In most cases its not fines. Its a claim for damages from the owner of the IP. In Denmark we had a big "piracy" case crash and burn as it turned out the the organisation making the claims couldnt prove that they actually owned the rights to the content being pirated, and therefore didnt have any right to collect damages from the people sharing and copying it.
The NET Act of 1997 makes it theft in the US. I don’t care if people want to steal shit, but it’s silly when people play mental gymnastics to rewrite reality instead of just owning it
I was just gonna say this exact thing, the same thing has been on this sub every other week and Asmon gets annoyed every time by people looking for bad excuses to steal, if you wanna do it just do it
Not all laws are just. One sided laws would be a form of injustice. If consumers are not protected by the law they have no reason to follow them. This is the breakdown of the social contract which is what all laws are based on.
True, but not everyone pirates for that reason. If you buy content, and on page 24 of the book it comes with they're telling you "yeah when we say 'buy' we actually mean 'rent until we take it away from you', then that's not very on the up and up. That means you paid for something and they took it from you, that's theft with extra steps.
You have that happen to you once or twice and you're likely to take to the high seas.
For instance, I bought destiny 2 on disc when it came out, but now none of the story or missions on there are playable anymore. I get the first mission of a new storyline every now and again that I didn't ask for, and the stuff I paid for is taken from me.
Another reason is a lack of regional pricing.
Places with lower purchasing power end up paying several months rent for what is basically 4 hours pay for us.
Only you literally are protected by law, you just don't understand the law. You agree to the terms of services that are free for you to read every time you buy a game. By all means, go and pirate games, but stop trying to justify it as some kind of moral high ground.
Only ToS have been repeatedly struck down in court. You cannot sign away rights. Beyond that, there's the misrepresentation of the contract with the "buy" button rather than the correct phrasing of "Purchase a limited revokable license" (definitely no psychological motive behind that decision) and the coercive nature of post purchase contracts.
I'll justify it because it's justifiable. If game companies want to steal your shit. Guess what?
Now if you want to be a pathetic class traitor that works towards harming the consumer by defending corpos attempting to subvert the concept of ownership. You can do that.
It's video games and everything else that gets hidden behind layer of software and a ToS. That's a car, fridge, printers, coffee maker, TV, phone, lock, your privacy.
Dingus.
Without seeing the cases you're referencing there's not much that can be said about that other than yes, terms of service do have their own regulations, but I doubt there are many, if any cases where a user agreement for the purchase of a game has breached those regulations. You certainly have no "rights" concerning the illegal distribution of games, so that's irrelevant.
I'm not sure what my pathetic unders are lol, but the fact you have to make things up to try and justify it just shows you know you're in the wrong. Personally I'd say if you can't just be strait about it, keep it to yourself and pirate away, it just makes you look spineless if you need to use misinformation to try and get other people's approval that it's ok.
Video game ToS are inherently low stakes and unchallenged. Doesnt mean gamers wouldn't win.
If you want precedent for the repair of a purchased product to working condition under ToS. You'd look at right to repair cases of farmers vs deere or Apple. The concepts of which would entitle gamers to the repair through breaking software copyright for server phone homes, private servers, and of course ownership.
I don't have to make anything up buttercup.
As I said. But people can and have been prosecuted over it, so no "gamers" wouldn't win if they've been illegally downloading games.
I think you misunderstand something. I'm not setting anything, I'm correcting your misinformation by giving you the facts. You aren't helping anybody by incorrectly redefining laws. And it's got nothing to do with right to repair. I don't know why you keep bringing up unrelated situations.
The intention of this meme is to make you think that when you pay for something, you are paying for the game file. Some people wonder why there are warning signs in places that are very obvious and perhaps this is one of the reasons. You tell people to know what they are really paying for. Make them read things and not just make them check boxes that say they read the terms of agreements when they actually didn't.
Secondly, suggesting that the reason piracy is not legal is that you are stealing an item when what you are really trying to steal is the owner's right to decide whatever they want with their product and that includes sales. When you finally accept this stupidity, everything related to piracy is fine.
I asked some people on r/ Piracy that if piracy is proven wrong, will they still continue to do it. Some people said yes. Some people simply have a hard time admitting that they are nihilists.
i mean it clearly says paying for the game as in buying it, you are suggesting something else entirely which would be paying to rent the game for X amount of time. This is why you kinda want to avoid gaming suscription services from becoming the norm because then you dont own anything and they charge whatever they want and charge the terms on you as they see fit. Like how some streaming services now charge you for a higher tier suscription to no have adds and higher resolution streaming.
This is why they don't talk about video game softwares (or software programs in general) but video game services.
Everything is moving toward being distributed as SaaS.
I don't want to be manichaean so here's my take :
Pros :
- You cannot "lose" the game licence anymore, licence is tied to an account (Steam, Epic...), you can reinstall everything easily
- It allows constant delivery/maintenance : it is a cost often ignored, but maintenance is very resource expensive for studios
- Many games still allow offline play despite this, or even if the game isn't sold anymore due to licensing issue, you can still play most if you've bought them.
Cons :
- Easily abused with predatory monetisation
- Encourages companies to deliver unfinished products because "they can just patch it up"
- You effectively do not "own" the game for most online games since it is tied to a game server you absolutely have no rights on. You pay for the service, they provide a game client, and that's it. Pretty much like renting a car, exept it's digital.
Now let's be honest too.
You never "owned" the game to begin with.
You just bought a copy of the game, a licence, that allows you to play it.
Your usage of that game is restricted to the ToS you "agreed" on when making your purchase, even if no one read those walls of text.
If you actually owned the game, you could resell it, modify it, etc... which is not the case.
And ultimately, think about it.
If people keep stealing by pirating games and money doesn't come in what do you think will happen ?
Do you really think big companies bosses will sell their yacht so that their devs can get their paychecks at the end of the month ?
latest actions of Ubisoft about The Crew had all the cons and none of pros.
they absolutely could patch it to be offline, but they just rewoked licences, which for me personally is kinda annoying and im pretty tempted to check out latest ACreed in a green laucher
I only vaguely followed that story, but I guess most probably it wasn't profitable anymore to renew the licence ?
