Do you believe that pirating is immoral?

[Sir I]

I'm thinking about it today, because of the morality about it. Sure, we'll play the games we love (eg. Touhou Project), but we don't give money to its developers and creators. I had searched if piracy is sinful, and predictably, they say it is. But that doesn't mean all think the same. So, I wonder...

Is it immoral to pirate games? 

Edited August 2, 2023 by Maniac Privateer

[Sir I]

...

Edited August 4, 2023 by Maniac Privateer

[yankop]

There was some discussion about this topic on a previous thread. In my opinion, it's not. And frankly, I don't understand how some people can get so obsessed and start going after people online because of this. Though the reason I feel like that about piracy might be because of my upbringing. Having grown up in the Balkans (just like CountVonNumeron who made the aforementioned thread) where piracy is the norm, it seems completely normal. For example, every single one of my friends has pirated movies and videogames (literally no exception).

[Yumetou]

Valve operates Steam, the largest game distribution platform in the world. Its founder, Gabe Newell, has stated in the past that piracy is a distribution problem, not a criminal problem. And frankly, I would agree with that. I have digital copies of games that I own and enjoy, for no other reason than because digital is a superior format to a cartridge or disk that could be decades old. Mandalore Gaming recently covered an old strategy game, Myth the Fallen Lords. Its last entry was back in...I want to say 2001? The series has had no rereleases since then, and has no (legal) digital distribution. Meaning the only way to legally buy it is to pay an exorbitant price for a secondhand copy which may not even work. The money won't even go to Bungie, the company that made the game, but Take2 because they own the defunct company that distributed it two decades ago.

Games like EoSD or the PC-98 games sit in a similar place. I would be more than willing to pay cold hard cash to Zun for his creations. $10 apiece for games old enough to be in the military. Yet Zun decides to deprive me of this joy. So, I have two choices. The first, I can learn Japanese, then once I learn the language learn kanji (which is much harder than speaking Japanese), then fly thousands of miles to Japan, search geek stores for a CD copy, bring it home, configure my PC to operate with a region-locked game, and *then* play Highly Responsive to Prayers as Zun intended. Or you could download it online in seconds from the comfort of your home and play an enhanced version modified by fans to play better on modern hardware for free. You'll notice how I only mentioned the 'but its free' part at the end.

 

Piracy is theft and theft is stealing. Sure. Its not a good or noble thing to do. Simultaneously, its hardly like these pirates are stealing from the mouths of starving devs constantly. Zun  is hardly going to live on the streets after I pirate a game he refuses to sell. Further, a number of pirates have taken to buying merch in bulk directly from mangakas, anime studios or game developers, as a way of paying for a game that is not for sale. I would definitely support that practice.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Yumetou

[Pepi]

There are some definitive sociocultural influences at play in this discussion.
Just like the case with Yankop and CountVonNumenor in the balkans, here in South America (and Central America too) pirating is the norm, and it's even commercialized with things like street vendors selling illegal copies for almost nothing or bootleg toys being overly abundant (does piracy apply to bootlegs?).
Unrelated to the topic, but those bootleg toys are nightmare fuel, and you should do everything in your power to avoid them.

If your living situation is dire/tight, I find it morally okay to pirate.
Let's say your country is suffering a troublesome inflation, if you decide to do the right thing it's likely that you will cut down on let's say desserts you like in order to reach payday.
But are you going to give up entertainment for your mental sanity? No!

 

Another situations where I find piracy morally correct is either for preservation or when the pirated version gives you a better experience over the official method.

One case that happened to a friend is that he discovered that the best way to enjoy the 90s Sailor Moon anime was to pirate it using a torrent from nyasi that mixed the best quality image with the best quality audio that normally go in different releases, but that are combined in the torrent.

Another case is for example Rockstar with the early GTA's getting some music tracks removed from the remasters, essentially not being remasters anymore.

