My issue is the license part. If I can’t own the installer files then it really doesn’t seem right anyways.
Honestly with the quality a lot of games are released with, and the state they often are in, considering also the ludicrous costs of purchase (and you don’t actually own >90% of these purchases), for me it’s completely ethical. In that quite a lot of these people have lost the plot, we are in arguably late stage capitalism, and it’s almost a necessity anymore to test things before purchase. Don’t part with your hard earned money before you know for a fact what you are purchasing.
My two cents.
i think it depends. i think it’s always ethical to pirate a game by a big company, but probably not from an indie developer. i’m not gonna stop you though
Buying licenses is never ethical. Buying the actual stuff, yeah, it is.
Who cares?
Ethics are a construct
Yes.
No, buying a license is never ethical.
GOG (and other DRM-Free stores) are definitely exceptions to this rule though. Even though you are technically buying a license, the games you buy are effectively owned.
If it’s unethical to pirate, you can assuage your guilt by buying the thing after the fact, or deciding you were never gonna buy it anyway. If you don’t think it’s unethical to pirate, then it’s not an issue.
As to what I believe… if buying isn’t owning, pirating isn’t stealing.
Based.
Copyright should be illegal also, everything should be copyleft.
That’s the opinion of the instance I’m on, so I can’t well disagree with you here. However, my wife is an artist, so I might have some bias in saying I think some things are worth paying for. I pay for Apple Music. I also have offline copies of everything I listen to. I mean, I’m paying for it. I’m paying a lot for it. But I stand by what I said, if paying for it doesn’t mean you get to keep it, not paying for it and having it isn’t theft. Except I do both. I pay for it and I have it.
I’m an artist too, I’m music producer 😅
Idk if this helps, but here’s my general ethical approach:
If it’s a small indie developer/studio. I always pay for the game, or at least, if I pirate the game, I buy the rough equivalent of their merch or make a donation if that’s an option.
If it’s a large studio/corpo game, I pirate it and don’t shed a single tear. Same is true for all my music and visual media.
I support people and small groups that need the help and are creating great products and art. I think it is actually unethical to support giant corporations monetarily, so I do my best to minimize the amount of money they get from me, which for many years now has been pretty close to zero.
There have been several games I ONLY bought because I pirated it first to play and then purchased. Some games don’t have demos available,
Maybe slightly off-topic, I just want to remind that Denuvo used pirated (personal licence) VMProtect in their commercial product.
crime is only okay when the rich and powerful do it
The forum post you linked to says “has been accused” rather than “has used”. It also leads to a dead link, and the page is not in the internet archive.
Wikipedia doesn’t mention it, so there’s no source there either.
There were quite a few news articles back then. Not to mention Denuvo probably pressured to have them removed, what do you expect an event happened in 2017 to have articles survived, when this event is not something you can find in mainstream media?
If you really want to verify, the best bet I can think of, is to ask people in r/crackwatch or cs.rin.ru.
Is it ethical to pirate a game
Yes.
Just pirate it. International law is gone. Civilians are being murdered in eastern Europe, Africa and the middle east.
Videogame purchasing ethics are a small grain of sand on a vast beach drenched in blood.
If the game doesn’t a demo or a refund period, then I don’t see a problem with it.
I miss shareware demos
The good days where the rest of the game was the same quality as the demo.
Never tried myself, but steam has a pretty good return policy, right?
That’s what I thought until I tried it. Bought a game only to find out it was not for me. I’d bought it that day, played 30 mins, initiated refund. Steam denied refund, I think because I was on a VPN. $30 I won’t get back…
Less likely to buy stuff now without trying it first. Not like I have it to spare anymore these days 🤷♀️
Hmm, well I’d say no. Like what if the ip or production company is garbage? Definitely wrong to give them money.