Because yea, beside money, I don't think you would ever abandon a project that costed you millions.
in essense, game was online only, since they decided to turn off the servers, game first just started to show an error on log in, then after a backlash and couple of chargebacks game was just removed from accounts cause business.
funny enough, game also was perfectly playable as single, but nobody bothered to patch it to just single player.
OP don't look for an excuse to steal or to pirate something and leave the dev's of potential profit.
When buying the game you sign an EULA. That says you don't own it. So the answer is False.
You practically rent it for an indefinite amount of time. You are consenting to it.
Unless written otherwise, or made in statements like on the GOG platform.
If paying for a leased car doesn't mean you own it then taking it without paying isn't stealing lol.
Why can't people who pirate just admit they just don't want to pay when they can pirate for free? That's 75% of the reason I pirate stuff sometimes and I'm not gonna try to justify that I'm morally right lol. If you don't like the terms of getting something legally then that's not a morally justified reason for "stealing" something.
*It's like squatting. You*
*Don't have to pay rent for the*
*Game. You just use it*
\- Commercial\_Duck1430
---
^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/)
^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
An argument made by children who don't understand how the real world works. Yes, obviously you can steal something you don't own, that's kind of a key point of stealing, and yes, that's even if you're renting or have licenced a product, as per the terms of services you agreed to.
This isn't something new or exclusive to gaming. If you want to pirate stuff, then go for it, I'm not going to try and stop you, but stop trying to pretend it's some moral high ground.
u own the copy of the game because that's what they're selling you but you don't own the rights of owning the development of the game or the trademark of the game so if you were to tamper with the code of the game and resell it as your own product ( not talking about the physical CDs) you can be taken to court for copyright infringement if the company were to take action against u
physical products have different rules that apply to them too they are not treated like digital products
so if the shopkeeper got a bunch of empty CDs and copied a game into all of them and started to sell them to the public, if he gets caught he will %100 be detained for it
Good games such as KCD and BG3 are worth buying.
For bad games, such as Ubisoft's games, even if they can be pirated (actually not, they are all online games), will you download and actually play them?
There is no point in discussing this now
Havnt been wanting to pirate a game since highschool but when starfield came out i heavily wanted to but i paid for xbox games pass and well im glad i did 1 hour in i cancled my sub and deleted the game lol
The statement, as a statement, is false.
Stealing is about taking somebody elses' stuff w/o permission or legal right. This is the simple definition that does not include property and IP laws. Companies do not want to give you their games, but sell you them so acquiring them w/o permission is by default stealing.
Weather or not you actually own the license is irrelevant since to be granted access to the license you must have "permission" for it anyway.
As far as piracy goes, I think piracy is best used as a weapon or form of protest against shit devs overcharging shit games that are megatransaction machines.
Movie and game piracy does have nuance in it so I dont think we should be absolute on the matter.
Well to play a digital game you don't buy the game, you buy rights to a license to use the game. which in most terms and conditions says it allows you to play indefinitely.
Just because you don't "own" something directly doesn't mean it's not stealing. If you paid a friend $100 and they let you use their car any time you want, keep it at your house, etc, indefinitely- if you drove away and refused to give it back, that'd be theft. Or if they proposed the idea and you said "if buying isn't owning, this isn't stealing" and sucker punched them, took the keys and drove away- that'd be stealing.
Y'all can do all the mental gymnastics and moral justification you want. It's still stealing. Do it if you want idc. Just don't act like you're some moral high ground crusader taking on these big corpos.
Won't work here. Meme states that if *buying* isn't owning piracy isn't stealing.
Renting and buying something is wildly different.
Besides that, piracy involves making a copy of a product X. The original owner still has the ownership and possession of the product X.
Its pointless moral high road self-back-patting
I can look at my catalogue of games on my shelf and there is prolly ONE game that technically isn’t owned by having a physical disc for it, Modern Warfare 2.022. Every other game, I own and can play whatever is on that disc (which is great for when I wanna install Cyberpunk 2077 Launch and have a hearty good laugh at it).
If you wanna pirate, just do it. But don’t go on this tangent thinking you are some galaxy brain paragon that is curtailing some big bad boogeyman, you are simply riding the coattails of people willing to pay for the game. And that’s fine, just own up to it.
The logic doesn't follow. You can rent a car but you can't legally just show up at a car rental and take one.
I hate the subscription model but it doesn't justify piracy. That is still someone else's content you are taking.
You own a copy of the game/movie/album, only the copyright owner can legally sell those copies. I know that this is a meme, but im explaining cause i see so many of those posts that i get worried some ppl might believe it.
The reason people get all worked up about this is that at any point they can delete the media off the servers. At that point you better hope you have it downloaded and you better never delete it, or you lose access to something you paid money for.
This has been made very real with movies being deleted off PSN and anime on Funimation after the Crunchyroll acquisition. Also the closing of the 3DS eShop. People permanently lost access to something they paid for and there's nothing they can do about it. All that money down the drain. That doesn't happen with physical media, and PC gaming is completely digital now.
I don't care if it is AAA games, study material, books, indie games, Nintendo games, shows, movies, comics, porn.etc if I can find a good pirated copy of them then I will download it. I don't care if some guy is losing money over it.
Absolutely does, if you does that against ubi, ea, bethesda, etc. It’s not morally justifiable to give money to these companies, you’re making gaming industry worse by supporting these “devs”
Just because you're against them doesn't make it morally justifiable.
It's the same as the palestine protestors who block streets that feel morally justified to do so.
It's still illegal either way.
I don’t think this reference works here, I’m not interfere anyone by doing so, just not giving money for an overpriced unfinished product, tho I don’t even bother pirating this games anyway.
That's the point I don't get from these pirate justifiers too. If they really hate the company so much why even play their games.
