this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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Nowadays, the absolute vast majority of games that I play are shit tbh.

This is why I pirate games first to try them out. I wanna be very clear that if I think a game is good I buy it, no questions asked.

However, since most games don't have demos or trials, I don't want to feel like I've wasted money so I look to piracy so that I can try them out before making a purchase.

AITAH?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can achieve the same with refunds on steam

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Totally solid option for some people, but not everyone. Depends on the game (some can’t be judged in two hours), your available time (can’t refund a game you bought a year ago that you only just now played), etc., and limits you to buying only from Steam. What if you’d rather buy from GOG or Humble Bundle?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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?

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[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yes you are an "asshole" for stealing but also fuck these companies are so shit you shouldn't care.

In a pure ethical debate its wrong but on a practical level I think its fine. Steam has a 2hr no questions asked refund policy which I feel is reasonable and so I don't pirate unless I want to play a game and not compensate the people who made it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I appreciate the input!

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