this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2026
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[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 20 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I don't follow this as a justification for piracy. Piracy isn't stealing but, assuming if it was not possible to pirate you were going to pay for the game, you are still causing the person who owns the game to lose money they would have otherwise gained.

My justification is much simpler: capitalists suck, buying games supports capitalists so I'm keeping my money.

[–] young_broccoli@lemmy.dbzer0.com 28 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Personally, If its not possible to pirate something I just forget about it until it is

[–] Inui@hexbear.net 3 points 2 weeks ago

This is me tbh. I don't value video games as part of my life to the extent that I will pay 70 dollars (or really almost any dollars) for 99% of them. I already don't do that for games that have/had Denuvo that took years to crack. I just forgot about them and did something else. I'd probably just read more books if I couldn't pirate games because I'm not spending that much of my income on them.

It's also the same argument that record companies tried to use for the last few decades when a majority of the piracy stats were from countries you couldn't even buy their albums or it was prohibitively expensive to do so. Avatar (the blue one) was the most pirated movie of all time at the same time as it was the highest grossing movie of all time. One download = one lost sale has never been true.

[–] conartistpanda@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

Sonic Frontiers my beloved.

[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

assuming if it was not possible to pirate you were going to pay for the game

That's not a reasonable assumption at all.

Sometimes people can't afford the extortionate game prices and thus wouldn't be bying them no matter what.

Other times, such as with the Denuvo DRM monstrosity or draconian anticheat systems on single player modes, pirated copies are better than bought ones.

And, as you say yourself, sometimes you just don't want to support the capitalists ruining games in order to squeeze every possible cent of profit out of them regardless of what that means for the quality of games and treatment of gamers.

[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Sometimes people can’t afford the extortionate game prices and thus wouldn’t be bying them no matter what.

In that case piracy is fully justified. If you wouldn't have bought it if piracy wasn't an option then I have no issues.

Bottom two reasons: yeah fuck DRM and capitalism. I didn't say I'm against pirating, I just need to find the logical justification :)

[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Piracy is stealing and stealing is good.

[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 weeks ago

theft definition

  1. To take illegally, or without the owner's permission, something owned by someone else without intending to return it.

It's hard for me to say weather this definition encompasses piracy or not. Although I would err to the side of piracy not being stealing, since media isn't physical.

[–] procapra@lemmy.ml 17 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't really care if it is stealing. Steal all you want. The random dude making the modern day equivalent of a flash game is certainly not counting on game sales to make ends meet, and the corporations can get fucked and die.

:)

[–] Blurntout@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Watching indie devs make 500k off of flash games 😅

[–] MadhuGururajan@programming.dev 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

And that's fine because the assumption behind "Indie" is they did all the hardwork themselves without getting paid regularly. Consider 500k is not a lot if you count how many months of work was put into the games without pay.

[–] Blurntout@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

We’re not mad about them hitting the nat 20 😂 we’re mad it was assumed they made zero money so it doesn’t matter if we pirate from them lol hungry devs needa eat fat cat Microsoft can suffer the thousand cuts lol

[–] MadhuGururajan@programming.dev 1 points 2 weeks ago

yeah my position is to be very clear that we are not against making money but about unsatiable greed shown from the likes of ubisoft or microslop.

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 13 points 2 weeks ago

I used to be philosophically anti-piracy in principle, and would often argue online against people who posted disingenuous or self-serving justifications for their actions. But these days the amount of piss-taking by the publishers has destroyed my resolve.

Yarrr.

[–] cheesorist@lemmy.world 9 points 2 weeks ago

fun fact, pirating the game means you actually own it I have repacked drm free pirated versions of games I own just in case i lose access to them or they get shut down

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 7 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Orrr

Just get games with a free software license.

Then you both own it and did not pay. :)

[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Better for security too. A game is a full program and can do basically anything on your computer. I don't even trust games from legit sources to run on my main OS. So if you pirate a game at the very least run it in a VM.

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 3 points 2 weeks ago

... a better "both ways" you can have.

[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I am just paying a different entity that provides the same "service" for cheaper or even free at the cost of my sense of security.

[–] CyroSignal@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago

Anyway, Nintendo and Xbox have colossal fortunes; I don't think pirating one of their games is going to bankrupt them.

[–] RindoGang@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

​I used to have a hard time sharing the things I bought with the piracy community

It just felt wrong to give things away to people who hadn't paid a thing. I felt like I was hurting the creators who actually put in the work

​But then I realized I was guarding something that wasn't even mine, all I bought was a license that could be revoked at any time... it never truly belonged to me

I was just being selfish. Now every now and then I make sure to share the content I purchase

[–] KazuchijouNo@lemy.lol 3 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

All games are technically licensed or something like that. I can't remember precisely how, but software is licensed and pirating is considered "breach of contract", not stealing. You shouldn't take my word for it because idk what I'm talking about. All I know is rich people hate it, so fuck'em!!

[–] 4am@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Pirating is copyright infringement. In other words, you infringed on the rights of the copyright owner to dictate how their “copy” is used. In this case, the term “copy” is being used as in “collection of writing”, not the common colloquial synonym for “duplicate” - copyright was invented before video games, after all ;)

So in other words: no it’s never been theft

[–] Viceversa@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

So in other words: no it’s never been theft

Yes. It was (and is) the other kind of legal offence. A copyright infringement, as you described exhaustively.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

No, i legitimately bought it. You saying "it's actually merely a usage license" is not my concern, yell at the shop that sold it with some fineprint somewhere.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

conceptually how can i violate a license i'm not party to? (idk what i'm talking about either but i like pretending)

[–] Viceversa@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

Because use of the product comes with an agreement.

And no, you can't "la-la-la, I'm not listening to this agreement, I'm not seeing it" your way out of it.