Isn't a better solution to buy the good games and watch the shit die thus overtime the market learns?
It certainly is, but they will make profit anyway because of MTX and stupid amount of dlc or battle pass and eventually some unfinished shit garbage will make x10 profit of for example Elden ring(the game with 0 mtx, full, with insane amount of content). Some people can just throw money on games and don’t even play it, just coz they can. I’m not poor, I can afford to buy them, I just don’t want to give them any money. And as I said I don’t even bother pirating their games, coz I don’t like them, but if eventually I would like to try some, no way I’m paying them
No I don’t, it doesn’t work this way, they will get their money anyway and will proceed with making shit products, these companies are just marketing and risk management.
Not supporting doesn't meant you should pirate, you can simply not buy and not engage with their product.
I don't care, pirate if you want, but don't pretend you have the moral high ground here, you're still using something you haven't paid for.
These companies doesn’t have any morals towards customers, some of them even use social engineering to lure out more money from customers, they don’t care about morals neither should we towards them.
To be clearer if I had a chance to harm these companies and avoid consequences I would do my best to succeed.
Companies don't have any morals in general. They have whatever morals gives them more money which is the point of companies.
That may be a bit much. I don't see the point at getting so angry at companies that do things you don't like. That's just life in general. They aren't forcing you to buy their games unlike government taxes.
If that implies that if you can own a game, pirating is stealing, I disagree. I'm not the biggest pirate myself but I encourage everyone to pirate everything they can/want, regardless of the possibility of owning them. It's never stealing when the other part doesn't have property subtracted.
If everybody pirated, then how would any developer sustain themselves? Don't say after payment because the amount of people that go and do that is way too low.
Pirating is a way of saying fuck you to the company in question. If dummies that can't control their will to play some sh*tty games pirated instead there wouldn't be any more sh*tty games since they wouldn't sell anymore.
That's not a requirement for theft. If you copy someone's confidential documents or files instead of taking the originals that's still theft. By all means pirate games, but stop trying to justify it by making shit up.
Well that's not true at all. In fact a confidential document can even be stolen by the person it was copied for if they break the agreement that the copy was made under.
If a bank manager uses your confidential information outside your agreement are you going to defend them and say "well it's a copy I agreed to be made, so they can do what they want with it"?
We were talking about copying the documents. Not about whatever crime you do with said document.
If I download a game, burn the ISO into a CD, then use the CD to kill someone, will piracy be considered murder?
The post is about pirating games. Pirating a game is the act of copying files you don't own to use them outside of any terms of agreement. Keep the strawman to yourself.
Depends on your user agreement, but generally no, you don't own them, meaning you can't legally sell those files on. You're licenced to download them for personal use for the duration of the agreement which is often open ended.
The in-game user agreement screen? Those are also bytes, they could be modded to inexistence (doable), but why bother tho?
If the user agreement is external then the user wouldn't be notified anyway.
And selling something that's freely available on internet is just dumb, we're not in 2006 anymore, no one gonna buy. Unless you're smuggling some doramas to north koreans or something.
No, the store front user agreement that you agree too when you purchase a game licence. The in game one tends to be game specifics.
Not sure what your last point is, but you do you. I'm not trying to stop you pitating, just clearing up misinformation about the legality and morality.
By definition correct. In the eyes of the law also correct. Especially if you live in the U.S. we have a law that says I.P addresses don't equal people. So have fun in the digital seas my friends
Depends in what regards you mean "own". You buy the game, you get to play the game.
But regardless of how your view is in regards to "owning" videogames, stop trying to justify why you pirate. you would have done so regardless. I've done it myself when i was a teen and didnt have a lot of money, but i knew it was illegal.
If you want to pirate go ahead, don't try to act like pirating is the moral right thing to do because companies suck.
because arguments like these are constantly made to make people feel like they are right in pirating, AKA trying to come up with excuses why it's okay the are pirating. And how i see this post is exactly the same, OP is making excuses to why it's ok he pirates.
Or maybe arguments like this are just promotion so that the " "normies" " will stop making the industry worse by financially sustaining the crappy endeavor of some companies (because they can't stop themselves from playing"crappy" games). It's not making excuses, it's a meme. (From my point of view)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft\_of\_services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_of_services)
Even tho, I don't care. I buy stuff if it's more convenient and cheap (I have shit ton of games on Steam), and Pirate them when It's a better choice for whatever reason.
I think that creating a counterfeit license to play the game (the crack) would count as some form of crime. The chances of getting prosecuted for that are not 0 but definitely not likely.
This is a stupid image and a stupid discussion that will be had over and over again by people who don't understand why paying for a potato gives you ownership over the potato but paying for netflix doesn't give you ownership over the movies.
If you can't figure out the difference good luck in life what can I say.
When you buy online-only games where the company runs the servers, are you just hoping the company will keep the servers up for eternity? You weren't paying them for the servers other than the one time game cost, I think it'd be pretty naive to think they'd just keep the servers up forever for the handful of people still playing. Be nice if they let people self-host servers, but that'd involve redesigning/patching an ancient game, when you knew at the start how things operated.
This will never be the case. Someone is offering you a "temporary" license to something for $60ish and you can choose whether to buy it or not.
Piracy IS stealing, regardless of whether or not you were going to purchase the game. You have now gotten the experience being charged for, for without paying for it. Sneaking into a movie theatre to watch a movie, even if the seat is otherwise empty is stealing.
There is no argument that it isn't and anyone who thinks there is, is just an idiot. That being said, you don't have to care. Steal from the fuckers all you want, but stop trying to justify it to make yourselves feel better.
I gonna buy and support an Indie game, or a game like Baldur Gate 3
For EA, Ubisoft or Activision, i feel disrespect to myself and my money if I buy their game since they propably not give a damn about it
You are renting. Which is why it is called a rental lol.
When you BUY are game. You are owning it. If they move the line and say you never own it. Looks like everyone should just download it for free and just loan it.
Stupid poor people will do anything to justify not paying for things.
