Sorry to say, you’ve mistakenly made one hell of a generalisation on that last sentence. Other than that one stinky turd, the rest is spot-on.
The truth is that if somebody was going to pirate software, then they were never going to buy it in the first place and it’s greedy and mentally ill to think otherwise…
I’ve been on the piracy scene since 2001 and was a moderator for one of the largest dreamcast piracy forums once upon a time. The core members of that forum are still together on Discord and we all buy things wherever possible. Gabe Newell is correct in that piracy is a service problem.
Steam cut my games piracy down to zero for the longest time (501 games, 414 DLC) because it was more convenient and had frequent sales. Other companies that decided to pull away from Steam and conspire with publishers regarding timed exclusives on a platform that doesn’t want me as a customer (Epic). As a result, anything that is an Epic exclusive is pirated indiscriminately and seeded for several weeks. I don’t even play any of them. Download, seed for a week, delete, rinse and repeat on the next exclusive. The same goes for anything with Denuvo DRM.
GOG has DRM free games, there’s a site where they are all available for download, and I’ve discovered quite a few gems that way. Those gems got purchased on Steam because GOG also doesn’t want me as a customer, even though I had decent library and bought several games at launch on there. I’m refusing to use a third party launcher to install games from there because once again, its a service problem.
Netflix cut my video piracy to zero between 2011 and 2020. When I moved across the world, I brought only my clothes, laptop, and storage drives. Everything I wanted to watch was available on Netflix or YouTube. Once Netflix started losing shows like Futurama, Parks & Rec, and even Sons of Anarchy, I went straight back to piracy and haven’t looked back. Netflix only continued to get my money because my partner insisted on doing things legally. By the time she had enough in October 2023, we were paying for Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Ziggo, YouTube, Curiosity Stream, and HBO. At the moment, only Curiosity remains.
Adding up the 3 “services” we consume content from the most (not including the ones we watch one show here and there on) added up to €497 per year. My piracy costs €472 per year not including electricity, which is used anyway since the server also hosts a boat load of microservices like NextCloud which replaces yet another subscription storage. It’s costing me €72 to rent a seedbox, and €400 at the upper-end for a large NAS drive one time per year.
It’s a service problem and I don’t think those who refuse to contribute to the broken service problem are mentally ill. The “managers” in charge are.
What I was trying to say was that; regardless of any explanation for why piracy happens, it is not the same as stealing physical goods. Corporate executives and MPAA types are mentally sick (they can’t see past money) and go to the extent of gaslighting consumers into accepting their definitions because if they control the narrative then they can do anything and spin it as normal or only solution.
It’s a service problem and I don’t think those who refuse to contribute to the broken service problem are mentally ill. The “managers” in charge are.
I am not blaming normal people. I am calling industry and rich oligarhs mentally ill. Because is it not sick to want to do what they are doing?
I am merely peeved by how normalized “piracy is theft” has become, when in today’s world corporates plunder the earth, commit wage theft, suppress collective bargaining, and don’t want to pay taxes. It’s so normalized that even piracy advocates have incorporated it into their vocabulary.
It seems that I misunderstood your original comment. You’re right in that piracy isnt the same as stealing physical goods.
My original comment was a jab at the corpos and using their terminology to highlight how utterly absurd their line of thinking is. I should have worded it better and used “imaginary profits” instead.
Just FYI but you can download all your GoG games through the webpage as standalone installers, only thing you’re gonna be missing out on without the GoG galaxy software is the automatic updates/cloud saves (which have been broken anyway with the latest migration they’ve been up to for the last several weeks)
I am aware of that. I could also just use Lutris since I use it to install the games themselves anyway. My point is, if the company that wants my money goes out of their way to not produce a Linux build of their launcher in the age of Electron, I’m going to get it elsewhere and launch it as a non-Steam game. Its the same number of steps. Still a service problem.
I know … people … who’ve been casually torrenting for 25 years and haven’t had a virus since the 90’s. They don’t do games or other “cracks” as they’re the easiest way to get a virus because you have to run an executable. You don’t run that risk with media files. The important thing is setting your OS to always show the file extension so you don’t click on any that are executable. As long as you click the .mp4 / .mkv you’ll be fine.
All you have to do is set up a vpn that allows P2P traffic and enable a killswitch, set up qbittorrent, go to one of the current reputable resources, mentioned all over the place, and click the magnet link. Better yet go the arr route and it’s mostly hands off after it’s set up.
