Comment by andoando
1 day ago
No they don't. I am tired of this feel good nonsense. I pirated games because it was free and I did not want to pay $60.
Just make your games a donation model if you really believe this. Or lets put up a version of Steam where all the games are free cracked copies of the game and see how it affects sales.
People pay precisely because they dont want to deal with the hassle pf pirating
I can pirate games easily, but I buy them on Steam because it's more convenient. If it's too expensive for me, I just never play it (or wait for a deal). I can't be bothered dealing with the installers and the potential viruses and the hassle.
I’m fabulously wealthy and still mostly pirate things just because I can’t be bothered dealing with online credit card payments.
Half the time I try to sign up for any of these services I get blocked for fraud because I’m in one country, my billing address in another and my bank in a third. Oh, and when something does work, it only works for a while until they lock the whole account with a bunch of paid content on it.
Which services exactly do that? Because Steam or GOG for sure don't.
That is my experience with Adidas.com.
I've not had issues with Steam, though my Steam journey was early into online purchasing adventures
>because it's more convenient
Yes, now imagine if we just removed the barrier to piracy completely. An easy to use client just like Steam, except all the games are free cracked copies.
There is no way thats not going to drop sales.
What has been proven many times is that people overwhelmingly choose the least effort/risk option.
A free Steam full of certified pirates games with official games updates would obviously drop sales but this is moot as it will never exist.
6 replies →
You really can't though, not if the games have an online component or you want the game to be patched/updated as frequently as it would be on steam.
Almost all games these days are basically like a work in progress, so if you pirate them then the game doesn't stay up to date.
Pirating games is just really inconvenient compared to tv/movies/music.
> Almost all games these days are basically like a work in progress, so if you pirate them then the game doesn't stay up to date.
Which, as a mod author and consumer, isn't always a bad thing. More than once, I had to drop just enjoying a game, to patch my published mods because some update that is automatically pushed out, and people have to accept in order to even boot a single-player game. Why? I don't know, but it's really annoying sometimes.
Besides, nowadays cracking groups release smaller patches too, so while you might not get the update the same hour it was published on Steam, usually within a week or two the same group that uploaded the original release, has released another patch.
If someone pirates 100 60$ games it does not mean that had piracy been impossible they would have spent 6000$ on those games
They might spend $600 on 10 of those games, though. It's not all-or-nothing.
They might still spend $600 on 10 more games though. Or spend it on a subset of the games they pirated because they want to support the developer. Who knows.
1 reply →
thieves lie to protect their self-image. i pirated because free games let me spend my money on stuff i couldn't steal like food at the mall.
i don't pirate anymore because i have a job now.
Copyright infringement is not stealing, and it's not a given that a sale would have happened at all - even if the llicit copy was unavailable.