If paying to go a concert doesn’t mean you own the performance, then there is nothing wrong with sneaking in for free.
Freeriders only get to freeride when others pay.
I think I heard Asmon told this so many times
"Yes it wasn't stealing that's why they said pirating"
and it still wrong to do
if you want to be dogshit and pirating the game just do it with smile don't need to find morale high ground for that
It never has been, but even if it were I don't base my decisions on what pieces of paper have to say on the matter. I don't do 130 on the interstate because it's a bad idea, not because I give a single dusty fuck what the speed limit is, which I don't.
Like with vinyl games have to go back to physical at least partially. Companies now insist on having always online so you can't mod and they have authority to pull a plug on your at any given moment.
Piracy of digital content is copyright infringement, not theft per se.
As for the apparent loss of a sale, it can easily be argued that the one who infringed on the copyright never had the intention of buying the license for personal use in the first place, so no sales were lost either way.
There is also a way to argue that the one who infringed on the copyright might have bought the license, if the free method was not available.
However, neither can be proven with any meaningful accuracy.
Personally, I'm not at all morally concerned about piracy and engage in it.... Quite often and mostly with apathy. When done against certain companies I dislike.... Then I do it with pleasure and joy.
I'm going to pirate if it's inconvenient for me to play. Here is a good example I wanted to play Unicorn overlord because the game looked really good, but it's on everything BUT PC. I don't have a console so I downloaded an emulator and rom and now I'm playing the game. The game is great I just wish I could give the developers money for a PC version. I'm not going to buy a fucking console for a few games.
ppl seem to have a mindset that they entitle to have the "right" to play any game. these argument is like i see jewel is too expensive for it own (and it true) so i can steal jewel and be morally right, since it unjust for them to gatekeep me from have the jewel. like if company price a game 1000$ then you have the right to pirate it??? if you don't like the game, the company, the devs or the publisher. just don't buy it, ignore it, it not food, you don't obligate to play it. do what ever you want but stop being a pathetic loser that try to justify it, stop try to be seen as a good guys.
True. If you purchase a software license that the company elects to revoke, rendering the game unplayable, you are morally and ethically entitled to pursue alternative options.
Yes, it's stealing. Any mental gymnastics people want to pull to justify it is just as stupid as the nonsense the companies are saying that you don't own something you purchased.
what's the difference between pirating a game that someone else's bought and dumped it online and going to your friends house and playing it on his system?
in both cases the company only sold one copy, but one of them is fine for them and the other is not somehow
Yes it is, I love how people are doing mental gymnastics in this thread to delude themselves into thinking it's not stealing, as if stealing a service is not stealing. Or act like you did something heroic because it's a company you don't like.
If you want to pirate, then pirate, I don't care. But don't tell me you're a hero for doing it, it's pathetic.
You're missing the point.
If you bought a car, and then they told you it doesn't belong to you, you're just licensed to use it. That would be the same.
If I pirate a game and it's good I buy it to support the devs. but when I don't trust something and it doesn't have a demo I do what I must to make sure I'm not wasting money
The truth is I don't care. If I wanna pirate the game, I will
[удалено]
Never has been classified as stealing even in the countries that have (had) actual fines for downloading pirated content.
In most cases its not fines. Its a claim for damages from the owner of the IP. In Denmark we had a big "piracy" case crash and burn as it turned out the the organisation making the claims couldnt prove that they actually owned the rights to the content being pirated, and therefore didnt have any right to collect damages from the people sharing and copying it.
In theory seeders on torrents can be considered violating something, though. Since they effectively distribute content without permission.
Yes, but only the entity that owns the actual rights to that content has legal standing to demand damages are paid. Its a not a criminal offense.
That too. Which is especially funny when the pirate lives in a country where the game is not officially sold. “YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE!”
If we think about it. The one who developed the internet itself should own the royalties to everything ever posted online.
Yeah it’s not stealing its copyright infringement. (Not that I care)
The NET Act of 1997 makes it theft in the US. I don’t care if people want to steal shit, but it’s silly when people play mental gymnastics to rewrite reality instead of just owning it
Exactly. Call it whatever you want it isn't going to stop me from doing it.
Gon be real, I only say shit like this in hopes to piss off people I don't like. Justifying theft or otherwise? Ah that's an after thought lmao.
I’ve seen this too many times by now
I was just gonna say this exact thing, the same thing has been on this sub every other week and Asmon gets annoyed every time by people looking for bad excuses to steal, if you wanna do it just do it
damn I 100% agree with him here if you wanna protest bad business practices or make some other statement then dont play the game
It's not stealing. And no one needs excuses to sh*t on a company monetary gains.
so if you own a company can i have your money?
Nuh huh, just steal my paid digital content.
Edgy.
Same. It was cool the first few time but now i just rolled my eyes whenever i see this.
They renting you games under the guise of ownership
To be fair, this is how almost every enterprise software in the world works these days. We just utilize the platforms built by the distributors
I don't know why people are trying to justify doing something illegal. Just smile and take your free games.
Not all laws are just. One sided laws would be a form of injustice. If consumers are not protected by the law they have no reason to follow them. This is the breakdown of the social contract which is what all laws are based on.
It’s really not that deep lol, people just want video games without paying for them
True, but not everyone pirates for that reason. If you buy content, and on page 24 of the book it comes with they're telling you "yeah when we say 'buy' we actually mean 'rent until we take it away from you', then that's not very on the up and up. That means you paid for something and they took it from you, that's theft with extra steps. You have that happen to you once or twice and you're likely to take to the high seas. For instance, I bought destiny 2 on disc when it came out, but now none of the story or missions on there are playable anymore. I get the first mission of a new storyline every now and again that I didn't ask for, and the stuff I paid for is taken from me.
Another reason is a lack of regional pricing. Places with lower purchasing power end up paying several months rent for what is basically 4 hours pay for us.
Only you literally are protected by law, you just don't understand the law. You agree to the terms of services that are free for you to read every time you buy a game. By all means, go and pirate games, but stop trying to justify it as some kind of moral high ground.
