based

image:

screenshot of a Tweet from Running With Scissors reading

“We’ve been told our games are too expensive in some countries but we’ve been using Steam’s recommended pricing for a while. We trust Valve enough to not change this. If our games are still too expensive for you, you can pirate them until you have enough to support us.”

  • apprehensively_human@lemmy.caEnglish
    8·
    1 year ago

    I have to imagine a comment like this does absolutely nothing to their sales figures. People who were going to download a cracked version of their games anyway remain unaffected now that they have a blessing, and I doubt people who weren’t going to pirate would now feel more inclined to do so.

    This seems like good PR and frankly it should probably be the default position for games studios.

    • giant_smeeg@feddit.uk
      2·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, the whole piracy crackdown situation is so stupid.

      I pirate a lot of media, if you added it all up it would be a lot of money (if I was to buy everything). The difference is, before I pirated I barely bought any of the media.

      • I pirate some games that i’d never buy. I buy all games I want to support.
      • I pay TV licence, netflix and amazon. I pirate tons of TV series because they aren’t on those services. I literally can’t buy some of them and if I could i’d need about 10 different streaming services.
      • Films, I pirate a lot of films. Before I pirated I never bought any films, i’d either wait for netflix/normal TV or just not watch them. I still go to the cinema for big releases.
      • I subscribe on patreon, github and donate to LOADS of projects, many of which i’ve pirated first or obtained a copy of (books are a big one here).

      If you were to objectively look at the value of the pirated media, it would seem that i’ve “stolen” or studios have missed out on lots of revenue, but the truth is I pirate a lot of media, just because I can.

    • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
      0·
      1 year ago

      I was going to say, all artists should share this position, but I’ll do one better: if you don’t have this position, you’re not an artist. Feels bold to make any absolute claim about what makes an artist, but I feel safe on this one. If making sure you’re fairly compensated is higher priority than sharing your art, then you’re not an artist.

      • xgranade@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        4·
        1 year ago

        Artists, like all laborers, should be fairly compensated for their work. The idea that love of art should necessarily come into conflict with fair compensation is a primary vehicle for continuing the exploitation of creative labor.

        That is somewhat orthogonal to the issue of piracy, though. Some of the most strongly anti-piracy platforms out there are also absolutely terrible in terms of labor rights (hence the current strikes in Hollywood, for instance). It’s notable that in this case, the studio seems to be saying fairly explicitly that piracy is indeed not the main obstacle to fair compensation, such that no conflict between their stance and labor rights needs to exist.