When I was young I was really poor. I couldn’t afford anime, manga, comics, video games, or anything else. There was also no real way for me to make my own money. I would fantasize about working at McDonalds to get a paycheck like I heard Americans did and buy my first game, but that was child labor or something and illegal.
Piracy was the only reason I got into most of my current hobbies. Without it, I would have probably not spent a cent on any of the above, but because of it I spent a significant portion of my income on them. Stupid, I know, should’ve saved more. Oh well.
So when I see things like this
I can’t help but feel like not wanting to ever buy one again and just pirate it. It’s not illegal to pirate in my country, only to distribute, so there’s literally nothing any of the companies could do. There’s also plenty of ways for people in other more restrictive countries to do it safely.
You’re just upset your piracy site is gone
I don’t care about the site, I never used that site, it’s more about the idea. They are spending who knows how many millions of dollars going after piracy sites, meanwhile their creatives are overworked, paid like shit, and the creation suffers from this. People end up blaming the animators, game developers, whatever else instead of the people at the top that decide all of it.
Shutting down piracy websites won’t even help, there’s thousands of them, there’s usenet, there’s torrents, infinite ddl websites. Unless you abolish privacy and encryption it is mostly impossible to stop it. Even under literal communism, piracy still existed. It just happened physically through tapes, discs, and storage media.
Titor, are you advocating for PIRACY?
No never do it it’s really bad you wouldn’t download a car would you?
I don’t think you can reliably vote with your wallet in today’s age unless there’s some really big, impactful cultural event. People will keep buying the new Call of Duty, FIFA, whatever, no matter what you do.
The only way to fix this is through legislation. I’m somewhat of a libertarian in some ideas, but the truth is a free market cannot be free without restrictions. Corporations have so many levels of separation that the people at the top do not care at all about the product or the consumer in most cases, just money.
I don’t know what legislation would fix creatives not getting paid enough. IP laws are there to protect corporations, not the creatives. Corporations are needed too, so their profit shouldn’t be gutted either. It’s a complicated topic.
Stop Killing Games is a good first step, but there needs to be more done for consumer advocacy and protecting creatives.
Gachiakuta
Fun fact, the creator of Gachiakuta complained about people from countries with high piracy. I’m from a country with high piracy, and thanks to that high piracy Gachiakuta is a best seller. Sometimes piracy is the only reason someone discovers the thing in the first place.
I discovered Junji Ito through piracy, now I have every single manga he sells in my country as well as a bunch of merch.
It’s pretty simple, really. Gabe Newell said Piracy is an economic, or a service issue. I also add it is an issue of preservation. Without piracy, most games, no, most media would be lost. You can’t buy Black & White anywhere.
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