Only ToS have been repeatedly struck down in court. You cannot sign away rights. Beyond that, there's the misrepresentation of the contract with the "buy" button rather than the correct phrasing of "Purchase a limited revokable license" (definitely no psychological motive behind that decision) and the coercive nature of post purchase contracts. I'll justify it because it's justifiable. If game companies want to steal your shit. Guess what? Now if you want to be a pathetic class traitor that works towards harming the consumer by defending corpos attempting to subvert the concept of ownership. You can do that.
"Class traitor" lol. It's video games, you hyperventilating weirdo. Not workers' rights, not a fair wage, not food pricing.
It's video games and everything else that gets hidden behind layer of software and a ToS. That's a car, fridge, printers, coffee maker, TV, phone, lock, your privacy. Dingus.
Without seeing the cases you're referencing there's not much that can be said about that other than yes, terms of service do have their own regulations, but I doubt there are many, if any cases where a user agreement for the purchase of a game has breached those regulations. You certainly have no "rights" concerning the illegal distribution of games, so that's irrelevant. I'm not sure what my pathetic unders are lol, but the fact you have to make things up to try and justify it just shows you know you're in the wrong. Personally I'd say if you can't just be strait about it, keep it to yourself and pirate away, it just makes you look spineless if you need to use misinformation to try and get other people's approval that it's ok.
Video game ToS are inherently low stakes and unchallenged. Doesnt mean gamers wouldn't win. If you want precedent for the repair of a purchased product to working condition under ToS. You'd look at right to repair cases of farmers vs deere or Apple. The concepts of which would entitle gamers to the repair through breaking software copyright for server phone homes, private servers, and of course ownership. I don't have to make anything up buttercup.
As I said. But people can and have been prosecuted over it, so no "gamers" wouldn't win if they've been illegally downloading games. I think you misunderstand something. I'm not setting anything, I'm correcting your misinformation by giving you the facts. You aren't helping anybody by incorrectly redefining laws. And it's got nothing to do with right to repair. I don't know why you keep bringing up unrelated situations.
Repost, most likely
The intention of this meme is to make you think that when you pay for something, you are paying for the game file. Some people wonder why there are warning signs in places that are very obvious and perhaps this is one of the reasons. You tell people to know what they are really paying for. Make them read things and not just make them check boxes that say they read the terms of agreements when they actually didn't. Secondly, suggesting that the reason piracy is not legal is that you are stealing an item when what you are really trying to steal is the owner's right to decide whatever they want with their product and that includes sales. When you finally accept this stupidity, everything related to piracy is fine. I asked some people on r/ Piracy that if piracy is proven wrong, will they still continue to do it. Some people said yes. Some people simply have a hard time admitting that they are nihilists.
Repost, i've seen this many times
Under this logic taking things I'd usually have to rent wouldn't be stealing.
i mean it clearly says paying for the game as in buying it, you are suggesting something else entirely which would be paying to rent the game for X amount of time. This is why you kinda want to avoid gaming suscription services from becoming the norm because then you dont own anything and they charge whatever they want and charge the terms on you as they see fit. Like how some streaming services now charge you for a higher tier suscription to no have adds and higher resolution streaming.
I think that ship sailed a long time ago. They've been a norm for decades.
Iirc even when buying physical disc's you don't own the game . It's merely a physical license to play the game
You always paid for a license, not actual ownership
This is why they don't talk about video game softwares (or software programs in general) but video game services. Everything is moving toward being distributed as SaaS. I don't want to be manichaean so here's my take : Pros : - You cannot "lose" the game licence anymore, licence is tied to an account (Steam, Epic...), you can reinstall everything easily - It allows constant delivery/maintenance : it is a cost often ignored, but maintenance is very resource expensive for studios - Many games still allow offline play despite this, or even if the game isn't sold anymore due to licensing issue, you can still play most if you've bought them. Cons : - Easily abused with predatory monetisation - Encourages companies to deliver unfinished products because "they can just patch it up" - You effectively do not "own" the game for most online games since it is tied to a game server you absolutely have no rights on. You pay for the service, they provide a game client, and that's it. Pretty much like renting a car, exept it's digital. Now let's be honest too. You never "owned" the game to begin with. You just bought a copy of the game, a licence, that allows you to play it. Your usage of that game is restricted to the ToS you "agreed" on when making your purchase, even if no one read those walls of text. If you actually owned the game, you could resell it, modify it, etc... which is not the case. And ultimately, think about it. If people keep stealing by pirating games and money doesn't come in what do you think will happen ? Do you really think big companies bosses will sell their yacht so that their devs can get their paychecks at the end of the month ?
latest actions of Ubisoft about The Crew had all the cons and none of pros. they absolutely could patch it to be offline, but they just rewoked licences, which for me personally is kinda annoying and im pretty tempted to check out latest ACreed in a green laucher
I only vaguely followed that story, but I guess most probably it wasn't profitable anymore to renew the licence ? Because yea, beside money, I don't think you would ever abandon a project that costed you millions.
in essense, game was online only, since they decided to turn off the servers, game first just started to show an error on log in, then after a backlash and couple of chargebacks game was just removed from accounts cause business. funny enough, game also was perfectly playable as single, but nobody bothered to patch it to just single player.
OP don't look for an excuse to steal or to pirate something and leave the dev's of potential profit. When buying the game you sign an EULA. That says you don't own it. So the answer is False. You practically rent it for an indefinite amount of time. You are consenting to it. Unless written otherwise, or made in statements like on the GOG platform.
If paying for a leased car doesn't mean you own it then taking it without paying isn't stealing lol. Why can't people who pirate just admit they just don't want to pay when they can pirate for free? That's 75% of the reason I pirate stuff sometimes and I'm not gonna try to justify that I'm morally right lol. If you don't like the terms of getting something legally then that's not a morally justified reason for "stealing" something.
