Pirates, everywhere pirates!

48 comments

*a game my employees made

Won't somebody think of the shareholders!
Every time someone pirates a game, a shareholder is a little bit further away from their third private jet!
How can you sleep at night?!?
- How can you sleep at night?!?
  I don't. I game at night. Problem solved!

Nintendo*

And probably EA didn't make it, just published it.

That's nothing, someone hosted an unauthorised Smash Bros tournament and everyone at Nintendo died
- everyone at Nintendo died
  Sounds like a net gain for the gaming community.
- But then theres no one left to sue us right?! Pirate all the (nitendo) things!!!!!

Probably next rts game you'll have to pay €0.5 per unit built and shooters you pay €0.2 per bullet. Rpg games will have item shops for real money.

If you and a friend shared the same car, you stole a car from the manufacturer. /s
- But you and your friend wouldn't download a car now would you...
  
  certainly not a tesla, lol

This is so sad, Andrew Wilson - lay off 400 employees :(

If that upsets you, kids, tell your dad to make a game worth paying money for in 2025, or to make his 1995 game easily accessible at an appropriate price.
- Best i can do is an ai texture flip and a “remastered” version for 40€
  
  I don't mind remasters per se. Diablo 2 Resurrected was absolutely awesome, and they didn't really change that much. Just modernised the graphics and made som some qol adjustments.
- Or accessible at all!

Also it's not like the workers typically get the long tail of profits. Most labor is only paid a salary, and the "owners" get to keep profiting. Workers should be entitled to the profits of their labor.
- So kinda like royalties
- Ironically that might boost productivity. And would lead to something closer to meritocracy
- But then what incentive would keep the owners owning everything?
- I would be a bit careful with this.
  It is incredibly hard to define each worker's contribution to any particular profit.
  It means that the worker's compensation depends on the overall success of the product which may have little to do with their work (for example bad management tanking a project or it getting cancelled before release).
  Accounting can move profits around in a lot of cases. Look at how every movie makes no money.
  In many ways having it be a transaction (work x hours get paid x dollars) is nice. I means that the employee knows exactly what they are getting upfront.
  
  I'm not the person you replied to at any point in the thread, and I agree that there is potential for a slippery slope in a similar way it happens with tipping culture.
  But my understanding of the original comment was that workers should also get a share of profit after the game is released, with no changes to the salary they received during the production stage which is just covering for labor as it happens everywhere else. Upfront payment and royalties, proportional to profit. (This type of arrangement is unusual but exists, or used to exist, in publishing, for both authors and illustrators).
  The idea wasn't to change it one for the other but hypothetically add it, but we know greed won't allow that to happen, which is used as a moral point for piracy: you are not hurting the people who did the hard work at all
  
  You could also have salaries 🤷
  The problem to solve is a handful of people who aren't really doing much work get most of the profits. There may be other solutions.
- How would you quantify ongoing projects where workers come and go and each of their specific contribution might not be easy to measure? Do they all also assume financial responsibility for any failures or lawsuits?
  
  How would you quantify ongoing projects where workers come and go and each of their specific contribution might not be easy to measure?
  Probably some sort of collective ownership, profit sharing, with negotiation and consensus building. Other people more well read than me have spent a lot of time thinking about this. My starting position is that the standard capitalist model of "I pay you $10 to make a widget, and I sell it for $1000 and keep all the profits" is not okay.
  Do they all also assume financial responsibility for any failures or lawsuits?
  Do the owners assume financial responsibility now? I think that's what LLCs and other corporate structures are for- to shield individuals from liability and responsibility.

Oh no, I'm gonna copy the folder a million times, I added ('murican) medical debt to someone's net worth!

Also, keeping and playing your old games you paid for is theft.

I'm bringing home the rain. Theres no supper on the table. The babies crying in the cradle.

I just wanted to see my boy Joseph Kucan in his prime again. I didn't mean to destroy your family!!!!
- You did not mean to, but did you care?
  
