Your reason for being a pirate

[duwen]

I have been a pirate the majority of my life - probably since I first hit the record button on a cassette deck when I was 6 or 7.
I'm now in my 40's and have pirated pretty much every medium that's piratable: Analogue music, analogue video, magnetic media, optical media, digital music, digital video... even print! If you can make a copy of something, you can pirate it.
The main thing that made me a pirate was movie piracy. And I don't mean downloading the latest Marvel superhero film - I'm talking 1980's... a stack of vcr's all inter-connected, real-time duping from tape-to-tape.
As a child of the video-age, and growing-up during the whole 'video nasties' debacle in the UK, piracy became the only way of seeing certain films that were banned. You traded rare films with friends, and happily sat through washed out, staticy, Nth gen dupes of films you'd otherwise never get to see.
This logic kind of followed through all my ventures into piracy, including games... for example, the majority of pirated PS1 disks I still own are for titles that were never released here.

I still pirate everything - movies, music, games, books, apps... etc - but I still purchase all those items too, just in a far lower quantity than the amount I bootleg

 

[VinsCool]

I've been buying a lot of games/movies/music these days -- because I can.

other than that. the only thing I "pirate" is rare/expensive and obscure games that re neiter released here, or untranslated.

mostly old console or computer roms. Old from 80-90

 

[gigio2000]

Do you need a reason to enjoy life?
There, your answer

 

[emmanu888]

I pirate games that are way too expensive or that i otherwise want to try before i buy. For the expensive thing well, let's say IIDX Empress on PS2 is something like 250$ on eBay and i'm not paying that much money for an old game.

As for trying before buying well Ubisoft got my money for Stick of Truth after i played through a pirated copy.

 

[Hells Malice]

I'm a pirate with 367 owned games on my steam list, so yeah.

I pirate games to try them. If i like them, I buy them. Pretty simple. If they don't hold my interest or whatever then I haven't wasted any money.
Or games just aren't priced properly. I'm looking at you Nintendo. I'll pirate it and if I ever remember to buy it when it's a proper price, I will. Most of the time I just stop caring though. Nintendo needs to learn how to price their games proportional to the content.

 

[SmellyPirateMonkey]

I try almost every game out before I buy them. I'm too poor to just buy everything i want to try straight up.

 

[coolbho3000]

I don't remember the last time I pirated a game. I have homebrew on my 3DS but I've kept it pretty up to date because I have a lot of eShop games. I pirated when I was a kid because I couldn't afford the games, but now I can.

 

[laudern]

Anyone paying for old SNES/genesis /etc games is just wasting money unless they are into collection games as far as I'm concerned.

In the past year I've bought a dreamcast and a playstation and have burnt games for those consoles. I don't see the point in paying ridiculously high game prices for a game I will most likely just play for an afternoon and never play again.

 

[ov3rkill]

Because I'm always looking for treasure.

 

[Sliter]

I am literally going to fix this message to it's utmost grammar-and-spelling-y ness. It's going to take me while...

well thanks o3o I really need to improve my English ...
also I think that we couldn't play EUR games, I actually only saw gb->gba and DS eur games, some 3DS and stuff but before that I think we couldn't use without these fancy adapters... the phantom could read only "his own" pattern (like Nes, without the retail game check thing, so their games can't be played on a nes) and nes (famicon with adapters ) and "turbogame" had both NES and famicom slots(and a crazy megadrive-looking controllers lol, srly look at this ,I don't know why someone pick a thing that work god an are already being producted here and make this ergonomic nigthmare with it XD)

 

[amoulton]

SWIM pirates because he bought a 3DS for full price and has easily spent another $200 on games. Nintendo has got it's money out of swim for this generation.

 

[AtlasFontaine]

I pirate because In my country is impossible to buy 1 game without sacrificing 3-4 minimum salary, just 1 game.

 

[total_n000000b]

No reason of being expensive or me being critic on games but out of many simple reasons one is availability,

In third world countries such as Pakistan there is no existence of the game you are looking for, heck even consoles especially Nintendo are extremely scarce to find. Besides even the most acknowledged pedestrians prefer not to waste money on such things but rather on cigarettes more. There is also no fixed region here and considering Nintendo again...... Don't ask about the situation of Wii orPs2, they come pre hacked and only option of buying games is pirated copy which we pay money for such crime! I'd rather pirate without making profit.

Solution to this is online, but even most online stores reject credit cards of certain region *cough* SEN and NOA. As well exchange rates come into play, my local bank thinks Canadian dollar is the same is US dollar when I once purchased smash bros 4 from eshop, I almost paid $75 including tax, at this rate I could've bought three games.