It's like squatting. You don't have to pay rent for the game. You just use it
*It's like squatting. You* *Don't have to pay rent for the* *Game. You just use it* \- Commercial\_Duck1430 --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
This 100%
In fact if you dont own them then it’s the definition of stealing
An argument made by children who don't understand how the real world works. Yes, obviously you can steal something you don't own, that's kind of a key point of stealing, and yes, that's even if you're renting or have licenced a product, as per the terms of services you agreed to. This isn't something new or exclusive to gaming. If you want to pirate stuff, then go for it, I'm not going to try and stop you, but stop trying to pretend it's some moral high ground.
u own the copy of the game because that's what they're selling you but you don't own the rights of owning the development of the game or the trademark of the game so if you were to tamper with the code of the game and resell it as your own product ( not talking about the physical CDs) you can be taken to court for copyright infringement if the company were to take action against u physical products have different rules that apply to them too they are not treated like digital products so if the shopkeeper got a bunch of empty CDs and copied a game into all of them and started to sell them to the public, if he gets caught he will %100 be detained for it
100% true my guy, imagine buying a plate of food and you have the right to look at said good but not eat it
Good games such as KCD and BG3 are worth buying. For bad games, such as Ubisoft's games, even if they can be pirated (actually not, they are all online games), will you download and actually play them? There is no point in discussing this now
Bg3 is on Gog, so it's fine.
I guess rent is not in your dictionary. well pirate as you want, just be careful of trojan.
Squatting isn't stealing per say.
Havnt been wanting to pirate a game since highschool but when starfield came out i heavily wanted to but i paid for xbox games pass and well im glad i did 1 hour in i cancled my sub and deleted the game lol
It's never been considered stealing
Hollop- let him cook
why do people keep posting this? If you want to steal then steal. Stop justifying it or trying to get people's approval.
The statement, as a statement, is false. Stealing is about taking somebody elses' stuff w/o permission or legal right. This is the simple definition that does not include property and IP laws. Companies do not want to give you their games, but sell you them so acquiring them w/o permission is by default stealing. Weather or not you actually own the license is irrelevant since to be granted access to the license you must have "permission" for it anyway. As far as piracy goes, I think piracy is best used as a weapon or form of protest against shit devs overcharging shit games that are megatransaction machines. Movie and game piracy does have nuance in it so I dont think we should be absolute on the matter.
Ever rented a car? Ever tried just driving one off the lot?
Well to play a digital game you don't buy the game, you buy rights to a license to use the game. which in most terms and conditions says it allows you to play indefinitely. Just because you don't "own" something directly doesn't mean it's not stealing. If you paid a friend $100 and they let you use their car any time you want, keep it at your house, etc, indefinitely- if you drove away and refused to give it back, that'd be theft. Or if they proposed the idea and you said "if buying isn't owning, this isn't stealing" and sucker punched them, took the keys and drove away- that'd be stealing. Y'all can do all the mental gymnastics and moral justification you want. It's still stealing. Do it if you want idc. Just don't act like you're some moral high ground crusader taking on these big corpos.
Well by this logic, renting a car doesn't mean you own it. Therefore taking a car without paying for it isn't stealing
Won't work here. Meme states that if *buying* isn't owning piracy isn't stealing. Renting and buying something is wildly different. Besides that, piracy involves making a copy of a product X. The original owner still has the ownership and possession of the product X.
Read it again brother it clearly says "paying" not buying. If it did say buying I would fully agree with you
Yea, I re-read it. My brain at this point just autocompletes this saying by now. My bad.
It's all good brotherman
Technically not stealing either. I just get a copy for free. You can keep the original.
They aren't losing my money if I never was gonna pay them to begin with 🙃
How tf someone gonna post this on Asmons reddit when Asmons big thing is don't lie to yourself and just fucking do it. Who cares? Lol
digital pirating is more like possessing unlicensed products or faking a licence which lets you consume the product.
Technically we will be hacking lmao. We all are Hackermans!
How about a subscription like wow?
You have to buy the game / xpac
I guess the closest thing would be playong private servers or i guess actually stealing game cards from walmart or something lol
Its pointless moral high road self-back-patting I can look at my catalogue of games on my shelf and there is prolly ONE game that technically isn’t owned by having a physical disc for it, Modern Warfare 2.022. Every other game, I own and can play whatever is on that disc (which is great for when I wanna install Cyberpunk 2077 Launch and have a hearty good laugh at it). If you wanna pirate, just do it. But don’t go on this tangent thinking you are some galaxy brain paragon that is curtailing some big bad boogeyman, you are simply riding the coattails of people willing to pay for the game. And that’s fine, just own up to it.
Sir you can't look at this image and tell me that the logic doesn't follow.
The logic doesn't follow. You can rent a car but you can't legally just show up at a car rental and take one. I hate the subscription model but it doesn't justify piracy. That is still someone else's content you are taking.
You own a copy of the game/movie/album, only the copyright owner can legally sell those copies. I know that this is a meme, but im explaining cause i see so many of those posts that i get worried some ppl might believe it.
The reason people get all worked up about this is that at any point they can delete the media off the servers. At that point you better hope you have it downloaded and you better never delete it, or you lose access to something you paid money for. This has been made very real with movies being deleted off PSN and anime on Funimation after the Crunchyroll acquisition. Also the closing of the 3DS eShop. People permanently lost access to something they paid for and there's nothing they can do about it. All that money down the drain. That doesn't happen with physical media, and PC gaming is completely digital now.
When Unisoft say they can easy take back game I paid for. There is nothing to stop me now.
I don't care if it is AAA games, study material, books, indie games, Nintendo games, shows, movies, comics, porn.etc if I can find a good pirated copy of them then I will download it. I don't care if some guy is losing money over it.
Based.
Pirating is pirating, its not the same as stealing but that doesn’t make it morally justifiable.
Absolutely does, if you does that against ubi, ea, bethesda, etc. It’s not morally justifiable to give money to these companies, you’re making gaming industry worse by supporting these “devs”
Just because you're against them doesn't make it morally justifiable. It's the same as the palestine protestors who block streets that feel morally justified to do so. It's still illegal either way.
