this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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You're an asshole for paying industry execs to be vampires after you see they've managed to narrowly evade the enshittification of their studio.
You might want to remember that there are also working grunts in that food chain. They already got paid to make the game, yes, but that was in the expectation of profit. If the game crashes, those execs will look for scapegoats.
Buying games feeds the vampires, but also the devs (even if only in scraps). In our current world, there's not a whole lot of options outside of "only buy indie games" to both support developers and avoid filling the pockets of execs and investors.
A few people pirating games instead of paying for them isn't a big deal, but it eventually turns into a "tragedy of the commons" issue like other forms of theft. Either the suppliers won't be able to stay in business or they'll work out ever more comprehensive (and invasive) prevention mechanisms. Remember when games were just the program on the disk and you didn't need keys and an online connection to activate your copy?
If you're buying games that are more than 3 months old, they do not. Bonuses are given for metacritic scores and launch quarter sales. They're never given royalties.
What's wrong with telling people to buy indie games and pirate anything made at the directive of blood-sucking vampires?
Remember when games were just some free software on Usenet that someone made because they thought it'd be cool, and shared because they were proud of it?
I didn’t say they were getting paid directly, but indirectly. Their employment and income - like all other working class grunts' - depends on their ability to generate profit for their employer. If we deny the employer their profit, the employer will take that out on their grunts. Conversely, if we pay them, that money likely will end up sponsoring further developments which - guess what? - pays the developers for developing more stuff.
Much of our modern economy is centered around credit and debt. The developers are effectively paid as a credit, in the expectation that the profits will pay the debt. If it doesn't, that will affect further credits.
And no, I don't remember Usenet, but it sounds like that was a good time then. How do they compare to modern games in terms of entertainment?
Almost none of the profit made off AAA games goes to the people actually creating the game. They don’t get a bonus if the new Madden makes $10 mil more than the old one. You’re tossing hundreds at the CEOs and saying it’s worth it if the devs get a few pennies.
Many of them probably aren’t even at the same studio anymore by the time you’re buying the game.
Did you actually read my comment? They don't get the profit from the old game. The success pays for them to develop new games.
Asked the other way round, if the game's profit doesn't pay the devs, what does?
Why does the company employ them?
So what happens if the company stops making money? A game's profit doesn't pay the past developers, but it does affect their future employment and income.
I'm not defending the exploitative system that bleeds us dry for the privilege of getting to temporarily benefit from the wealth they've already extracted. I'm not opposing piracy. I'm very much in support of OP's strategy.
All I'm saying is that piracy won't fix that system, because the ones most dependent on the game's success aren't the exec's that'll be hired elsewhere nor the investors that'll extract their wealth elsewhere, but the devs whose employment and existence depends on their capacity to generate that wealth.
Attack the system at the top, but don't drop the bottom.
I'd comfortably argue that Tetris is amongst the best games ever made.