Sorry to say, you’ve mistakenly made one hell of a generalisation on that last sentence. Other than that one stinky turd, the rest is spot-on.
I’ve been on the piracy scene since 2001 and was a moderator for one of the largest dreamcast piracy forums once upon a time. The core members of that forum are still together on Discord and we all buy things wherever possible. Gabe Newell is correct in that piracy is a service problem.
Steam cut my games piracy down to zero for the longest time (501 games, 414 DLC) because it was more convenient and had frequent sales. Other companies that decided to pull away from Steam and conspire with publishers regarding timed exclusives on a platform that doesn’t want me as a customer (Epic). As a result, anything that is an Epic exclusive is pirated indiscriminately and seeded for several weeks. I don’t even play any of them. Download, seed for a week, delete, rinse and repeat on the next exclusive. The same goes for anything with Denuvo DRM.
GOG has DRM free games, there’s a site where they are all available for download, and I’ve discovered quite a few gems that way. Those gems got purchased on Steam because GOG also doesn’t want me as a customer, even though I had decent library and bought several games at launch on there. I’m refusing to use a third party launcher to install games from there because once again, its a service problem.
Netflix cut my video piracy to zero between 2011 and 2020. When I moved across the world, I brought only my clothes, laptop, and storage drives. Everything I wanted to watch was available on Netflix or YouTube. Once Netflix started losing shows like Futurama, Parks & Rec, and even Sons of Anarchy, I went straight back to piracy and haven’t looked back. Netflix only continued to get my money because my partner insisted on doing things legally. By the time she had enough in October 2023, we were paying for Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Ziggo, YouTube, Curiosity Stream, and HBO. At the moment, only Curiosity remains.
Adding up the 3 “services” we consume content from the most (not including the ones we watch one show here and there on) added up to €497 per year. My piracy costs €472 per year not including electricity, which is used anyway since the server also hosts a boat load of microservices like NextCloud which replaces yet another subscription storage. It’s costing me €72 to rent a seedbox, and €400 at the upper-end for a large NAS drive one time per year.
It’s a service problem and I don’t think those who refuse to contribute to the broken service problem are mentally ill. The “managers” in charge are.
What I was trying to say was that; regardless of any explanation for why piracy happens, it is not the same as stealing physical goods. Corporate executives and MPAA types are mentally sick (they can’t see past money) and go to the extent of gaslighting consumers into accepting their definitions because if they control the narrative then they can do anything and spin it as normal or only solution.
I am not blaming normal people. I am calling industry and rich oligarhs mentally ill. Because is it not sick to want to do what they are doing?
I am merely peeved by how normalized “piracy is theft” has become, when in today’s world corporates plunder the earth, commit wage theft, suppress collective bargaining, and don’t want to pay taxes. It’s so normalized that even piracy advocates have incorporated it into their vocabulary.
It seems that I misunderstood your original comment. You’re right in that piracy isnt the same as stealing physical goods.
My original comment was a jab at the corpos and using their terminology to highlight how utterly absurd their line of thinking is. I should have worded it better and used “imaginary profits” instead.
My mistake!
Just FYI but you can download all your GoG games through the webpage as standalone installers, only thing you’re gonna be missing out on without the GoG galaxy software is the automatic updates/cloud saves (which have been broken anyway with the latest migration they’ve been up to for the last several weeks)
I am aware of that. I could also just use Lutris since I use it to install the games themselves anyway. My point is, if the company that wants my money goes out of their way to not produce a Linux build of their launcher in the age of Electron, I’m going to get it elsewhere and launch it as a non-Steam game. Its the same number of steps. Still a service problem.
I only ever pirated music, i was to young and not knowledgeable enough to pirate movies, so i just got viruses from limewire.
Thats why i dont pirate now, i dontknow how.
Netflix is making more keen on learning everyday.
I know … people … who’ve been casually torrenting for 25 years and haven’t had a virus since the 90’s. They don’t do games or other “cracks” as they’re the easiest way to get a virus because you have to run an executable. You don’t run that risk with media files. The important thing is setting your OS to always show the file extension so you don’t click on any that are executable. As long as you click the .mp4 / .mkv you’ll be fine.
All you have to do is set up a vpn that allows P2P traffic and enable a killswitch, set up qbittorrent, go to one of the current reputable resources, mentioned all over the place, and click the magnet link. Better yet go the arr route and it’s mostly hands off after it’s set up.
Awesome, I’m going to take a look at it all. Allegedly
It’s become far easier than it was in the past. The piracy community is very friendly and will gladly help those who seek their guidance.