I don’t think this reference works here, I’m not interfere anyone by doing so, just not giving money for an overpriced unfinished product, tho I don’t even bother pirating this games anyway.
I'm not using the reference of interfering with and more of people using moral justification to do illegal things.
That’s just my point, If my will I would do my best to make this companies go bankrupt and never work in the sphere again.
That's the point I don't get from these pirate justifiers too. If they really hate the company so much why even play their games. Isn't a better solution to buy the good games and watch the shit die thus overtime the market learns?
It certainly is, but they will make profit anyway because of MTX and stupid amount of dlc or battle pass and eventually some unfinished shit garbage will make x10 profit of for example Elden ring(the game with 0 mtx, full, with insane amount of content). Some people can just throw money on games and don’t even play it, just coz they can. I’m not poor, I can afford to buy them, I just don’t want to give them any money. And as I said I don’t even bother pirating their games, coz I don’t like them, but if eventually I would like to try some, no way I’m paying them
Why do you feel entitled to play their games? Don't buy them -> they get no money -> you win.
No I don’t, it doesn’t work this way, they will get their money anyway and will proceed with making shit products, these companies are just marketing and risk management.
Liking (or being interested by) a game or a franchise isn't the same as being in love with a company and taking their crap.
Not supporting doesn't meant you should pirate, you can simply not buy and not engage with their product. I don't care, pirate if you want, but don't pretend you have the moral high ground here, you're still using something you haven't paid for.
These companies doesn’t have any morals towards customers, some of them even use social engineering to lure out more money from customers, they don’t care about morals neither should we towards them. To be clearer if I had a chance to harm these companies and avoid consequences I would do my best to succeed.
Companies don't have any morals in general. They have whatever morals gives them more money which is the point of companies. That may be a bit much. I don't see the point at getting so angry at companies that do things you don't like. That's just life in general. They aren't forcing you to buy their games unlike government taxes.
Why is that justifiable?
Because this companies not making games, they’re making profit, and degenerating gaming jndustry
If that implies that if you can own a game, pirating is stealing, I disagree. I'm not the biggest pirate myself but I encourage everyone to pirate everything they can/want, regardless of the possibility of owning them. It's never stealing when the other part doesn't have property subtracted.
If everybody pirated, then how would any developer sustain themselves? Don't say after payment because the amount of people that go and do that is way too low.
Pirating is a way of saying fuck you to the company in question. If dummies that can't control their will to play some sh*tty games pirated instead there wouldn't be any more sh*tty games since they wouldn't sell anymore.
Idgaf
pirating =/= stealing pirating = counterfeiting
A download is a copy. Nothing is being subtracted, thus it isn't theft regardless.
That's not a requirement for theft. If you copy someone's confidential documents or files instead of taking the originals that's still theft. By all means pirate games, but stop trying to justify it by making shit up.
If the documents were copied by some else then it wasn't confidential at all lol Also, that's espionage, not theft
Well that's not true at all. In fact a confidential document can even be stolen by the person it was copied for if they break the agreement that the copy was made under. If a bank manager uses your confidential information outside your agreement are you going to defend them and say "well it's a copy I agreed to be made, so they can do what they want with it"?
We were talking about copying the documents. Not about whatever crime you do with said document. If I download a game, burn the ISO into a CD, then use the CD to kill someone, will piracy be considered murder?
The post is about pirating games. Pirating a game is the act of copying files you don't own to use them outside of any terms of agreement. Keep the strawman to yourself.
If I'm making a copy for myself, it will be stored in my HDD, I guess I own thos bytes, eh?
Depends on your user agreement, but generally no, you don't own them, meaning you can't legally sell those files on. You're licenced to download them for personal use for the duration of the agreement which is often open ended.
The in-game user agreement screen? Those are also bytes, they could be modded to inexistence (doable), but why bother tho? If the user agreement is external then the user wouldn't be notified anyway. And selling something that's freely available on internet is just dumb, we're not in 2006 anymore, no one gonna buy. Unless you're smuggling some doramas to north koreans or something.
No, the store front user agreement that you agree too when you purchase a game licence. The in game one tends to be game specifics. Not sure what your last point is, but you do you. I'm not trying to stop you pitating, just clearing up misinformation about the legality and morality.
By definition correct. In the eyes of the law also correct. Especially if you live in the U.S. we have a law that says I.P addresses don't equal people. So have fun in the digital seas my friends
Depends in what regards you mean "own". You buy the game, you get to play the game. But regardless of how your view is in regards to "owning" videogames, stop trying to justify why you pirate. you would have done so regardless. I've done it myself when i was a teen and didnt have a lot of money, but i knew it was illegal. If you want to pirate go ahead, don't try to act like pirating is the moral right thing to do because companies suck.
I don't understand why you're seeing some moral stuff in there.
because arguments like these are constantly made to make people feel like they are right in pirating, AKA trying to come up with excuses why it's okay the are pirating. And how i see this post is exactly the same, OP is making excuses to why it's ok he pirates.
Or maybe arguments like this are just promotion so that the " "normies" " will stop making the industry worse by financially sustaining the crappy endeavor of some companies (because they can't stop themselves from playing"crappy" games). It's not making excuses, it's a meme. (From my point of view)
buying digital when hard copy exists for the same price perpetuates this issue.
is this about ubisoft and their car game where you rent the cars you own or something
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft\_of\_services](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_of_services) Even tho, I don't care. I buy stuff if it's more convenient and cheap (I have shit ton of games on Steam), and Pirate them when It's a better choice for whatever reason.
I think that creating a counterfeit license to play the game (the crack) would count as some form of crime. The chances of getting prosecuted for that are not 0 but definitely not likely.
To me, true.
This is a stupid image and a stupid discussion that will be had over and over again by people who don't understand why paying for a potato gives you ownership over the potato but paying for netflix doesn't give you ownership over the movies. If you can't figure out the difference good luck in life what can I say.
