I'm old enough to remember when PC demos were a thing and essentially if a demo didn't exist, the game likely wouldn't sell well. Hell there used to be entire websites that ONLY had demos for download of upcoming releases. So now game companies don't do demos anymore, I pirate the games as a demo. If it's something I think I'll play through and come back to in a month or two or even a year then I'll buy it. If it's an indie dev I'll buy it because I want to support them.

If it's something I'm no likely to finish or will finish and never pick it up again, high seas.

Music is different. I just soulseek everything. I'm not paying some crappy streaming service to then provide pennies to the artist. I can support artists I like via other means. Merch sales, going to concerts, etc that's where they get their money.

TV and movies? fuck em. I'm not paying for that crap when 9 times out of 10 something that I like is just going to get cancelled after 2 seasons. They don't need my money.

Books? nope, always pay for those.

[–] Sauerkraut@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 14 hours ago

Ethics are very important to me so I say always support worker owned companies/ small indie teams, always support books, but never support evil mega corps like Amazon, Disney, EA, Activision, etc.

Also, any company that has donated to the Republican neo-fascist party? Fuck them. If you wouldn't give money to Putin then you should never ever give money to anyone who will give that money to Putin's puppets (conservatives)