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CodenameDarlen @lemmy.world

I finally decided to go full piracy against big companies

Tired of this abusive business model that big companies use on games.

  • I see a game on Steam with some decent price
  • I click on it
  • Dozens of DLCs, "Gold", "Deluxe" "Enhanced" version to enjoy the full game
  • Then you decide to pay for this shit anyway
  • But then the game is behind a launcher, that needs online connection and account even if it's full single-player
  • The game sometimes are just a port from an old console with almost full price, a game that you've paid for before
  • The game needs a hell amount of updates do become playable
  • And so much more...

Steam did an excellent job keeping me away from piracy, they provide too much good feature, discounts and etc... But not even Steam can make miracles against those abusive practices.

I must say RDR1 port was the last drop to me, It's game I played back on PS3 on my teenager time, I wanted to have some good memories and play it again, guess what, a full AAA price on a port, it's not even a remaster.

I've been avoiding EA and Ubisoft games for years, but still buying from big companies on Steam. Now I just give up, there's no more hope for AAA games, only mercenary companies are left: EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar, Activision, 2K, Bungie etc...

  • EA: Games with a hell amount of DLCs, the same FIFA every single year at full price, launcher required, they don't even try to hide anymore
  • Ubisoft: Same thing as EA, lots of DLCs, missed some game content from an old Prince of Persia because they shut an old launcher integrated to the game.
  • Rockstar: Launchers everywhere, charging a full price for the same game multiple times (GTA V).
  • Activision: You pay a full price and it still comes with a hell amount of micro-transactions, killed COD.
  • 2K: Out of nowhere decided to add a launcher to every old game they had (Bioshock and others I think) saying it was "QoL" update, now they decided to remove it, too late. The new Borderlands 4 terribly optimized, here we go with some dozens of updates again.
  • Bungie: The live service model, removed a lot of old paid contents from Destiny, the game will eventually die.

I'll still pay for small companies games, because I can, but those big ones, honestly, I don't give a shit anymore, they could be erased from existence together with all their games, I really don't care. Some smaller companies I've had a good experience and I think it's worth paying for: Ghost Ship Games, No More Robots, Hello Games, Techland, Frictional Games, Annapurna Interactive.

Some companies are in a limbo to me, I'm not entirely sure about it: Capcom, Bethesda, Warner, Square Enix.

So, that's it, I just downloaded Spider Man Remastered and RDR from FitGirl, it worked seamless, I didn't have a single issue. I could even add as non-Steam game and use Steam input (thanks Steam), I'll probably use some script to move to savegames data to the cloud, and let the packed games on an external HDD (finally, I'll own my games).

Another thing that's hard to ditch to me is achievement tracker, I know we have AchievementWatcher but it doesn't work too well on pirated games. It's something I'll need to get used, not a big deal tbh.

I'll probably use the money I'd spend on AAA games to explore some indie games. And AAA games are now always pirate.

Obs.: The companies I've mentioned here are from my own experience, this isn't meant to be an Wikipedia of good/bad companies, I know there are more decent and bad companies out there.

109 comments

  • If something isn't respecting your values, I'm of the opinion that you make a stronger statement by not even pirating those games. If you're spending time playing them, you're also not spending time and money playing some game that was meticulously made to respect your values. You're fine playing indie games, but you'd play more of them if you gave up playing these AAA games that you decided to pirate. You talk to your friends and on forums about the games you play, which will at some point convince someone else to buy and play them, too. If you want them to hurt, so that they change, don't even give them the time of day.

    • This is the best way. Give your time and money to something you believe in instead of wasting a moment on something you don't.

    • That's right, it's exactly what I think, you are one way or another helping a game to be known. The same strategy people talked about why Microsoft don't shut every Office cracker, they want normal people to use it and get used to it, so companies will use it too, eventually, and they can audit some IT companies, charge a hell amount of money if they use pirated software.

      I agree with everything, but I'll still pirate AAA games, just for the experience. I classify publishers/developers companies like this:

      • Companies it doesn't even worth playing to avoid indirect marketing: Ubisoft, EA
      • Companies that at least it worth pirating: Activistion, Rockstar, etc...

      Let's be honest, the games are good, probably made by some people who love what they were doing, but then it was put behind a shitty business model, because developers are just trying to make a living while executives trying to harvest all the money.

      I think as the time goes, developers will start making their choices better, leave predatory companies, start or join indie companies, and I, at the same time, will migrate to a more indie focused gaming.

      • You follow your own moral compass. My feelings are, if I was short on money, I've got a backlog and a stream of games being thrown at me for free (legally) such that I'd never have to pirate and never be bored. I'm willing to pay more for a good product, and I so thoroughly enjoyed Borderlands 1-3 that I bought the deluxe edition of 4 that was a no-go for you; they're one of the few AAA devs keeping LAN alive, and that is worth me throwing me money at them to tell them they're doing it right, on top of just making a very fun game. The companies whose games you're pirating are the ones that need the attention the least, but every game you could be instead funneling time and money into benefits so much more from each individual sale. Plus, the reason we've got so much anti-consumer bullshit in games now is because piracy was a boogeyman for the industry for a long time, so I'd rather not give them any additional data points to make things even worse when we've already got an entire era of video game history that disappears when their servers go offline. That's how I see it anyway.

