After reading today EA’s takes on AI and strategies about boosting user monetization promoting and exploitation of user’s gambling addiction, I asked myself “How can someone defend those company agains boycotting and piracy?”.

So here I am: is there somewhere a curated list of VG companies to absolutely avoid giving money too? If not, do you thing we should do it? It would be nice to have a list with arguments and sources in order to make more publicly relevant the ethical and strateical reasons behind piracy.

p.s.I think it’s ok if you pirate things even without a moral stand behind, especially if you can’t afford games and other media at all, but the arguments still apply

  • skyeEnglish
    10•4 months ago

    Are you saying that Ubisoft doesn’t actually believe that people shouldn’t own their games and that this was a hypothetical discussion that was taken out of context? Because my impression was that this was sort of a response to people complaining about subscription-based games and DRM content that makes the concept of owning games blurry.

    Because if this position doesn’t really represent Ubisoft, then what should have been said is whatever does represent Ubisoft. Ideally they should agree that people have the right own the games they purchase.

    In my opinion someone should generally own what they buy. That’s why I like GOG, which distributes DRM free games, and part of why I often pirate games especially from large companies. In my opinion the take that people should only have a license representing permission to use a product that is actually owned by a company is delusional if not dystopian, and Ubisoft should be made fun of for having that position, and their games should be pirated.

    Here’s an explanation/rant/opinion I more or less agree with by Louis Rossmann if you’re/anyone’s interested

    • Eggyhead
      3•4 months ago

      Are you saying that Ubisoft doesn’t actually believe that people shouldn’t own their games and…

      No

      that this was a hypothetical discussion that was taken out of context?

      Yes

      • skyeEnglish
        1•4 months ago

        if the statement does accurately represent the position of Ubisoft as a company, why is the context important? What is the context that would improve peoples’ perception of Ubisoft telling their customers that exchanging your money for their products doesn’t grant you ownership of the products?

        • Eggyhead
          1•4 months ago

          I apologize, this is a bit of an extreme comparison: If I were to ask you what needed to happen for Nazi Germany to have won WWII, and you gave an honest answer, would it be fair of someone else to take your answer as proof that people on the internet wanted the nazis to win? It shouldn’t matter how your quote is used because there are certainly Nazi supporters on the internet, which is the primary concern of the claim. Right?

          I would like to know what the original question was.

          • skyeEnglish
            1•4 months ago

            I see what you mean, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the context of the question that prompted the statement, and yes when you put it like that I can see how the context can be important. So I did a bit of Googling to see what I could find after I read your reply, and here’s what I found:

            From what I can tell this is the first article that broke the news, and it’s a conversation with Philippe Tremblay, the director of subscriptions at Ubisoft. Here’s a long excerpt of the relevant portion:

            The question remains around the potential of the subscription model in games. Tremblay says that there is “tremendous opportunity for growth”, but what is it going to take for subscription to step up and become a more significant proportion of the industry?

            “I don’t have a crystal ball, but when you look at the different subscription services that are out there, we’ve had a rapid expansion over the last couple of years, but it’s still relatively small compared to the other models,” he begins. "We’re seeing expansion on console as the likes of PlayStation and Xbox bring new people in. On PC, from a Ubisoft standpoint, it’s already been great, but we are looking to reach out more on PC, so we see opportunity there.

            "One of the things we saw is that gamers are used to, a little bit like DVD, having and owning their games. That’s the consumer shift that needs to happen. They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection. That’s a transformation that’s been a bit slower to happen [in games]. As gamers grow comfortable in that aspect… you don’t lose your progress. If you resume your game at another time, your progress file is still there. That’s not been deleted. You don’t lose what you’ve built in the game or your engagement with the game. So it’s about feeling comfortable with not owning your game.

            "I still have two boxes of DVDs. I definitely understand the gamers perspective with that. But as people embrace that model, they will see that these games will exist, the service will continue, and you’ll be able to access them when you feel like. That’s reassuring.

            “Streaming is also a thing that works really well with subscription. So you pay when you need it, as opposed to paying all the time.”

            Streaming is a distribution method that appears to lend itself to the subscription model, although currently it remains a very niche corner of the business. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot told GI in June that Ubisoft believes in streaming, but that it needs time. “It’s getting there,” he told us. “Just not as fast as we thought. When you are in a good city with good internet, it’s fantastic. But it’s not the case for everyone. The Nvidia experience, for example, is fantastic, but we thought it would go faster. We’ve learned a lot by working with these services, and we’re using that experience to enhance what we’re doing,”

            So yeah it sounds to me like the journalist directly asked how subscription models could become more accepted and normal. It sounds like Philippe Tremblay wants, in particular, for Ubisoft to get in the streaming market, like if you don’t have a powerful enough computer to run a game, pay to stream it from a computer that is.

            I’m on your side now I think, but I would maintain that Ubisoft would probably love a future where all games are subscription based, but that would just be speculation on my part only based on my bias against corporations ;3

            So yeah I get you now, sorry for pressing you, thanks for bearing with me