 

[wormdood]

so i got a long one. how do i make a collapsible text box thingy?
nvm got it

Spoiler: this story

Warning = grammar, punctuation . . . whats that?

ive been waiting to tell this story for a while now.
i grew up poor as hell all i was ever able to afford was a system (Christmas gift) and one or two games a year (one for my birthday and one from saving) at the time sega and snes games were like $30usd new. also a pc? "forget about it" lol im so poor i never even saw a computer outside of the public library until 1999. so to play games i hung out all day at a video game retail store called "zappers"(predecessor of eb/gamestop) where they had many tvs and systems set up and a open copy of every game to try before you buy (before demos were a thing) this lasted years before they closed and grew in me a true love for the games i could not afford
my first experience with roms(or at least a multi game cart) was not an illegal one. the cable co. TCI offered something when i was a child called "the sega channel" (at the time my mom worked for them so we got it free) it provided (through cable internet) about 50 sega games that would change every month (before gaikai and onlive existed R.I.P.) then i got a the ps1 2 years pass and i only accumulated 3 games. i found out about the "ps1 disk trick" but it confused me as i was still new to computers and learning how to use aol "lol" so i had no way to download and burn roms, so i did what any poor black kid from a fatherless home living in poverty (and i mean poverty ex: for two years i had no glasses even tho i was so nearsighted that if i were to copy notes from the blackboard in school i would look like a typewriter ribbon 1 foot from the board walking left to right over and over again. . . in the end my teachers got together and bought me a new pair of glasses "poverty" ) would do steal shit! i started (less relevantly atm with food then) ps1 demos (o.p.m. mag) then ps1 games (1 every weekend) this lasted till about 3 years. then my cousin "kali" invited me over to play ps2 (why not he was holding on to like 1/3 of my stolen retail ps1 disks anyway i can grab some from there) when i arrived he was doing something so confusing to me he was at his computer seemingly typing while watching battletoads&double dragon gameplay i asked "what the fuck kinda porn is this witchcraft?" and he explained what an emulator was and how simple it was to get games(roms) i was "hyped" i asked a lil unsure if it can "play zombies ate my neighbors" he pauses his game and presses f5 or something like that an the screen said "state saved" . . . i realized emulators added new features to the gameplay i already loved and just like that it became a ménage à trois (me/games/and theft of games for emulation) the next year (while my mother was in rehab as she got caught smoking marijuana) my moms boyfriend kicks me out the house (half way into my senior year of high school) i was homeless 16 year old without a job or high school diploma luckily my girlfriends mother takes pity on me (as her family on the same day lost there home to a fire) and moves me into an apartment with them.
1 year later
they had a bare min spec computer that my newly-ex-girlfriend used for kazaa. so i googled emulators with it and stumbled upon gbatemp among others (began lurking) and learned about gba flashcards and ps2 modchips both excited me but well living with my girlfriends parents fresh out of high school with no job or idea how get a job (no interview outfit, no references, no id (or idea how to get one))i could not afford mods for anything or basic needs even so i look for a job anyway two weeks in more ironically good dumb luck while waiting in line at a burger king (to ask for a application) a mentally challenged employee asked me for my help with something without asking what i agree i go outside with her and find she is trying to throw away an industrial size freezer (over 200lbs) into a 8 foot high dumpster i lift it overhead and ask her to push it out of my strained over extended grip and it falls in with a loud bang she thanks me and offers me the free meal she gets (because she is challenged "employees pay 1/2 price normally") i turn it down her manager comes outside hearing the bang she explains and i get my first job
3 months later
i move out on my own(well with roommates but for the first time as a member of society) bought a gamecube and a ds fat and games (fuck at this point id totally forgot about temp and mods) anyway a year later i meet a new girl(if anyone cares) got a better job(not much better) with that a pc to finally call my own looked up emulators and roms noticed new ds roms on the sites so i go back to google look farther than page one and rediscover gbatemp find out about this new thing called dssc2 that just shot up in price to $50usd and said to myself "r4 $5usd" time has passed i got another slightly better job i went through/got a lot of ds/wii systems 2 psp's a wiiu thats too far updated (when/if the mods get better/simpler i will buy a new one) and a vita(fw 3.5.1 the only other one that remains unhacked "im a noob at heart so in confused pm me if you can help simplify the process because im over my head here") i still pirate the games on them but before that is made to be an easy option i do buy games (tho some games like pokemon i buy flat out for organized play) so for a while it's been out of habit, but at this point its mainly because im gonna be a father and as a poor black man with a fatherless past i refuse to let my child suffer the same fate so im saving all my cash now in that effort (tho i will likely teach them how to be a pirate)
edit: in short it became a part of me

welcome to my life

 

[Bubbysaur]

I've become addicted to it. Ever since I started (PSP ISO/CSOs), it was the thrill of knowing that I could get the newest games for free that continued to drive me into continuing into doing it.

Now that I am working and I make enough to buy, I still do it because of the ease of mind that I don't have to out my limited resources towards buying games.

But for me it's really an addiction. I even pirate games I don't have any interest in playing just to see if it will work. I am not ashamed of what I do, though.

 

[Vipera]

I have read some stupid and hilarious posts. Keep believing your lies, people.
I have also very appreciated the ones that simply said "because I can" or similar. No, for real, no sarcasm intended. You are honest and I appreciate you.