Would it be a good idea to make a new topic discussing DRM? There are a lot of things to cover there, just this week Google started to put pressure in Chromium (the open source base for Chrome) to include DRM in it, giving google the ability to completely disable ad blockers (they are considered a form of piracy to some, because you are skipping the payment in form of ads).
Something that can completely stop piracy, good or bad, is DRM. It can also potentially harm the right of ownership, what happens if your product depends on a server to unlock the DRM, and the server goes down?

[Sir I]

You know what's funny, I am an African living in a country, while not perfect, is comfortable enough. But the reason I pirate Touhou games is a bit silly. It's because my parents don't want me to waste money on games. Not because we are broke, not because I am in a horrible country. But because they want to spend money on something that's actually worth buying. It is possible to have that reason, right?

Edited August 3, 2023 by Maniac Privateer

[Eulogous]

If the alternative to pirating is jumping through countless hoops for something not in my language, something I need to figure out how to patch, and isn't even marketed or meant for me to play, and I have to pay large amounts of money to obtain legally, then I'd say no. The thing I hate the most when it comes to Touhou specifically is that the communities for the common points of entry are so insistent on making the process of getting into official content the most inconvenient and unpleasant experience it could possibly be. 

The constant whining about piracy is such a First World problem, made by people who can't understand any circumstance or perspective beyond their own.

[Yumetou]

Another thing to bear in mind is the good byproduct of piracy. Preservation. Since I took an interest in Touhou, I have heard numerous different reasons why Zun does not want to republish the PC-98 games. These range from 'He is not proud of them' to 'He was a dumb kid who ripped art from other games and doesn't want to be sued'. One I have heard less is 'He lost the sourcecode'. Meaning the early Touhou games might have been entirely lost. Unable to be published either due to legal issues or coding problems. Thanks to piracy, these games exist for us to enjoy.

This is increasingly becoming the case as hundreds of older console and pc games are discarded. Only 90% of games make any revenue after costs in the modern market. It was probably worse in the 90s when most people had to turn to magazines for gsme recommendations. While for most games, it is because they are shovelware, there are plenty of odd little games that would be entirely forgotten if only legal options were available.

For other games its the only practical option to play it. If I wanted to play Panzer Dragoon legally, I could pay up to $3,000 American for the game alone, plus a Dreamcast to play it on. To the best of my knowledge, it has no rereleases or legal distribution. In America, $3k is a lot of money. About eight days pay at a low end American job. For a poorer country, I imagine that's enough to buy a new car or a house. The idea that I should pay two month's worth of rent and grocery money for a game is ridiculous. A game functionally is just code, and can be replicated infinitely, meaning its value is somewhat artificial. I do want the game makers to be fairly compensated for their work. But why should that money go to a scalper a quarter century after the game was last published?

 

@Maniac Privateer that's rough. Hopefully you'll be able to move out amd buy games you like someday.

[nitorii]

something I don't see people talk about much regarding piracy is that it has a decent to high chance of resulting in a purchase of the original product (if available and not convoluted, like the pc-98 touhou games cited above). for example, you get a pirated game, have a good time with it, but you cannot buy it at the time (be it for monetary reasons, whatever). you can keep enjoying it until you're able to buy it and support the creators. the fact you pirated something at all shows that you have interest in whatever product you may be getting, which is a good thing! piracy is not, and hopefully never will be as bad as people make it out to be, even if it is, well, a crime.

I did this with terraria, tomb raider, ultrakill, the witcher, a hat in time... the list goes on. in some way, even if indirect, you're supporting the creators, so I don't think it's immoral. even if you don't buy something, you can always recommend such product to someone else, which may result in them buying it, so it's still a win for who made it.

[hades]

Everyone in their lives pirated something at least once, the most commonly pirated thing is music but the loudest discusion about piracy is games which mainly are pirated because of two reasons the first one is that the legal product is inferior to illegal one and second one is accesibility/convenience  because most people don't want to open multiple launchers before they can play or find community patches that repairs the game.

