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I have a different opinion entirely: piracy is not like theft, it’s like tax evasion (or, for indie games, like sneaking into a concert without a ticket). It’s a bit stingy, but it’s perfectly understandable in certain cases, and in general not that bad of a thing morally
The mental gymnastics people need to do to feel better about getting something for free against the wishes of the creator is so wild.
Just own it.
My favorite is people who use “archival purposes” as an argument for having a dump of some shit like SMB + Duck Hunt cart for NES. That shit isn’t going anywhere man, you just want to play it for free and that’s ok.
Surely, as in most modern games, the creators exact wishes is that nobody will be able to play it in a few years …
It’s not always against the wishes of the creators. It’s certainly against the wishes of whoever is making money out of it, and fair enough this is sometimes the creator but more often than not we are talking about a middleman, such as a publisher or big entertainment company.
When I see piracy is depriving the creator of revenue directly, it always feels bad to me.
When I see the creatives have been paid already, or have several income streams (and big ones at that too) and the only ones deprived of profit are the middleman companies… Well…
Yeah, “the wishes of the creator” don’t matter. They don’t get to dictate how people use an idea they’ve shared, no matter how elaborate. If they want to keep it private, then don’t share it.
There is no “stealing” when we talk about digital goods, as copying files is virtually free of cost (just a littld bit of electricity).
So if the file gets duplicated and you get the copy you stole nothing.
Piracy is a service issue, plain and simple. It would be all but dead if media companies gave their customers what they actually wanted, but line must go up at the expense of literally everything else.
