Software piracy?

I ditched paid software instead I'm using open source, web app (ex photopia,gimp), and free trial abuse

Have you tried FOSS? I use it for everything and pirating software is likely going to infect your computer.

Pirating dev tools in 2024 sounds like a misstep to me. Most of us (professional developers) gave up paid software about a decade ago.

There's so much competition for developer eyeballs, we (professional developers) have become accustomed to there being a good-enough free version of every good tool.

Usually the paid version just adds enterprise bullshit that only managers of developers (such as myself) want.

If you're worried that the "community edition" of the dev tool you want to try is under-powered, most aren't. To be sure, you might ask over in one of the programming Lemmy's.

Edit: And to be clear, I pirated the hell out of the developer tools I learned on, as a kid. I highly approve, and most developers do, of pirating dev tools to learn. But due to that community value, the free versions of great dev tools are almost always fully featured, today (finally).

I wouldn't want to run proprietary software even if it had negative price and the developer paid me.

Haven’t had problems with filecr.com but use at you own risk as usual

What tools are you after?

With something so niche as pico-8, you are probably better off just biting the bullet... In your shoes I'd investigate if there are viable FOSS alternatives and, failing that, just fork the 15USD the developer of PICO-8 asks for.