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Something that I can’t wrap my head around is selective piracy. It’s a phenomenon I’ve observed with me and my friends, where sometimes we choose to pirate games, and sometimes we choose to buy games.
Usually, the games that get pirated under selective piracy are games that we want to play, but currently we don’t have enough money. Purchased games under selective piracy are the opposite: Games we find out about or remember around the time we have the necessary funds to purchase it.
Another phenomenon is ease of piracy. On places like home brewed consoles, unless your morals are that rejecting of piracy, you pirate, usually because it’s just easier. On places like the Switch, where piracy is difficult to pull off (especially on mod chip only switches), we just buy the games we would’ve pirated if we could’ve. PC is weird, because buying a game is just as easy as pirating it in most cases. So, it kinda just ends up to current circumstances.
And, that’s all I gotta say. It’s a pretty weird pattern I’ve noticed. Thoughts?
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Billy
I mean aren't most pirates selective? since the motive is normally a lack of funds to buy things or simply not wanting to directly support some creators. I'm pretty sure there was a study saying most pirates don't really have it as their first thought and only do it when other factors (such as insane prices) happen
Ian
For video games specifically, I rarely pirate new games (with one large exception but let's keep this SFW). The reason is because there's nothing where I really want to play it but am impatient about it and want it now and for free. I have a PS5 and a Switch but I don't want to jailbreak either console just to play a game for free, plus I visit libraries a lot which offer 1-3 week checkouts for games, so I'm strictly talking PC. Sales are constant and I've amassed a large amount of games from Epic and Amazon for free, so now I have more video games than I will ever need. There was like one time that I pirated a game, I think it was because I wasn't sure about it, and I feel guilty about it and still haven't opened it up and played it.
Also my Internet speed is slow so I'd rather get the game legally since that'll be a faster download especially for large file sizes.
Now OLD games, like emulating ROMs/ISOs, that I don't give a shit about. The hardware is faulty since it's long been discontinued, legally acquiring the games is incredibly expensive if it wasn't one of the best selling games on the console, fan translations aren't accessible without purchasing an expensive bootleg, emulators and computers are catching up to the point where I can play 2000s era consoles flawlessly, and the file sizes are smaller. With Dolphin specifically I've been able to play with my real Wii remotes, so I can play sideways and classic controller methods and they'll feel like I'm playing on a real Wii. I've also hacked my SNES Classic to include every SNES game I'll ever want to play, including fan English translations of games that didn't leave Japan.
Pirating new games is very risky (plus multiplayer usually doesn't work) but I don't mind pirating old games at all.