Pointing this out isn’t clever.
Software piracy satisfies the colloquial understanding of theft as the act of obtaining something without paying for it, but not the colloquial understanding of theft as the act of depriving someone else of the thing you’ve obtained. Purchasing a software license satisfies the colloquial definition of ownership as the right to do something after having paid for that right, but not the colloquial understanding of ownership as the right to do anything you want with what you have purchased. Software piracy isn’t theft in the legal sense, and purchasing a software license is not a transfer of ownership in the legal sense.
Memes like this are just pointless quibbling over words (barely more sophisticated than “You’re a doodoohead!” “No, you’re the doodoohead times a thousand!”) and contain zero insight into the morality or legality of software piracy or software licensing.
But while you’ve eloquently pointed out the inherent flaw in the definitions we use in this discussion, i could use your same argument against you, reducing your argument to:
“I don’t like this meme”
Because memes, sayings, chants, etc exist to boil down a nuanced concept into a quick statement of belief, you could nitpick em, all of em all day, and while a little mental flaggelation is fun we’d have spent that day missing the point.
Pedantica aside, do you disagree with the meaning behind the saying?
You do realize you’re in the programming humor community, right?
their lawyers would probably argue that it’s the “unlawful interception of a service”, but i don’t care.
If you buy someone’s services, then those services end at a point. You don’t own them or that service forever. That’s ridiculous.
I feel this phrase that took off grossly oversimplifies the issue.
The real argument is that games should be seen and treated as a good, not a service.
Users expect to buy a game, a product, not a service. There are enough examples always needing to be online games where local single player stops working when sunsetting the server or just a connection issue.
Games as a service is a scam.
*publishers
*Game publishers
I don’t think it should be the devs getting angry, rather the execs
For real most devs are just happy you enjoy their work.
The only ones losing money are shareholders and they barely lose enough to make a trickle of a dent.
there’s no evidence they’re losing money. the assumption that piracy is lost sales is one made by execs and we all know they don’t know their asses from their elbows.
It depends, small indie games teams usually suffer from this. Big houses that screw over players, those can go fuck themselves.
Have you noticed, nowadays, games from such “big houses” tend to be not even worth pirating?
Just a major waste of time.Yeah, there’s not always a clean separation between execs and devs, even if that’s politically inconvenient.
I’m going to go ahead and say that digital markets are still broken, and the solution definitely isn’t what the big execs want, either, but “everyone pirates everything” isn’t going to work if you like the present variety and quality of videogames available.
Yeah, drm-free storefronts like GOG are the best solution I think. I love Steam and Proton, but if Valve ever goes public that would all change for the worse.
Do devs get paid royalties? If not, why would they be mad at something that doesn’t affect them?
Only if they’re independent developers of the game, which is why you shouldn’t pirate little indie games. Otherwise they already got paid as much as they’re gonna get paid, only people losing money when you pirate a game are the executives.
Sometimes. Those can get canceled when they layoff the team after release.
Who are the real pirates?
s/developers/publishers/
Also, not sure how this is programming related 🤷
Look for games that are sold DRM free. Those can’t be taken from you by devs or the store after backed up. And usually devs and/or stores that deliberately sell such games also make it clear people can keep their games.
I hate this phrase because it assumes that copyright infringement was at one point the same as stealing - it never was.
Stealing is a crime, where you take with the intent to deprive. Copyright infringement is a civil offense where the original owner loses nothing.
But see you’re thinking about it the wrong way… Every one of those pirated copies is 100% a potential sale lost.
Won’t you think of the shareholders?
/s
I don’t think that that’s necessarily true. Let’s say someone designs a rucksack because they find the existing options on the market uncomfortable. They produce them on a small scale and they get fairly popular. Then Amazon sees it, copies it, mass produces it for less than the original designer could, and makes sure that any time someone searches for a rucksack on Amazon their version appears first in the list. I think it’s reasonable to say that the original designer lost something there
That doesn’t mean copyright can’t be or isn’t abused, of course
You’re saying that like it isn’t already rampant. IP laws are a textbook example of classist disenfranchisement. It’s a rule for which the capitalists are protected and not bound by, but which workers are bound by and do not receive those protections.
I chose Amazon and a bag design as the example specifically because it’s a real story (although not a rucksack, I misremembered that part)
And what was the outcome of this IP theft? A video mocking a multi billion dollar corporation? They took down the specific product called out, but they still make extremely similar dslr bags to peak Design and they’re definitely still copying other companies designs. This is my point. IP laws only benefit the billionaire class and fuck over everyone else.
They’ve lost potential revenue, but that is not the same as if amazon would come to their house and had stolen their only rucksack prototype.
Potential revenue is not your property.
It still sucks though.
Potential revenue isn’t, but intellectual property is. At least in most current legal systems, it is
And that’s why copyright infringement is a crime, just not the same crime as theft.
Ah, but they didn’t lose the exact item that the thief gained. For legal purposes, that’s important; nobody could be charged with larceny.
IANAL
There are only a few things that will make me buy a game without a second thought.
- a game by Capcom,
- a game by Kojima,
- “Overwhelmingly Positive” reviews on Steam,
- a Bundle with the game and all DLCs for under $10,
- a game with a notoriously large modding community,
- a game that a friend what’s to play in coop.
That’s about it, everything else is pirate first and if it’s actually something I’ll play I buy the game for real. I’m 400+ games deep in my Steam library of which I have maybe 20 actually completed and 5 that I regularly play. That’s literally thousands of dollars down the drain.
In my opinion that’s a pretty generous list of reasons to buy a game without much further questioning or research. I think the last game I almost immediately bought ~10 minutes after hearing about it was YOMI Hustle for $5 in May of last year.
That said, looking through my purchase history I can tell you that the amount I have spent on Warframe, a F2P game, is vile.
When something is available DRM-free on GOG I don’t scrutinize it so closely.
How’s this programmer humor?
Let’s not be angry at the Devs, it’s the publishers and other execs we should be pissed at :-(
Devs should be angry as well, kinda hard to get paid when your employer doesn’t have revenues.
Are the devs volunteers? Yeah, the publishers take a lot of money, but if the games are all being pirated then the devs could get 100% and still make less money.
Whatever you do, don’t use G2A and other similar CD key reseller websites. Developers would rather you just pirate the game because a lot of those keys are stolen, which cause a charge back that ends up costing the developers tens of thousands of dollars in fees. In rare cases it has even bankrupt them.
Whatever you do, don’t use G2A and other similar CD key reseller websites
For indie games, sure, I always just buy those legit.
But some EA / Ubisoft game; I rather pay $5 on G2A than risk accidentally downloading a malware infected crack
Pirating is stealing the owners right to distribution.
Keep on pretending like you aren’t affecting the salary and lives of artists.
Piracy is not stealing. Piracy affects artists.
These two statements can and do coexist.
Do you think everybody works on a game pro bono until it releases and makes a profit? Artists and Devs are all either commissioned or salaried employees. By the time the game releases everybody who put in any effort has long been paid. You’re effectively stealing management bonuses, shareholder dividends and most importantly the budget for a sequel or longterm support.
More like gaming executives