        The times I don't feel gross about pirating, personally, are when the pirated version is supposedly the better version of the game (like emulating an old console game instead of playing a compromised PC port) or when the game is delisted and no longer available through ordinary channels, like Battlefield 2. You do what feels right to you. Pirating Nintendo games is an option to me, but they bother me as a consumer in all sorts of ways, and I instead spend that time and money on games like The Thaumaturge rather than playing through Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo will be just fine without my sale. The team behind The Thaumaturge may or may not have made enough money to make a second game. If Nintendo was a less shitty company, I'd be buying and playing Metroid Prime 4. Maybe I'll end up discovering and enjoying something else during that time that needs my dollar more instead.

  • Okay, okay.

    I am going to have to whip out this criticism for anybody that has made these kind of rants.

    STOP. FOCUSING. ON. AAA. GAMES!

    I'm not kidding, that's your problem and that's anyone else's problem who get sick of gaming as a whole. You keep kicking that can down the street for AAA game development to pander to you, but end up disappointed over and over and over. But you still kept your hand out, you still bought their games at Day 1, you still bought their DLC, you still waited for all and any patchwork. You were still there!

    Meanwhile I and several dozen others by now, have been in the pirating game for years before you and anyone else had the guts to finally join in after having your face slapped hundreds of times by this point.

    And people have been also telling you for years as to what the better alternatives that was out there were, but nooope! Still stuck to AAA development.

    Took you long enough.

    • There’s a scene like this in one of the Telltale Sam and Max games that really deserves a better reenactment. Went something like this:

      Sam: “So, Bosco, how much do you want for this…’Deadly virus’ that’s really just a tissue you sneezed into?”
      Bosco: “A hundred trillion dollars.”
      Max: “WHAT? That’s insane!!”
      Sam: “How crazy can you get to think we’re going to pay something like that?”
      Bosco: “All I know is, I keep finding the dumbest junk around my store, and think up the most ridiculous price I can imagine for them! And you two keep paying it! So who’s crazy now, fool?”

    • I think you can generalize it even further to don't reward bad behavior. That should include purchasing goods and services from organizations that try to exploit people or commoditize art.

    • It's funny you say that.

      I started pirating games again when the official version of The Sims 3 from Steam wouldn't run on Linux no matter what I did, but a pirated version (which I got just to check if I could get it to work) ran just fine.

      Once I figured out how to run that version of the game in Linux (as well as how to sandbox it with Firejail), that knowledge meant I could just as easilly run other pirated versions of games.

      Now, generally I'm the ultimated patient gamer (notice how all of that was for The Sims 3, which is from 2009, with its latest DLC being from 2013), but in my Redbeard persona I can just as easilly get recent AAA games as I can any other (probably more easilly, even, as those are the game torrents with the most users).

      So I've downloaded a number of those, and installed a couple.

      And you know what: even the supposedly best ones are BORING. Even highly regarded large open world ones, with their beautifully crafted supposedly alive worlds feel shallow and formulaic in terms of game play and don't really hold my attention for all that long. I literally have 4 or 5 downloaded recent AAA games waiting to be tried, which I simply can't be arsed to install because everytime I do try one it just turns out to be dissapointing. I find myself going back to Indie games I've played again and again like Project Zomboid or The Lone Dark, or even really old AAA games like The Sims 3 or The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (all bought and paid for, BTW).

      Even when the only costs are my time and storage space, modern AAA games aren't worth it over Indie games of older AAA games with far less dazzling graphics.

      As I refuse to pirate Indie games, by now I've pretty much given up on piracy simply because if you exclude Indie games, all the other games are kinda shit.

  • @CodenameDarlen@lemmy.world and plus, most of the time, when you're buying indie games from steam, they're drm-free, so you can play them offline, run them without steam running in the background.

    honestly, I have no more hope in the AAA games, since it will be the same game over and over again with different skins or slight UI tweaks. there's nothing much Steam can do at this point, because it's the business model of these companies in the end. It's time to give back all the money wasted on these AAA games to indie titles now, it's well deserved...​:bilibilidianzan:​

  • Same story as Netflix, it used to be great value but look at it now...

  • Bit busy so can’t make a long comment. Just wanted to say, welcome to the ‘dark’ side. I highly recommend to check the instance I’m on for everything you need (Megathread). It tells you where to look, which safety measures to take etc.

    I wanted to purchase Metaphor Refantzio because the game seems good and then figured out they blatantly said “you don’t own Metaphor even if you purchase it”. Thus decided to pirate it (it isn’t cracked but it is playable).

  • The hell does "piracy against big companies" even mean?

    Man, pirate what you can't afford if you must, just... you know, be honest about it. I'm always annoyed by people doing the thing they wanted to do anyway and presenting it as activism. That's not how that works.

    For the record, while I think there's plenty to be critical about in modern gaming, "DLC", "game has a launcher" and "game is ported from other platforms" are not that. "A game I played on the PS3 was too expensive when I wanted to rebuy it" is somebody giving you bad value up front, not some ideological stance you're taking.

    For the record, I also didn't buy it because I also didn't think their launch price was right. In fairness, it has since been on sale for 30 bucks multiple times, which is a lot more reasonable.

    And again, I'm not saying don't pirate it. Do what you want. Just don't be weird about it.

  • I always watch at least 10+ gameplay videos and critiques before buying games, especially AAA. For indies, I don't do it as much, more like "surprise me" kind of experience.

109 comments