As for me, I rarely pirate anything. But when I do, it's always about stuff I can't really buy. And I hate scalpers far more than pirates, so yeah, pirate the shit out of Flinstones or Tail Concerto and make those assholes go bankrupt, I don't care.
If there is a game I'm interested to play on VC, I buy it. If there isn't any way for me to play a game other than buy an overly-expensive used cartridge without giving anything to the real devs, I pirate it. If said game is released one year later on VC, I'm not buying it anyway because I'm not playing that game anymore. As for all the "new" games, 0 piracy.

 

[wormdood]

I have read some stupid and hilarious posts. Keep believing your lies, people.
I have also very appreciated the ones that simply said "because I can" or similar. No, for real, no sarcasm intended. You are honest and I appreciate you.

As for me, I rarely pirate anything. But when I do, it's always about stuff I can't really buy. And I hate scalpers far more than pirates, so yeah, pirate the shit out of Flinstones or Tail Concerto and make those assholes go bankrupt, I don't care.
If there is a game I'm interested to play on VC, I buy it. If there isn't any way for me to play a game other than buy an overly-expensive used cartridge without giving anything to the real devs, I pirate it. If said game is released one year later on VC, I'm not buying it anyway because I'm not playing that game anymore. As for all the "new" games, 0 piracy.

as i was the one of the two with long post im inclined to believe you are referring to me
yup its stupid and hilarious
"welcome to my life" & no part is a lie
and what? "because i can" gets respect? thats the worst reason to do anything Q"why did you shoot him" A"because i can" Q "why did you rape her" need i go on unless someone has a gun to your head (and even then) you still "can"(tho that will end bad) because as humans we have free choice

 

[henn64]

I originally got an AK2i to be less of a financial burden on my parents. For years, all I asked for on B-days and Christmas were DS games anyway. My logic at the age of 9 was 'I should stop asking for games every year, they're like $20x2 days, and we sure ain't rich!'
I follow the 'try before you buy' mentality now, but I usually use my GW for honest homebrew now.

 

[Margen67]

I pirate because:
It's the only way to get it. Mostly unmastered music because it sounds better than the mastered version because Loudness Wars.
I can't afford it. I'm not buying a single album on vinyl for 30$ or a game on the Eshop for 60$.
I don't want to support region locking, excessive DLC, shitty ports/unfinished games, and other shitty practices. Looking at you Nintendo, Rockstar, Ubisoft, Rocksteady/WB, and EA.
It's convenient.
Torrents are almost always better quality than streaming or digital shops.
I don't care about morals.

 

[ilman]

Spoiler

So, I live in Bulgaria where games are pretty damn expensive to begin with. Luckily, my parents owned an internet cafe 'till about 2002-ish(I was about 4 then), when I was introduced to games like Jazz Jarckrabbit 2 and Captain Claw. It turned out, though, that all the games at the internet cafe were stored on a Linux rig somewhere and the game keys were somehow transferred to the computers that requested it. That way the machines at the cafe stayed in the gray zone and weren't considered illegal.
I was a big fan of Sonic and Mario back then, so I really wanted my pop to upload some of their games on the computers. After he searched around he told me that there weren't any good ones for PC. Neither I, nor my pop had heard of any Nintendo or Sony consoles until then, since Bulgaria was part of the Soviet Union 'till 1989 and not many non-Soviet products made their way here.
So, my dad opened up Google and told me how to find games with it. He then searched for Rayman 2, found a torrent, opened it up through FlashGet(damn, that takes me back) and after 2-3 hours it was downloaded. We went through the installation instructions and after some time we had a working Rayman 2.
As time passed I asked him to install other games, 'till I learned how to pirate myself. I also asked him to print me cheats of games like Disney's Hercules, Captain Claw and Jazz Jackrabbit 2.
Then, when I got to 1st grade (~2006) I got myself my very first laptop - it was a crappy Toshitba. But, no matter how crappy it was, the first thing I did on it was install Warcraft 3 after I saw a friend of mine play it a lot at his home. And I really got into it. Undead main here. Too bad the franchise took such a drastic turn to the MMO genre. I really want a Warcraft 4...
Anyways, after winning several Maths competitions, the Christmas when I was 9 I got a PSP. And the first thing I did afterwards was I searched around Google, found some hacking guide and within an hour or two I had pirated isos of God of War:Chains of Olympus and Yu-Gi-Oh Tag Force 2 running on it. My shitting experience was forever changed that day.
Then I got a Wii in 2010 and I came across this site...

So, tl;dr born in a poor-ish country, was lucky to have tech-savvy parents who taught me to pirate

Nowadays, though, I play mostly LoL and Steam games I get off the humble bundle. I do occasionally pirate a game I'm not sure I'll like *cough*Stanley Parable*cough* or I find something interesting that I know my laptop(Lenovo Y580) might not run well. Speaking of which, I really hope that Fallout 4 is well optimised.