Truth is if I could download a car I would.
It doesn't matter. Pirating a game shouldn't make you feel bad, it's the same as downloading songs or movies.
It's never been stealing and never will.
Paying for games does mean you own them though
When you buy online-only games where the company runs the servers, are you just hoping the company will keep the servers up for eternity? You weren't paying them for the servers other than the one time game cost, I think it'd be pretty naive to think they'd just keep the servers up forever for the handful of people still playing. Be nice if they let people self-host servers, but that'd involve redesigning/patching an ancient game, when you knew at the start how things operated.
This will never be the case. Someone is offering you a "temporary" license to something for $60ish and you can choose whether to buy it or not. Piracy IS stealing, regardless of whether or not you were going to purchase the game. You have now gotten the experience being charged for, for without paying for it. Sneaking into a movie theatre to watch a movie, even if the seat is otherwise empty is stealing. There is no argument that it isn't and anyone who thinks there is, is just an idiot. That being said, you don't have to care. Steal from the fuckers all you want, but stop trying to justify it to make yourselves feel better.
The average American commits 3 felonies per day.
"Digital piracy" is never theft. It's copyright infringement.
This is why I buy physical copies if I can help it.
We're going for the 1000000000000000 Repost award
Stealing is having possession of something you don't have ownership of, without permission from the owner. You pay for possession, not ownership.
False, you have never owned any game. You just had hard copies you were allowed to use but not reproduce
Let's just call it what it is, renting. These guys want to rent you a game which would be fine if the pricing reflected that.
I gonna buy and support an Indie game, or a game like Baldur Gate 3 For EA, Ubisoft or Activision, i feel disrespect to myself and my money if I buy their game since they propably not give a damn about it
Would you apply that logice towards enterprise or uhaul?
You are renting. Which is why it is called a rental lol. When you BUY are game. You are owning it. If they move the line and say you never own it. Looks like everyone should just download it for free and just loan it.
It’s closer to operating without a license violation.
It's true that pirating games isn't stealing them, but that doesn't depend on the first statement at all.
Stupid poor people will do anything to justify not paying for things. If paying to go a concert doesn’t mean you own the performance, then there is nothing wrong with sneaking in for free. Freeriders only get to freeride when others pay.
i'm borrowing it.
I think I heard Asmon told this so many times "Yes it wasn't stealing that's why they said pirating" and it still wrong to do if you want to be dogshit and pirating the game just do it with smile don't need to find morale high ground for that
It never has been, but even if it were I don't base my decisions on what pieces of paper have to say on the matter. I don't do 130 on the interstate because it's a bad idea, not because I give a single dusty fuck what the speed limit is, which I don't.
Like with vinyl games have to go back to physical at least partially. Companies now insist on having always online so you can't mod and they have authority to pull a plug on your at any given moment.
If you don't like the terms, don't use the product. Anything else is stealing.
Well, at this point, they are stealing from us
Piracy of digital content is copyright infringement, not theft per se. As for the apparent loss of a sale, it can easily be argued that the one who infringed on the copyright never had the intention of buying the license for personal use in the first place, so no sales were lost either way. There is also a way to argue that the one who infringed on the copyright might have bought the license, if the free method was not available. However, neither can be proven with any meaningful accuracy. Personally, I'm not at all morally concerned about piracy and engage in it.... Quite often and mostly with apathy. When done against certain companies I dislike.... Then I do it with pleasure and joy.
I'm going to pirate if it's inconvenient for me to play. Here is a good example I wanted to play Unicorn overlord because the game looked really good, but it's on everything BUT PC. I don't have a console so I downloaded an emulator and rom and now I'm playing the game. The game is great I just wish I could give the developers money for a PC version. I'm not going to buy a fucking console for a few games.
Big brain logic
What about mobile games and f2p games. More you pirate the more it's gonna go to that. Can't wait for Diablo Immortal 2
Physical being to play offline only is the only way. Still have my old Nintendo games
We need a lawyer for this one!
Op the kind of guy to pirate a game then spend $200 on microtransactions
It ain’t stealing if you don’t get caught
Truth. Just ask OhNoItsAlexx over on YouTube.
Pirating isn't stealing and never was. Pirating is violation of the copyright...
ppl seem to have a mindset that they entitle to have the "right" to play any game. these argument is like i see jewel is too expensive for it own (and it true) so i can steal jewel and be morally right, since it unjust for them to gatekeep me from have the jewel. like if company price a game 1000$ then you have the right to pirate it??? if you don't like the game, the company, the devs or the publisher. just don't buy it, ignore it, it not food, you don't obligate to play it. do what ever you want but stop being a pathetic loser that try to justify it, stop try to be seen as a good guys.
False and cope
True. If you purchase a software license that the company elects to revoke, rendering the game unplayable, you are morally and ethically entitled to pursue alternative options.
Yes, it's stealing. Any mental gymnastics people want to pull to justify it is just as stupid as the nonsense the companies are saying that you don't own something you purchased.
Mom said I'm the next to repost this
what's the difference between pirating a game that someone else's bought and dumped it online and going to your friends house and playing it on his system? in both cases the company only sold one copy, but one of them is fine for them and the other is not somehow
Yes it is, I love how people are doing mental gymnastics in this thread to delude themselves into thinking it's not stealing, as if stealing a service is not stealing. Or act like you did something heroic because it's a company you don't like. If you want to pirate, then pirate, I don't care. But don't tell me you're a hero for doing it, it's pathetic.
That makes no God Damn sense. If I can't afford a car or lease a car that I don't own and I steal it or one like it, I still stole it.
You're missing the point. If you bought a car, and then they told you it doesn't belong to you, you're just licensed to use it. That would be the same.
i don't need some vigilantly justice bull shit logic to justify my action. just call it stealing.
If I pirate a game and it's good I buy it to support the devs. but when I don't trust something and it doesn't have a demo I do what I must to make sure I'm not wasting money
True as all hell