Hakita (Creator of ULTRAKILL) on Piracy
Hakita (Creator of ULTRAKILL) on Piracy
People will pirate no matter what and for various reasons. That's fine. Gloating about it publicly is just weird to me though.
Yea i dont feel like posting pictures of me and my pirate ship. But i like to spread it by words or if i can in a forum that tries to keep me anonymous :)
Fun story:
Tonight I pirated the PC version of Firmament (made by Cyan Worlds). I backed the game well over two years ago but the game was delayed, and then when it finally released a year ago, Cyan only released the PC version, and the PS4/5 version —the version I elected to receive — still hasn’t come out yet. I don’t know if it ever will and I’m tired of waiting.
So I pirated a game I bought for a different platform because it never released for the platform I bought it for.
Pls dont pirate indie games. They are usually made by a very small amount of people that work realy hard and deserve every cent. And usually they are very cheap. Everybody can spare five bucks once in a while.
What people need to learn is that "indie game" it's not a synonym for good, or worthwhile. I've pirated tons of indie games which wereamazing and I ended up buying.
I've also pirated tons of indie games that I wouldn't have spent a damn dollar on because they absolutely sucked.
Pirate indie games all damn day. Pay for the ones that aren't flame-broiled ass. Don't reward people who asset flip or put 5 mins of effort into something just because the game is listed under a category called 'indie' lmao
This is how I handle pirating. I more or less treat pirating as a demo for the game. If I liked the game enough to finish it, 9/10 times I'm going to actually buy it unless I have some personal reason not to, like the dev being a pos I don't wish to support or something.
Indie also covers an enormous financial area. People generally group games into AAA, Some nebulous middle ground games that are generally produced by the major studios but aren't AAA and Indie.
There is a difference between indie games that sell millions of copies vs dozens and this lack of discrepancy makes this complex. I once pirated a game called infernium after seeing a friend play it on switch, then learnt that it's an absolutely tiny game by a solo developer. I happened to adore the level design and lore of that game so much that I bought it on steam and then bought all of his other games too just to support him.
On the flipside, we refer to a game like Hades as indie. I love supergiant games and have purchased all their titles but I would have felt zero remorse at pirating Hades.
Maybe the only thing that I feel is sad in all of this is that the massive AAA games takes years to be cracked nowadays, which means only indie games are pirateable. I don't like the unfair dichotomy this creates. There are probably a reasonable amount of people who pirate indie games and buy AAA games for this reason, and that's bad for industry.
I can't :( It's 5 dollar for you not for me. (I am a Teen BTW)
Pirate today, buy tomorrow...unless its a AAA dumpster fire. Always pirate AAA games. The gaming experience tends to be better because pirates remove all the anti-cheat and other BS.
Yes they are cheap, but you cant say every can. It would even be better if it was phrased with should. Let em pirate the game and check it out. Many games dont have good demo and you are wasting your money. Even if it were just 5 bucks, you could have spend your spare 5 dollar on a game you already enjoyed and credit the development. And maybe i would even pay more if i choose the price myself
Cheap is relative, for me Hades was very cheap but steam changed the default price adjustment for my country and now Hades II cost almost twice for what I paid for Hades I.
There have been a few times in my life where I pirated a game or album, and ended up liking them so much I legitimately purchased them.
I literally just did that with backpack hero - the windows version through wine was having problems that made the game unplayable if I alt+tabbed, so I bought it for the native Linux version.
I remember being in the Stardew Vallet subr×ddit with someone talking about their guilt pirating the game because they really really enjoyed playing it but just couldn't afford the 15$ price at the moment.
Several players graciously offered to purchase & gift them the game on Steam.
It was so lovely.
People will happily pay for good, enjoyable games they feel are worth the price.
I'd like to play that new Princess Peach game one day, but there's no fucking way I'm paying 60$ to play a game I'm not even sure I'll like.
Nintendo is just on their own planet when it comes to... Basically everything, including game pricing.
They get it. Looks at all these "influencers" getting shit they don't need for free all the time to spread word.
Piracy is basically the same thing, but it's somebody getting something they do need/want and giving it honest word-of-mouth promotion
I don't remember who it was but some developer who's also an influencer was having a problem with piracy on one of his games in I think it was brazil? something to do with the fluctuating currency making it prohibitively expensive no matter how low you set the price, so he just made it free in Brazil.
Might be this dude; it is not free, just very affordable in their market. It turns out making it affordable also brings in a lot of revenue.
that's it
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PirateSoftware I believe it's who you're talking about. But yeah he didn't make it free, just priced well for that country
Also it's better for Devs than buying grey market keys bought using stolen credit cards.
I wish there was a middle ground. The grey market keys provide convenience that pirating doesn't, like steam activation.
I stopped using key resellers for games though after learning about how they're sourced
See, the thing is, the corporations believe they already own our money, so not giving it to them when they demand is the real injury, not us downloading a game or a movie. All the product does is tell them which internal bounty hunter to credit with the safe capture and return of what was already theirs.
"I'm paying with exposure." argument is not that great. Agreed with easy access to culture for those who can't spare the money though.
It's a bit different of a dynamic compared to a company that can pay and instead pays in exposure.
“I’m paying with exposure.”
In this case though, advertising otherwise would have actually cost them money... This is the one time that it actually is a "decent" although not "great" argument. The exposure dynamic to companies is completely different than for workers.
What would make it easier to donate for things which have been freely distributed as torrents? Some links in a bundled text file?
For indi-devs having a "donate" option on their page might be good for both people that maybe pirated but liked it enough to send some amount (even if not the full price). And could be a random source of money to off-set some of the pirated copies from people that just decide they wanted to show additional support for the efforts of the devs.
Lots of fans are willing to leave donations especially if the devs are at risk of shutting down or some other hardships. So long as the donation options only go to the devs/creators or their specific studio/company and not to some larger entity/publisher. Store fronts like itch.io allowing devs to have both an official front to allow safe free copies along with the normal price and "pay what you want" stuff is also nice.
This is why Name Your Price is a better system
Ultrakill is one of those rare examples of media where I genuinely feel a large amount of guilt if I pirate. Great community, super responsive (and largely queer) development team, incredible game...
First time in forever that I've actually bothered to buy a game without pirating it first. So here's a hot take that goes against everything I usually stand for: pirating indie games is kinda bad.
With all the recent studio shutdowns and a largely saturated market, it's becoming harder and harder for indie game developers to make a living. I hope everyone remembers to support independent projects they truly enjoy - be it music, games, or any other piece of media - because otherwise we're going to end up with only 3 game studios that pump out the same homogeneous bullshit every year.
And I'd add Celeste to the category of "I'd feel bad for pirating it".