Recently I have come to a realization from a different perspective what it means to be a software pirate.
As some of you may know, I work as a software- and game developer, and over the many months I have worked here I learned a lot of things in regards to the inner workings of a corporation, development lifecycle, etc.
Recently while browsing the eShop with disgust seeing all the boring-as-hell games with anime tiddy clickbait I noticed that some games were on discount. It's important to note that even if I weren't a pirate, I'm still a huge cheapass, so I just added them to my wish list then moved on. Later while checking my wish list, I noticed that one of the games I added had their discount expire in ~1-2hrs. That's not when the realization has fully kicked in, but I thought to myself after converting the prices to my local currency (with transaction fees), "meh, after reading the description and seeing the images and videos, I might as well get it, I pay more for my food and drinks in Tesco every day anyways", so I bought it.
After clicking "continue shopping", I went back to my wishlist, and checked the other entries, and saw a game which was way too expensive (like 35GBP) for being just a port of the DOS version. I decided to search if it has a PC version, because that's the easiest to pirate for. When looking at the platform list the game was released for, it hit me. First we have to burn a ton of money just for design first, and getting it approved. If it gets approved, we burn even more money for prototyping and writing code from scratch (and that is while using already existing and tested libraries, like Unity or Qt). Then we fix some bugs, and ready the game for release. Then we get a request for a new feature before release, and after implementing it, bugs start to exponentially multiply, effectively burning up the entire budget. Then once you actually do get a release, you have to hope that skiddies won't crack the anti-piracy protection and that hacker groups won't upload a cracked version, effectively kissing most of your income byebye due to a cracked version being way too easily accessible.
...except that some pirates don't work like that. Like me.
There are a few types of pirates:
- the pirates: who never pay for anything, and you can not make a single penny from them. In my experience it's a decent amount, but not that much as many people make it out to be. Includes minors too whose parents are penny-pinching or broke or Karens.
- the cheapass: "if it's available for free from a trusted source then I might as well go with it". This is probably the biggest group of pirates. They'll wait a long time before buying the game, but if they see a really good deal then they might buy the game, but usually go for the cracked version instead.
- try-and-buy: I belong in this category, and lots of others. They pirate the game first, try it, and if they have played it through or they enjoy the game, they buy it. Sometimes even legit players have to resort to this if there is no demo available and there is a little info available about the game (without spoiling it).
- buy-and-crack: I also belong in this category. I'm not sure about the size of this category, but it feels like it's insignificant. These players buy the game, but remove the annoying DRM associated to it which hinders their experience. I do this especially for Steam-only games, because I don't need a stupid resident program to break my game with automatic updates. Leave me alone
The sad truth is is that almost nobody seems to do this differentiation, even though the difference between these pirate groups is really significant.
So why have I written a wall of text detailing the common type pirates? To get to my point: no matter what you do, pirates WILL always get what they want, even if it means paying more for DRM circumvention than it actually costs to buy the actual game multiple times.
Companies should learn how to mitigate piracy instead of just getting more aggressive with DRM. Just like with advertising
Crappy launchers (uPlay, Origin, Rockstar game launcher, Battle.net, and dare I say Steam client) and crappy storefronts (Switch eShop is the most notorious one in my book) definitely don't help with combatting piracy. Some launchers in fact only encourage piracy. And cheap ass attempts at a "discount" won't bite most of us either, like disguising a "price drop" from 59.99$ to 55.99$. In fact, such bullshit attempts just aggro some of us more and give more reason to attempt piracy.
In my eyes we're not only some cheap-ass discount whores who always only want 99.9% discounts (even though such discount would be really welcome), but we actually want reasons and features to stay with a platform. These platforms nowdays are not consumer-oriented, but money-oriented with the least effort as possible, and companies get away with it because we suck it all up.
And let's not get me started on those platforms where not even the purchase is easy! There are literal useless artificial barriers placed in front of you at checkout (*cough*Rockstar Warehouse*/cough*).
tl;dr: No matter how people tell you piracy is bad, you won't know how it actually feels like to the devs until you have experienced it yourself. The point is that buy your games and software if you can.
