this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Hell yeah, game devs don't deserve to be paid for their work ๐คก
They've already been paid. Bethesda doesn't have profit sharing.
... Do you think workers in a car factory don't get paid until someone actually buys the car they helped build? All the devs have already been paid!
Given how video game studios work, also probably laid off
And how do these companies make the money required to pay the salaries of their employees?? ๐ค
They were the best selling game on steam for month before the gane even came out.
"Enough suckers ahead of me have paid for the game, now it's morally right for me to pirate it!" ๐คก
Record-breaking profits usually suggest that even when they have all the money, they will not pay the devs much.
Ask the people who worked on Avatar (the one with the blue people), which was simultaneously the highest grossing movie of all time and also the most pirated movie for several years after its release.
If you carjack someone else, commit actual grand theft auto, does that mean the workers in the car factory that produced the car get their pay retroactively revoked?
That's actual theft, you stole it from the owner, and even then it doesn't affect the factory workers' salary at all.
If I get a copy of Starfield from a friend after they're done playing it, does that count as stealing the devs' salary?
Which dev did you write your check to?
Since you're ostensibly a pirate, it stands to reason that you wouldn't understand how buying a game works.
As somebody who almost went into the game industry and didn't because of the low wages, horrible working conditions, and just generally poor quality of life, I think I know more about how devs get paid than some rando on the internet.
And I haven't pirated a game since the Bay went down like 10 years ago. I just hate people who get so holier-than-thou because a handful of dollars from their purchase will go towards paying the devs' salaries on the studio's next game while ignoring how much of it will go to stock options for the shareholders and buying the CEO another Ferrari. You wanna pirate games or not, I don't care. Just don't give me this "my money is going to the devs" crap. Because it isn't. That's just the excuse you use for your pearl clutching.
I will happily buy more expensive games that are shorter and with worse graphics than modern AAA games, so long as the devs are getting paid well and aren't crunched. Because my money isn't going to the devs, but it certainly tells the company what I do or don't care about.
Piracy is always moral. These types of comments ignore the fact that "game devs" don't actually have full control of their works but instead is split through a larger publishing/corporation and shareholders. Game devs have very little autonomy or personal agency at all.
Am I taking crazy pills? Thieves are claiming the moral high ground?
Redefining theft from "taking a physical object that isn't yours" to "right click copy, right click paste" has got to be one of the best psyops of all time.
I was never going to give Todd Howard the money for this regardless, after FO76. He would have received $0 for this game regardless of if I downloaded it or not.
So it's okay to steal because someone else is stealing more than you?
This is so fucking stupid. If you steal a physical item, say, a block of cheese, it is no longer in the possession of the shop, and can't be sold to someone else. The cheesemonger will have to make another block to sell.
If you copy and paste a bunch of 1's and 0's, the original is still there. How was that theft? Does the original still exist?
Is watching a movie at a drive in from outside the lot with a pair of binoculars theft? If you can hear a copyrighted song from your neighbours yard, is that theft? Taping a movie when it airs on TV with a VHS, is that theft?
If you tell a joke and I start to word for word retelling your joke then I haven't stolen your joke? After all the joke still exists in your head.
If you have an excellent idea, for the sake of scale let's say it's a million dollar idea, but you don't have the means to realize that idea. Now let's say I heard of your idea and I can realize the idea and make millions off it. Have I stolen your idea? The idea still exists in your mind but it's no longer a million dollar idea because I already made millions from it.
If someone scrapes the web for your activity to create a profile of you (which is for instace what Facebook does) is that stealing your data? After all none of your data goes missing
Similarly if someone hacks your bank and takes your financial and personal data the bank holds, is it not stealing? Does it magically turn into stealing if after taking your data they delete all the data from the banks system? What if they encrypt it without deleting, effectively making the data impossible for the bank to use?