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Piracy

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Re: Piracy

#91

Post by yetihehe »

SXX wrote: post #89
belorn wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly this is not even about development companies, but the distribution platforms which are even further away from the game developer. It is the distribution platforms that makes policy and generally dictate the conditions on which a game is "sold". The design and blame of microtransaction/gambling is more on the game developer, but even here we keep hearing stories on how such design is being pushed by the publish…

Microtransactions exist because there are people who happily pay for them, but not spend similar amounts on high-quality pay-to-play single-payer games. It's just a market with supply and demand. As about distribution platforms neither investors, publishers or game developers have any leverage against Valve, Microsoft or Sony. They just do whatever they want. So you're totally right here. These kind of monopolists ca…

> Microtransactions exist because there are people who happily pay for them, but not spend similar amounts on high-quality pay-to-play single-payer games.

I can't speak for everyone, but I think this may be because with microtransactions you pay for additions to some product already known to be good (you tested it and you like it enough to buy some more), while with single-player games you typically have to pay upfront in hope it will be good. So risk-aversion sets in.

Re: Piracy

#92

Post by a-french-anon »

anal_reactor wrote: post #28
dailykoder wrote: post #3

> The streaming platforms, for which you pay full price, don’t even let you choose the quality of the movie you want to watch. What you watch today might disappear from all platforms in two months. I have seen so many songs disappear from Spotify lately that I am considering to hoard music again. Gladly I have most of those that disappeared on my HDD anyways, since it's been mostly old songs, but yeah. Was kinda frus…

How do you discover new music? That's been an issue for me, considering how I don't use Spotify.

Read MA or RYM reviews and append all the names I don't already know to a big backlog.

Re: Piracy

#93

Post by deergomoo »

dartharva wrote: post #36

GOG exists. Blu-ray discs of movies, shows and music exist. Even when consumers have the option to buy from those modes, they don't. They prefer Steam and Netflix and Spotify instead. Why? Because contrary to the opinion of a couple of online aficionados, the masses don't care that much about preserving media after they have consumed them once, or once the trend has subsided. The market has spoken, the affordability…

> Blu-ray discs of movies, shows and music exist

For now. Everything Everywhere All At Once never got a physical release here in the UK. Considering it won best picture that is insane to me.

Similarly, a lot of prestige shows that are either produced by streaming companies or distributed by streaming companies outside the US never get physical releases.

I’m not saying you’re wrong—you’re dead right—but it bums me out.

Re: Piracy

#95

Post by hmry »

zgeor wrote: post #11
dailykoder wrote: post #3

> The streaming platforms, for which you pay full price, don’t even let you choose the quality of the movie you want to watch. What you watch today might disappear from all platforms in two months. I have seen so many songs disappear from Spotify lately that I am considering to hoard music again. Gladly I have most of those that disappeared on my HDD anyways, since it's been mostly old songs, but yeah. Was kinda frus…

It's nice of Spotify to at least leave the names of the songs. Years ago I had several huge music video playlists which today stand at 80% of what they previously were.

YES! It's so unbelievably annoying when websites just remove stuff from your playlists / bookmarks / whatever without telling you what was removed.

For anyone stuck in this situation and willing to spend a few (many) hours to recover the titles of their YouTube playlist: On the playlist page, in the (...) menu there is a "Show unavailable videos" button. After clicking that, you can right-click all the unavailable videos and copy their URLs. Then you can either try the wayback machine, or google the video ID. Usually you will find some forum posts talking about the video and mentioning the title.

Of course, it's not guaranteed that you'll find anything this way. But I have recovered multiple playlists this way.

Re: Piracy

#96

Post by TheBruceHimself »

Here's the thing: I take a step back and realize it's not a big deal. No one's dying, suffering, or anything of the sort because I don't reallly my games through steam or stream my favorite tv shows. Worst case scenario is something is no longer available anywhere thanks to it not being stremaable, rentable, on a service. Is this unfortunate? Yes, but is it enough to feel we need to massively change? Nah... Most of the movies ever produed are lost. Many hours of TV shows prior to the 60s were simply not recorded.

People also pretend like owning media means they'll one day, decades down the line, still be able to play it but in my experience this is rare. I have CD roms from the 90s that I just can't play. I'd likely need to find a windows 98 machine and do all sorts of magic to get them actually running. How much is any media of value me 8 years after I consume it? It wasn't too long ago that the only way you could watch a movie again is if a theature decided to show it again. You didn't see Attack of the Green monster in it's brief run in 1956? Oh well, too bad. It's only VHSs came out was owning a movie even a concept.

So, i've just learned to shrug it off. Ok, so i don't have a solid physical copies of all the Star Trek TNG, but I can stream them and it's not costly. In fact I've never really paid less for media in my life. Hypothetically they could take it from me, and leave me to never see it again. That'd be annoying but just annoying.

Piracy is as it ever was: annoying to setup, navigate, some level of danger and, now, nowhere near as well integrated or easy to use as the "legal" infrastructure. Maybe i'm just renting my shows but i'll take that over torrents that stop at 99%, missing epsides and dodgy subtitles.

Re: Piracy

#97

Post by edanm »

> Neither side is innocent—piracy is not theft, but let's admit, it is unfair. [...] The companies, with their excessive pricing, instead of selling their products once, turn them into SaaS with lifetime monthly subscriptions. They sell games for $60 and then add microtransactions, turning them into service games.

I'm sorry, but these are not comparable. One side - the pirates - are doing something that is illegal, unethical, and explicitly disallowed by the other side. It's not a voluntary arrangement - it is the opposite.

The game companies, on the other hand, are offering a voluntary arrangement. You don't like it, you don't have to agree to it. No one is forcing you.

Re: Piracy

#98

Post by belorn »

edanm wrote: post #97

> Neither side is innocent—piracy is not theft, but let's admit, it is unfair. [...] The companies, with their excessive pricing, instead of selling their products once, turn them into SaaS with lifetime monthly subscriptions. They sell games for $60 and then add microtransactions, turning them into service games. I'm sorry, but these are not comparable. One side - the pirates - are doing something that is illegal, u…

The new California law is quite clearly illustrating that what digital stores do is illegal, unethical, and not a voluntary arrangement. When a customer buy a product in a store they expect ownership of the item, not a temporary and limited digital license. Presenting it as a sale is fraudulent and misleading.

If companies don't like it they can "sell" their products in countries without customer protection. No one is forcing them to participate in the market.

Re: Piracy

#99

Post by reisse »

> "Look, no one pirates music anymore"

Is using hacked streaming apps or sharing accounts in violation of ToS considered piracy?

Re: Piracy

#100

Post by pathartl »

happymellon wrote: post #69
pathartl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about games that require an account in order to play at all? It's not a new concept and has been around for at least 15 years. Additionally, by modern games relying on matchmaking and lobby systems, almost any multiplayer game over the past 5-10 years is unplayable without an internet connection.

I'm not sure I follow. Is the argument that Steam is worse than Spotify because a subset of games have got built in self destruct, while Spotify only requires ongoing rent to access that 99¢ song? I think the self destruct is bad, and requiring 3rd party logins for single player games should not be allowed.

The argument is that platforms like Steam encourage developers to implement vendor lock in features. It's something that's more likely to happen with something like software vs standard media like music.
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