZUN, I own real authentic fumos now. And those are just as expensive as the games. You may be thinking... "well, why not just buy the games already if you have enough money for the fumos?" The games aren't as accessable to those living in the West who don't know Japanese very well/are completely unfamiliar with it. I don't understand the hate given to this forum... Anyway, Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukah

[potatolover]

Despite this website having a forum, it's main activity still is piracy.
Even ignoring the main games, the website is distributing free copies of paid products made by people, and a lot of them aren't from zun. (downloads > fancontent)
Since this is the main image of the website, it is understandable why people would come to despise it.
I remember this website always being seen in a bad light, despite being somewhat essential before, but, now that the DMCA strike happened, people are more vocal and direct about their hate for piracy, as they do not want the "touhou community" to be associated with piracy.
This is also reinforced by the fact more and more games are available on Steam, which means that should have no trouble getting the games by paying for them.
Of course, not all of the games are on steam, and they do not come pre-patched the same way they do on moriyashrine, which means you are expected to use thcrap by yourself(really impressive work on their part in my opinion).
I would like to know, do your friends play the games, or any fan games?
If so, how did they get them?
Do they also listen to pirated music on youtube, when the albums are mostly supposed to be paid for, or do they pay for the albums?
Happy Holidays and have a good day.

[Eulogous]

I'm getting the weird feeling of Deja Vu with this topic

People often look through the lens of a perfect world, where everyone has money, accessibility, and the patience to go through every step, and then cast judgement towards those who don't fit in their rigid view of how things should be. I doubt most of these people have even played any official Touhou game, so it'd sure be easy to just be the outsider looking inwards, nodding and going "Yes, piracy bad" without any context of why anyone does it in the first place.

[_.Mevs]

Pretty simple answer

They don't look outside their shells

Thanks to piracy, people like me that don't wanna buy the game or don't have the condition (here in Brazil, it has pretty abusive prices) get the chance to play touhou, without counting that in some countries like here, Touhou doesn't even appear in the steam shop, only some fangames like Luna Nights

As a new touhou fan, i have to say, thanks to this site i had the chance to play amazing games, not only the Windows but also the PC-98 ones, and i doubt those reddit idiots would pay a lot of money for a old PC-98 and spend other lots of money into PC-98 disks

Like potatolover said, if the world is so perfect and everyone can just buy the original thing, why don't they buy the music albums instead of listen to them on youtube?

People nowadays just join a certain group and think they have the right to judge other ones, Moryia Shrine isn't just a piracy site, the forum is amazing, they only don't see it because they don't want to

The people that complain about Moryia are the same guys that complain about pirating Nintendo games, they're the pure juice of "nooooo don't pirate my millionaire company" (i know Touhou is a indie game, but come on, some dudes pirating some of the games won't break the market, Zun is still making thousands of money with the Steam content)

Several people here played the pirate versions first and then bought the games, we're not ruining the market, we're just opening it to more people, is basically a favor to Zun since a lot of people started getting into Touhou thanks to it and even bought original content, for them, everyone should have the same condition to get all the games and that's it, like if everyone had a lot of money to spend on things like games

Btw, Moryia Shrine isn't only about Touhou and pirating Touhou games, there's a whole community behind it, with amazing people that made me enjoy Touhou way more

The community here is way healthier than the ones of people that complain about us, but for them we're the villains of the history because we did pirate some games, like, i never saw fights or bunches of l0li henta1 here the same way i saw in the other fandoms, they're absolutely worse, the only difference is that they got some cash in their wallets

 

[CountVonNumenor]

On the problem of pirated games. I admit that I do have an illegal copy of PCB from this website I downloaded long before the DMCA (I think 2 years ago), and that was my first taste of bullet hell games. Given that experience, I am feeling quite hesitant to actually buy any of the games, fearing they might just end up on a shelf, without me touching them. In a way, I think it actually saved me from doing an expense I may have not enjoyed in the long run (this does not mean I will not try come back to it one day...).

Anyway, the idea is that when I buy a game (which is very rare), I want to make sure of two things: 1) I will enjoy the game and 2) have the replay-ability and feeling I want to get back to it (not just get bored once I finished it, if I can finish the game of course), therefore feeling the money was well spent. In the case of official Touhou games, I have not felt that yet. I suck at bullet hell, and my experience with one fan-game (albeit with clunky controls for keyboard) proved that it is doubtful I would enjoy both fighter games and side-scroller platform games as well. And at almost 13 Euro for each of the games here in Romania, it is still an expense I need to consider before actually taking it.  

And to not call myself a complete pest towards ZUN, I have to say one thing: I HAVE BOUGHT THE FULL FORBIDDEN SCROLLERY SERIES. I have initially bought Volume 3 as a gimmick, thinking I could give the series a shot. And after I finished reading it, I actually ended up loving the series as I bought more and more volumes. Just less than 3 week ago, I have become the proud owner of the full series in printed, paperback format. In total, I have spent about 469 RON (Romanian currency) on all 7 volumes, or roughly the equivalent of 100 US dollars. So now am I am still a pest for the fandom given I am associated with this place? Maybe. But at least I know (or at least hope so) that I managed to support ZUN by buying some official product I ended up enjoying a lot. 

Now time to go back robbing ZUN and the fan circles who compose music or fan games by watching some quality content on YouTube
 

51 minutes ago, _.Mevs said:

The community here is way healthier than the ones of people that complain about us, but for them we're the villains of the history because we did pirate some games, like, i never saw fights or bunches of l0li henta1 here the same way i saw in the other fandoms, they're absolutely worse, the only difference is that they got some cash in their wallets

Oh don't worry, nobody in this fandom will ever question the issue of needless community drama, the great rift between the JP (pretty much its own thing) and overall global Touhou communities, the fact that despite a niche fandom, we are still very divided, loli hentai and all the disgusting stuff because we all know how the Touhou Fans be Like

54 minutes ago, _.Mevs said:

As a new touhou fan, i have to say, thanks to this site i had the chance to play amazing games, not only the Windows but also the PC-98 ones, and i doubt those reddit idiots would pay a lot of money for a old PC-98 and spend other lots of money into PC-98 disks

I have already talked about the PC-98 DMCA issue in the other thread of this kind, together with very much the source material for all the debacle. And before that, I think it might have been Tenkko who was the first one to notice and write a thread on the same issue back in spring.