  Given that this EA guy clearly is against the Brotherhood or Nod, I wouldn't care.

I think this is a real problem for indie authors lol.
- Why? People who pirate games are likely in one of two camps: they either pirate games to try them out and then purchase ones they like or want to support, or they're people who don't believe in intellectual property and don't see what they're doing as theft.
  The former would contribute monetarily to games just like any other fan. The latter was never going to purchase the game anyway.
  Frankly, indie developers who try to scapegoat the piracy community as why their games under-performed likely just don't make very good games in the first place. When my projects flop I don't throw a fit about it and start slinging shit at any community that remotely feels right, actually more importantly, no matter how right it feels... no, I just accept that my attempt that go-around was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe it will do better in the future, maybe not. I don't blame the market or the audience for my metrics, tho. I am the one who made the game and I am the one who chose when, how, and where to release it. Nobody else.
  Developers and content creators aren't fucking helpless victims and they should stop acting like it when it comes to IP and copyright. They really got white middle-class people so fucking scared of thieves that they invented this whole entire fictitious, conniving spectre to blame all their worries and fears on in the form of some weird imaginary mega-thief that somehow can magically steal ideas themselves and whimsically influence the market... seemingly in whatever manner is rhetorically convenient for whoever is prostrating themselves upon the Cross^TM in a given moment, interestingly enough.
  I think most developers, who aren't pissbabies, usually like the piracy community because it is free advertising for their media that they otherwise wouldn't get and it doesn't affect sales. Plus most real artists, those who dedicate their lives or significant portions thereof to their works, are probably just happy someone enjoys what they made enough to interact with or consume it. I know I am. I'm not on some weird fucking hate-bender over people choosing to copy/use/plagiarize/steal/whatever my work in a way that I deem wrong or incorrect... because it isn't my fucking business what someone does with something after I make it - and this fictitious notion that the value of your work is somehow tied to who's allowed to interact with art and how is fucking infuriating and immediately contrarian to what I believe is the essential nature of art and the human experience.
  Think, do you ever see highly successful games developers and studios bitching endlessly about the "theft" of their works? No. Mojang could give less of a shit if you pirate Minecraft, because they're not huffing copium about the inherent value of their work. And no, Minecraft's token EULA and Mojang's terms of service are not Mojang giving a shit about piracy. Mojang takes a fairly intentionally laissez-faire approach to piracy, and has for the company's entire existence to some sort of degree depending on time and who was in charge. Now, Nintendo gives a shit about piracy: because they're an imminently failing business losing market share one shitty release after another, amongst other cultural differences. We really did a good ol' corporatist number on Japanese society after WWII but I digress.
  Guess who's made the most widely played game of all time? Give you a hint, their name certainly doesn't rhyme with tempo.
  
  The cool thing about your comment, it can be applied to the entertainment industry in general. Movies, music, TV. A lot of this applies. Some companies equate having a lock on the content means they only produce the finest of content that must be of the highest value. But by God they can put out some really awful crap and charge a premium for it. Thank Jehovah for libraries.
  
  It's a bit long but it does check out.
  I used to pirate a lot when I was younger and didn't have the money.
  Now Epic Games and Amazon Games take care that I never have to buy games any more because they give them away for free. I only buy games if there's a specific one I really want to play.
  For the same reason I don't need to pirate any more either, it's just not worth the risk of catching malware or something, and there's more than enough free games around.
  But what I wanted to say is the alternative to piracy is playing free games, not paying for a game.
  
  Thank you for your sincere opinion. In most cases, yes, you are right, but sometimes, let's say, in your own country you can still sell yourself somehow, but in a foreign country, they won't pay you a penny, they'll just pirate it. I'm talking about special and prohibited games that you can't always upload to Steam. Some authors are really offended because they are under a lot of pressure, but it depends on the audience of the game.
  You could say that it's not all that simple here and I don't really want to sort out this whole mess because it doesn't interest me, you understand, I'm just some random guy who expressed his opinion and I know that it may not be accurate.

48 comments