based
image:
screenshot of a Tweet from Running With Scissors reading
“We’ve been told our games are too expensive in some countries but we’ve been using Steam’s recommended pricing for a while. We trust Valve enough to not change this. If our games are still too expensive for you, you can pirate them until you have enough to support us.”
I have to imagine a comment like this does absolutely nothing to their sales figures. People who were going to download a cracked version of their games anyway remain unaffected now that they have a blessing, and I doubt people who weren’t going to pirate would now feel more inclined to do so.
This seems like good PR and frankly it should probably be the default position for games studios.
Yeah, the whole piracy crackdown situation is so stupid.
I pirate a lot of media, if you added it all up it would be a lot of money (if I was to buy everything). The difference is, before I pirated I barely bought any of the media.
- I pirate some games that i’d never buy. I buy all games I want to support.
- I pay TV licence, netflix and amazon. I pirate tons of TV series because they aren’t on those services. I literally can’t buy some of them and if I could i’d need about 10 different streaming services.
- Films, I pirate a lot of films. Before I pirated I never bought any films, i’d either wait for netflix/normal TV or just not watch them. I still go to the cinema for big releases.
- I subscribe on patreon, github and donate to LOADS of projects, many of which i’ve pirated first or obtained a copy of (books are a big one here).
If you were to objectively look at the value of the pirated media, it would seem that i’ve “stolen” or studios have missed out on lots of revenue, but the truth is I pirate a lot of media, just because I can.
It’s the streaming part for me.
Few years ago there was Netflix and Film1 in our country and an ISP with TV that also had a movie service.
That was about it.
Now there’s Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max, SkyShowtime, Apple TV+ and ViaPlay added to it.
It’s impossible to have have just 1 and view what you want. Ofcourse you can keep on switching but some of them but it’s all just making it more complicated.
Solution? Pirate it. One source and everything available even stuff that isn’t on any on those services.
Also some movies can’t be bought digital.
IMO all movies and series should be available on any platform and let the streaming service decide if they want to have it in their portfolio. Only the “originals” should be locked to a platform to keep stuff unique.
And make every damn movie and series available for purchase.
IMO all movies and series should be available on any platform and let the streaming service decide if they want to have it in their portfolio. Only the “originals” should be locked to a platform to keep stuff unique.
That’s just cable though. Not sure that’ll be any better. The second a company sees a revenue stream or thinks they’re missing out. They monetise it to the detriment of the customers.
Just adding on to this, every game I’ve ever pirated I ended up buying later on. Or I bought in the past (this applies to the games I emulate)
I would say 80% of the games I pirate, I put less than 30 mins into it.
Before this tweet, they also mentioned piracy over grey market keyshops, which seems to be a lot more of a valid reason to endorse it. This seemly links to that tweet.
It won’t have a large effect, but in previous examples of companies doing this, comments would lead me to believe more people who pirated end up buying the game to support the devs after trying it. It makes sense too, but same pirates are unlikely to buy anything that had denuvo and stuff shoved into it.
I was going to say, all artists should share this position, but I’ll do one better: if you don’t have this position, you’re not an artist. Feels bold to make any absolute claim about what makes an artist, but I feel safe on this one. If making sure you’re fairly compensated is higher priority than sharing your art, then you’re not an artist.
I wish more companies did this; however, I believe most CEO’s have the biased view that everyone has at least some money to spare which, as you probably know (likely on personal level), isn’t true.
I understand that participating in cultural aspects of society must cost money due to the very nature of economics (if you want the artist to continue to make art, make sure they don’t starve to death) but ‘pirating’ things is there not only as a stop gap to terrible service and personal risk (privacy violations, etc.), but also as an equalizer between those that have, and those that don’t.
If I made enough that I didn’t have to worry about money while working full time, I’d be much more inclined to spend money on arts and entertainment. As it stands, my entertainment budget is almost entirely going to get food I don’t have to make myself.
But until society shifts focus to living wages (and not just enough to live, but enough to thrive)…… welp. Maybe those ceos should think on that, and start paying better.
Definitely. I recall a time in my life where I was working while still living with my parents. Needless to say I had A LOT of money I didn’t know what to do with. I ended up with about 2 storage bins of books and CD’s. I eventually got rid of them when computers became much more capable, but I think I would still buy them if I had extra income. I doubt I will though for at least another 2 decades, considering all the student debt I have. Who would’ve thought that loading people with crippling financial debt would be bad for the economy?
This approach makes so much sense from a business perspective.
How many here have this experience: out of my entire friend group that I grew up playing video games with, I can’t think of a single person who kept pirating games after acquiring disposable income, even though we all exclusively played pirated games as teenagers. Without piracy, none of us would have had access to any games, and very likely none of us would still be into gaming today, spending probably thousands of euros every year on games, consoles, PC components, etc.
I miss the era of freeware and demos. Give me a taste with no strings attached and you are far more likely to get my money at some point.
Yeah it’s a shame demos died out. Now studios (or publishers, more likely) just expect everyone to pay for a game they don’t even know they’ll like, and tough shit if you don’t like it.
A lot of indie games on steam still do demos actually but yeah shitty that AAA games don’t do them anymore.