As some of you may know, I work as a software- and game developer, and over the many months I have worked here I learned a lot of things in regards to the inner workings of a corporation, development lifecycle, etc.
Recently while browsing the eShop with disgust seeing all the boring-as-hell games with anime tiddy clickbait I noticed that some games were on discount. It's important to note that even if I weren't a pirate, I'm still a huge cheapass, so I just added them to my wish list then moved on. Later while checking my wish list, I noticed that one of the games I added had their discount expire in ~1-2hrs. That's not when the realization has fully kicked in, but I thought to myself after converting the prices to my local currency (with transaction fees), "meh, after reading the description and seeing the images and videos, I might as well get it, I pay more for my food and drinks in Tesco every day anyways", so I bought it.
After clicking "continue shopping", I went back to my wishlist, and checked the other entries, and saw a game which was way too expensive (like 35GBP) for being just a port of the DOS version. I decided to search if it has a PC version, because that's the easiest to pirate for. When looking at the platform list the game was released for, it hit me. First we have to burn a ton of money just for design first, and getting it approved. If it gets approved, we burn even more money for prototyping and writing code from scratch (and that is while using already existing and tested libraries, like Unity or Qt). Then we fix some bugs, and ready the game for release. Then we get a request for a new feature before release, and after implementing it, bugs start to exponentially multiply, effectively burning up the entire budget. Then once you actually do get a release, you have to hope that skiddies won't crack the anti-piracy protection and that hacker groups won't upload a cracked version, effectively kissing most of your income byebye due to a cracked version being way too easily accessible.
...except that some pirates don't work like that. Like me.
There are a few types of pirates:
- the pirates: who never pay for anything, and you can not make a single penny from them. In my experience it's a decent amount, but not that much as many people make it out to be. Includes minors too whose parents are penny-pinching or broke or Karens.
- the cheapass: "if it's available for free from a trusted source then I might as well go with it". This is probably the biggest group of pirates. They'll wait a long time before buying the game, but if they see a really good deal then they might buy the game, but usually go for the cracked version instead.
- try-and-buy: I belong in this category, and lots of others. They pirate the game first, try it, and if they have played it through or they enjoy the game, they buy it. Sometimes even legit players have to resort to this if there is no demo available and there is a little info available about the game (without spoiling it).
- buy-and-crack: I also belong in this category. I'm not sure about the size of this category, but it feels like it's insignificant. These players buy the game, but remove the annoying DRM associated to it which hinders their experience. I do this especially for Steam-only games, because I don't need a stupid resident program to break my game with automatic updates. Leave me alone
The sad truth is is that almost nobody seems to do this differentiation, even though the difference between these pirate groups is really significant.
So why have I written a wall of text detailing the common type pirates? To get to my point: no matter what you do, pirates WILL always get what they want, even if it means paying more for DRM circumvention than it actually costs to buy the actual game multiple times.
Companies should learn how to mitigate piracy instead of just getting more aggressive with DRM. Just like with advertising
Crappy launchers (uPlay, Origin, Rockstar game launcher, Battle.net, and dare I say Steam client) and crappy storefronts (Switch eShop is the most notorious one in my book) definitely don't help with combatting piracy. Some launchers in fact only encourage piracy. And cheap ass attempts at a "discount" won't bite most of us either, like disguising a "price drop" from 59.99$ to 55.99$. In fact, such bullshit attempts just aggro some of us more and give more reason to attempt piracy.
In my eyes we're not only some cheap-ass discount whores who always only want 99.9% discounts (even though such discount would be really welcome), but we actually want reasons and features to stay with a platform. These platforms nowdays are not consumer-oriented, but money-oriented with the least effort as possible, and companies get away with it because we suck it all up.
And let's not get me started on those platforms where not even the purchase is easy! There are literal useless artificial barriers placed in front of you at checkout (*cough*Rockstar Warehouse*/cough*).
tl;dr: No matter how people tell you piracy is bad, you won't know how it actually feels like to the devs until you have experienced it yourself. The point is that buy your games and software if you can.
