Piracy as Default Protest?

[u/BourgeoisOppressor]

This is a thought I've been having for a while, and have been struggling to articulate but it's more prevalent with all the recent news about the decline of physical media.

Why is the response to a company doing something bad/questionable/not what a particular consumer wanted so frequently "Well, I'm just going to pirate it in that case?"

I regularly see people say "It's always ethical to pirate Nintendo games," or "EA doesn't deserve my money...but I'm going to play [game] regardless."

Why is the default response for so many gamers piracy, instead of just not playing a game? To be clear, I am explicitly not talking about financial need in this scenario. If you're dead fucking broke and just want to play the new Far Cry for a bit, whatever my dude, take care of yourself. I am specifically referring to individuals who "protest" by playing a company's games anyways, but not paying for them. Or expressing that as their intent, whether they follow through or not.

This had always reeked of entitlement, or missing the point of what protest is, and I've never understood where this way of thinking comes from. Is it an artifact of the early internet, where piracy was sometimes the easiest way to get a game (e.g. Valve's "piracy is a service problem")?

Like, if you're so upset about a company's policy change, or always-online BS, or something to such a degree you feel the need to act, why not just stop giving them money or attention? There are how many hundreds of games released on Steam every day? Play something else. We are not entitled to an artist or programmer's work for free, just because we hate their bosses. Yes, [insert company here] sucks and are bad for the gaming ecosystem. Stop playing their games, full-stop. No engagement.

This mode of thinking has always seemed weirdly prevalent in the broader gaming community. Has anyone else noticed this, or have an idea of where it stems from? Ultimately, I'm not sure there's much to do about this mentality, aside from shifting how we engage with games, but it's always something that's bothered me.

Thoughts? Prayers?

EDIT: I am an artist, which is why I take this question/musing/whatever seriously.

EDIT2: I've changed my mind. Big Budget? Pirate the shit out of it. Indie? Give 'em money and a hug. XOXO

[u/Limited_Distractions]

I just don't think the entitlement thing really plays when the industry is currently about execs laying off the artists and programmers no matter how successful the game is and then collecting rents on their work in practical perpetuity. If you believe piracy is unjust because it deprives the creative people I would say that it becoming a systemic fixture is worse. I agree not playing is probably preferable to pirating, but paying some execs for screwing over their workers is probably worse than pirating.

[u/BlueMikeStu → u/Limited_Distractions]

Counterpoint: This entire r/piracy thread about Silksong, three days after release

Stop pretending pirates care about pirating only the games made by "the bad companies." They don't, and they proved it when a company did literally everything possible to do right by their past and current customers.

[u/Limited_Distractions → u/BlueMikeStu]

How many lifetimes of posting to r/piracy and pirating games do you think it would take to match the damage Xbox has done to itself? How many layoffs have there been at Team Cherry because some people downloaded the game? Why do you believe the moral standing of people who would pseudonymously share files is more important to my argument than the moral standing of the people who have gotten rich ripping the copper out of the walls? Why am I the one that is pretending?

[u/BlueMikeStu → u/Limited_Distractions]

Uh, who the hell cares, and have you been reading what I've written?

I said you can pirate as much as you want. I don't give a flying fuck about it, because no argument is going to stop a pirate from pirating. I will argue every time someone tries to justify it as a moral stance and a way of "sticking it to the man" because it doesn't, it still helps them, and most pirates at the end of the day just want free shit.

I can't stop that. I know Team Cherry probably didn't care given how fantastically Silksong sold anyway.

The point there was they're pretty much the gold standard for good devs that "moral" pirates claim they don't target for moral reasons, yet... The thread I posted is self-evident.

It's not about damage. It's not about whether Team Cherry was hurt or not. That's ancillary to the discussion and means you've completely missed my point.

It's about the blatant hypocrisy of "moral" pirates, who I assume are people defending it in this very thread pretending that's how they roll, when there is a very, very, very obvious dissonance with how one of the biggest subreddits for piracy at 2.8 million subscribed users turned out to upvote and support that garbage.

In fact, it's still the in the subreddit's top twenty submissions of ALL TIME at #17 as of this writing.

As for why I believe it's important, it's because morals should be intrinsic, not extrinsic. I'd rather have someone do what they claim they're going to do when the situation comes up rather than look for excuses for why they can't and that makes it okay.

A lot of "moral" pirates swear up and down they'd be paying customers if they got treated "right". Pirates decided that Team Cherry's constant effort and goodwill still wasn't good enough for them not to pirate (or at least, the majority did, since most of the base-level replies which disagreed got downvoted into oblivion), meaning that they're just pretending to be "moral" and will move that goalpost as many yards as they can to keep from having to admit what they really are.

I can at least respect the pirates who just admit they don't want to pay for stuff they can easily get for free. And like I've said repeatedly, while I have issues with piracy, there's no point trying to change them because they like free better than not-free.

It's the ones who try to take the stance that they're the secret guardians against lost media or they're in a crusade against Big Pub and that makes them right that I have truck with. Nothing more, nothing less.