Hacking Emulation Gaming Is it morally correct to pirate games that cannot be obtained officially from the company that made/published them?

[Alexander1970]

Is it morally correct to pirate games that cannot be obtained officially from the company that made/published them?​

A morally more correct and way better option is to SELL (and of course buy) the same game over and over again on every newly released Nintendo console.

 

[Maximumbeans]

A morally more correct and way better option is to SELL (and of course buy) the same game over and over again on every newly released Nintendo console.

+15 social credit with Nintendo.

 

[Ligeia]

Of course it is. And it seems a lot of people confuse legality and morality, which are completely differents things.

 

[Luke94]

+15 social credit with Nintendo.

Including social credit for Epic Games.

 

[Blakeskits]

View attachment 424390

what if I end this sentence like this.

 

[DragonMals]

We should be allowed to get games through other means from companies that don't want to have a catalogue of their olde products. Nuff said. And we should have emulators that have their own programming to translate their older software to play said older games.

 

[Luke94]

In Rayman 2 you have Robo-Pirate face.

 

[Cylent1]

Piracy is Gender Neutral!

 

[Luke94]

As for instance in case of Sonic CD you had that weird looking masks within some kind of text written in japanese language. Probably as anti-piracy measures as I heard.

 

[Avalyn]

There was some research published last year showing that 87% of games made before 2010 are unavailable to purchase anywhere. In terms of preservation, I see no issues with this. If they don't want our money, then who cares?

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/14/...reservation-video-game-history-foundation-esa

 

[Blakeskits]

As for instance in case of Sonic CD you had that weird looking masks within some kind of text written in japanese language. Probably as anti-piracy measures as I heard.

Sonic CD specifically has a lot of weird debug screens left in by the devs. It's not too likely that these were made for anti-piracy due to the relatively energetic nature of the JP boss theme compared to the US one. Although the sega CD could run any burned disk, no one had a DVD burner until a couple years went by, technology progressed, and by then, no one even cared for the CD

 

[Luke94]

YouTube video related to Rayman 2 anti-piracy measures screen of robo-pirate face was actually considered as not off-topic. It was rather considered as on-topic.

 

[emmanu888]

In Rayman 2 you have Robo-Pirate face.

Which is also an issue if you have a legit copy of the game.
Definitely remember being unable to play past a certain level despite having a legitimate copy of the game inserted in my DVD drive.

 

[Lostbhoy]

How come I can buy a movie from the 1920s or a peice of music from a similar era in modern format but I can't buy a game from the 1980s for instance!

Why is there no universal legacy market for games of bygone eras? Probably most are gone and the 'vc' approach is all we got??

More should be done about that from all parties because the game scene is suffering at the moment, this obviously in turn will affect the quality of games moving forward so rather than waste time and money into future projects (not stopping ofcourse) but take some time to give the game market what it deserves and possibly get some re inspiration from revisiting old dreams and possibly lost titles that could even become a better game in reality today. Just a thought, as the old saying goes... Make it legal, the fun and thrill of obtaining 'illegally' disappears. Current gen piracy would be another story tho!

 

[AkikoKumagara]

Why is there no universal legacy market for games of bygone eras? Probably most are gone and the 'vc' approach is all we got??

I've had the same thought. If these corporations would open their mind to emulation a bit, they could make a killing by selling ROMs, for example. Nintendo specifically already targets ROM sharing sites, but does nothing to fill the void it creates. Emulation is mainstream enough that a ROM-selling or rental (ew) service would probably do extremely well. Maybe not targeting things like the Switch, of course, but for the retro libraries.

SEGA has kind of done this in a few ways over the years, including via game collections that are user-exposed ROM files and an emulator+frontend (see: SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis Classics, for example).

 

[SeventhSon7]

does hell go with yes?

 

[SylverReZ]

SEGA has kind of done this in a few ways over the years, including via game collections that are user-exposed ROM files and an emulator+frontend (see: SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis Classics, for example).

The Sonic Mega Collection for example has all of the ROMs encrypted.

 

[lucasfergui]

Piracy is Gender Neutral!

Not in Spanish, french, German, Russian, etc.

 

[Taleweaver]

I went with not moral, but it's really 'mostly no'.
That is: if you buy it, I see it as morally acceptable if you pirate it for other platforms or emulate it. I don't think it's fair to expect companies/developers to port their games to every platform or maintain it forever. If you buy it, it's yours (imho).

Piracy isn't stealing to me since it's making copies. But even so: the moral right thing to do is meet what the devs want, providing it's reasonable. If they sell it for platform X, buy it for X (even if you play it on Y). If they choose not to sell it anymore and don't label it abandonware, that's also a choice. We have to be reason able as well: do we REALLY want this game, or are we looking to get something for free?

A few caveats:
1. I'm taking morally here, not legal
2.abandonware is a huge Grey area since it often has to be agreed on by everyone, and studio's might not be around for that.
3.yes, I pirate. I have my reasons, but pretending it's a morally correct thing isn't among those reasons
4. Lots of yes votes, but... Sorry, but there's remarkably poor reasoning in the replies.

 

[Jayro]

You cannot justify piracy period.

Several people, including me, already have in this thread.