Huh, I haven’t run into an indie with a demo recently, but it’s definitely great to hear that demos are still a thing in the wider indie scene.
The last Steam Next Fest in June had so many demos, I only had time for like 4-5. There were quite a few posts and comments (including mine) on the demos we tried.
During the many steam festivals, there will be indie games with demos.
They want people to buy before they know what is like so they don’t have a chance to reconsider or regret it. This is why they hype preorders.
But so many games still have demos? I feel like it’s probably more that they’re cheap and don’t see a reason to pay whatever it costs to throw a demo together for free
Like people have been pointing out, it’s usually indies which don’t have an establish audience yet that do this. It’s much rarer for triple A games.
Demos have returned, on PC at least.
“Steam Next Fest” are events when devs launch demost for their upcoming projects. it’s like 3 or 4 times per year
I love Next Fest, I usually end up wishlisting like 3-10 games. Lots of good stuff that I’d never know or care about otherwise.
I know of a certain former boss of mine who, after becoming a millionaire by side-lining the whole (game!) company and selling it to random yanks who didn’t know WTF to do with it, still continued to pirate games. While moving into the most expensive quarter of the city – by renting a house there.
But sane people without a cocaine habit, sure, yes.
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I’m getting old … what does this mean and why is it objectionable? Google suggests it means they have strong character, which seems like a fair assessment.
What I understand this originates from is “not based on anything”, so essentially bucking the trend or the norm. Doing things not because something or someone told them.
It’s 4chan type of language, itself an alt-right cesspool.
Gotcha… From reading all the responses, it sounds like the word and meaning itself isn’t really objectionable, it’s more the people that use it. Which isn’t something a search engine tells you… 😅
It’s gone mainstream. I hear it in high schools all the time from many different students. I think it’s pretty unobjectionable.
I’ve long regarded it as a red flag, since the first people I encountered using it were alt-right dipshits. Subsequently it seems to have been adopted wholesale, and I get the impression that most people don’t see it as politically charged.
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My man, that’s so not funky of you! If you skedaddle into this far out place called internet, you have to expect to come across new terms that are slammin and radical to some people. Instead of giving them hairy eyeballs and going “No can do”, how about you say “Word, brother”? Every generation invents its own gnarly slang and that’s pretty fly, actually. Like, what makes your slang groovy and theirs bogus?
Groovy is definitely a word we should all use more.
Go to bed already grandpa. Stop hating on new words so much.
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I figure people need to pick up on new slang or risk becoming the old man or woman that yells at kids to get off their lawn one day.
Lol… it definitely reminds you of how old you’re getting. But I’m sure the generations preceding ours felt the same.
Based is just a common word zoomers like me use. While your likely implication of it being some sort of dogwhistle or right wing term might have been correct like, half a decade ago, it doesn’t apply anymore. Everyone uses it between the age of 16-20.
Simply: Based = Good Cringe = Bad
I wish people stopped using it, because it’s often confusing as f.
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Idiots use lots of words. Like the word “idiots”.
Says the fuckin idiot
It’s just slang that more-or-less means “confident”, originally coined by the rapper Lil B.
While it’s an interesting line of inquiry as to why internet culture may appropriate and adopt words like this, this comment is just giving off major “old man yells at cloud” energy.
Yeah, it’s pretty cringe
I don’t think this post is allowed on lemmy.world.
This post isn’t on Lemmy.world.
It is funny though since they blocked the piracy community
Oh that’s what everyone was talking about… Well, i’m glad that I’ve got my BeeHaw at least
The wonders of federation
If you can’t otherwise afford them. Pretty important “if”. And then only until you can afford them.
Now I have to buy their games lol.
I might buy one of their games just to offset someone who can’t. I absolutely appreciate a business with this kind of attitude. Like someone else said, the people who pirate it probably weren’t going to buy it anyway. Might as well get some goodwill out of it.
Now if only there was a way to safely pirate stuff without the possibility of the binaries having keyloggers or cryptominers embedded in them. I seem to recall some studio hosting an official torrent on their website precisely for this reason.
Like having the source code?
Or a zip package signed by the developer.
That’s awesome of them! What’s their best game? I’ll buy a copy on Steam.
OG Postal and Postal Brain damaged
they’ve always tacitly been cool with it. they’ve dropped little hints like this into their games since the 90s.
I’m pretty sure I was friends with the founder of that studio back in the suprnova.org days when his username was RunsWithScissors and he was a full-blown pirate.
I mean I don’t think the pirates needed their permission, but it’s a nice gesture at least. Accepting the reality that people will pirate your games makes for much better PR than trying to crack down on it through DRM.
I’d seen postal, but it looked like a meme game, so I never considered playing it, now I might try it out, see what it’s all about.
Theyre all kind of bad and rely mainly on shock humor to grab your attention. Think the GTA series but with more piss and shit jokes. You pee on people… Not exactly high brow. I thought the second one was fun though.
uuuh…everything that takes enough effort and skill to make is somehow a kind of artistic piece + art works in mysterious ways, I guess? 😄
Honestly it’s all sorts of wrong especially these days, but I’ve played through the whole thing 3 or 4 times. Surprisingly fun gameplay and enough easter eggs to be interesting on replay.
You all complaining about the word “based” know that Urban Dictionary exists, right?