Some people pirate just to don't pay for the product or they don't feel confident if they will enjoy it and if they enjoy it but if they enjoy it they will probably become fan of the game/franchise and will want to support creator through some means as buying merchandise or next game/album or even tell other people about it buy them a copy to play together etc. so piracy  isn't as bad as some people play it to be because if person goes through a hoops to pirate the game they weren't going to pay for the product in the first place so...

Creator isn't losing anything in the first place and can gain fan/person which will be supporting his further creations

Edited August 3, 2023 by hades

[Pepi]

11 hours ago, yukayay said:

something I don't see people talk about much regarding piracy is that it has a decent to high chance of resulting in a purchase of the original product (if available and not convoluted, like the pc-98 touhou games cited above).

It's pretty close to being a fact that piracy increases sales, look at this story:
Notch (the creator of Minecraft) has a fair share of critics, but something he did wonderfully was to allow free access to Minecraft in the early days, it was the basis to allow a big jump in popularity and sales.
Meanwhile survival mode was being developed, Minecraft Classic (creative mode) was free, and it was very popular around 2010-2012, increasing the sales a lot.

And once the full game released, there was a "bug" where if you entered any username and a random password at the log in prompt, you could play the game for free, until it was patched in version 1.7 (in late 2013 with the "bug" existing since at least 2011, it also coincided with minecraft's early peak of mainstream popularity).

I was one of those kids who figured the "bug" in the launcher and played for free, and once a fix was announced, I begged my parents to buy Minecraft and they did.

[Sir I]

20 hours ago, Yumetou said:

@Maniac Privateer that's rough. Hopefully you'll be able to move out and buy games you like someday.

Np, and I realized that my father CAN buy me games I just ASK him. It is just I'm not very confident for telling him.

Edited August 4, 2023 by Maniac Privateer

[The_Trader]

On 8/3/2023 at 4:11 AM, yankop said:

There was some discussion about this topic on a previous thread. In my opinion, it's not. And frankly, I don't understand how some people can get so obsessed and start going after people online because of this. Though the reason I feel like that about piracy might be because of my upbringing. Having grown up in the Balkans (just like CountVonNumeron who made the aforementioned thread) where piracy is the norm, it seems completely normal. For example, every single one of my friends has pirated movies and videogames (literally no exception).

Yep here piracy laws are just a piece of paper

Edited August 4, 2023 by Saathi
Spelling

[yankop]

22 hours ago, yukayay said:

even if you don't buy something, you can always recommend such product to someone else, which may result in them buying it, so it's still a win for who made it.

This reminded me of the anti-piracy screen on Just Shapes and Beats. (Timestamp: 0:49)

https://youtu.be/Ae5yV4p7uh8

[Yumetou]

I didn't bring up the idea a pirate's purchase could lead to future purchases in my argument, since there is no real authoritive data I can cite on that. Though that has been a consistent theme from a lot of friends of mine who did pirate. They often became big fans of a game they downloaded online for free, and followed the series for years after. Becoming legitimate customers on the strength of a good game.

 

One thing to bring up as well, an argument against pirating is that piracy leeches into sales of a game, which hurts the company. I recall a story of an indy game which was absurdly pirated, like 80%. I am sure that is somewhat true. But the consensus is that if a game was pirated, that doesn't necessarily translate to a purchase where piracy is not an option. And the amount lost cannot be quantified.

An Ubisoft game on sale for $45 is a lot more expensive than the same game for free. If I pirated the game and played it, and didn't like it, why would I buy it deliberately? I deleted it off my hard drive in a couple hours. If I spent $45 on the game, that is $45 I am not getting back. I can exchange it for store credit, sell it for half price, or return it on Steam after less than two hours. But that's a lot of effort for less money and an underwhelming experience. Meanwhile, if piracy wasn't an option, chances are I just...wouldn't risk my money on it. I would play a friend's copy if I was curious, wait for a sale (potentially just forgetting about the game in the wait) or just write it off altogether. The idea stamping out piracy would mean game sales would rise is a faulty assumption.