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127 comments
  • i refuse to pirate indie games. i will always buy games that are independently released or from small publishers because 1. they're just trying to break even (unlike publishers like EA and Activision who have millions of fans lining up to buy their repetitive junk) and 2. they almost never have DRM. i'll also buy my music for similar reasons; 99% of artists can barely make a living and i really do not want to contribute to that statistic

  • So there is a thing I kind of pirate, but not entirely – e-books.

    But thing is, our public library page has e-books and some of them are available to be read online. Now I cannot officially download them, however opening a network tab on browser console shows me a request to download the whole .epub file. So what I do is copy that request as curl and just download it via terminal.

    Is it piracy, probably, is this resource publicly available for me to read, definetly yes.

    Other than that I don't really pirate much else.

  • I can't recall the last time I pirated anything executable (games and other software). There are legitimate free options for everything I've wanted, and executable code is just too risky.

    • well gog games can be safely pirated because the executables you're getting are signed with their digital signature.
      it's much less morally correct tho, especially because most of the games published on gog are indie games, but if you have literally no money to spend (like I used to) there aren't any better options

  • DRM-free ebooks. I make a point of buying them, of thanking the publisher... And not sharing it on the usual piracy channels.

  • I extremely rarely pirate games and software. It's just far too easy an attack vector for malware. The games I want to play are usually worth buying regardless, and free software is good enough for my needs. It isn't a flat out refusal, I've definitely pirated these things, but it's in niche situations where I need to see something specific, and I always check run it under a vm

  • Nothing nowadays.

    I’ll pirate indie games, see if it like it and if I do - I buy them to support the developer.

    Similar with ebooks, I pirate them, read and if I like it. I will buy the physical book to support the author.

  • i think the concept of "donation" is a relevant piece of this puzzle.

  • Any sort of program, because I don't trust anonymous people enough to not end up with a virus.

  • My main ones are:

    • Pretty much any software or games. Not really for moral reasons especially, but I mostly run Linux so most of them aren't available anyway, and if I do get something it's usually such a pain in the ass to actually get it working (and keep it working whenever there's an update) that it's usually not worth it when there's often a FOSS alternative. Also no pirating indie games.
    • Books, with a few exceptions. I don't want to screw over authors so I don't download books, but there have been a couple of old ones where the author is long dead and I already paid for a paper copy, so I snagged the eBook just for convenience. I figure that's not hurting anyone except the publishing company so whatever.

    Also with games I'm one of those extremely patient people who can wait years for something to go on sale, so what I usually do is set a price in my head for what I think something's worth, and then ignore it until it ends up at that price. So like: Baldur's Gate 3 - they did a good job and released a proper working game = full price. Cyberpunk - looks alright but it was a big mess on release and had a bunch of stuff missing = wait until it's all fixed and has all the add-ons in a bundle, $25. Last Of Us PC = it's one of my favourite games but it's 10+ years old now and was also a bit of a mess on release so they can fuck off with the $70 price tag = $10 tops. No Man's Sky - Might be decent now but they really bullshitted that one on release = wait until it shows up for free on Epic or PSPlus. And so on. There's a lot of them lol.

  • If it wasn't for publishers changing content, removing content, or outright de-listing games, as well as always online requirements, I would never consider video game piracy, but these things are pushing me in that direction.

127 comments