Piracy and low budget gaming

in Hive Gaming3 years ago

Purchasing vs piracy in my routine

If I really like a single player game after completing it and I have the money for this, I will buy it. But those are not the only rules: the game studio that developed them must still be in business, it can't have sold out to another company, and it can't be a mainstream release where profit comes before gaming. If this criteria is not meet, I will be content in piracy.

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Proud to have Primordia on my Steam library

When a game is not good enough, which lately has usually been the case, I will quit playing it halfway through. If it is, like Primordia proved itself to be, I will get it on Steam as soon as I have enough funds in my Steam wallet. Alternatively, I might instead trade for a key on the second hand market, which is also original so I'm cool with it, because activation key scarcity increases second-hand prices which leads to retail purchases.

Sometimes I will have some gaming funds on Steam, but if I haven't recently finished a game meeting the requirements I've laid out, that money will only be spent on persistent multiplayer games. That means games that cannot be pirated.

Thanks to this method, I only pay for what I enjoy playing. Because I get to try a lot more games, I buy more games than I usually would if I never pirated them. And yes, I do stick to the buying-good-games-after-I'm-done rule.


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Buying GTFO did not make me feel like I was taking a risk

Reasoning

Most of us, non-casual gamers, have limited time and money to invest into our beloved hobby. We cannot afford either resource just to go through every single game in our backlogs because there are just too many games we want to play. Spending on something we regret is simply not an acceptable.

A lot of games are pushed out with hyped lies or missing features. While playing a plethora of them, we also eventually come to the sorrowful understanding that some do not suit our taste. Not to mention the increasing number of public beta / early access titles which lack too much or might get abandoned by its developer too soon. But these realizations will often come too late after our purchase, denying us the opportunity of a refund.


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Gaming budget: under control! [image source]

What do you think?

Considering how limited our lives are as we grow old, do you think this line of thought is acceptable? Would you prefer strictly obeying the law if you can afford it? How important actually owning the games you play is to you?

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the game studio that developed them must still be in business, it can't have sold out to another company

This is great, I am going to adopt this. I have not checked for this in past, but it is very important.

Ad. second hand markets - some Indies wrote that they would prefer people to pirate their games over buying on G2A or similar sites because if sellers got keys via stolen credit cards it actually costs developers money on charge back fees, which Valve demands from devs in full. Not sure if its still true, but it made me not wanna buy anything on key reselling sites.

stolen credit cards

I use steamtrades.com. I simply trade key for key. Those won't be charged back because people have been holding them for a while. They would have had been disabled by the time they're traded. I mostly just trade bundle games for other bundle games.

I use Steamtrades too for the same reason. I stopped using it but might return. Especially if I upgraded my PC.

Nice, bundle leftovers are safe for sure. That's where key trading is beneficial for all parties involved.

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I try to minimize my Piracy, I have certain rules that I don't follow all the time, but have on my mind even if I don't follow them.

The most important rule: I don't blog on games I pirated, or at least not as much as games I bought with money... My reasoning is that I shouldn't profit from something I basically "stole" for my own enjoyment.

There are exceptions to this rule: Any game I played before I made this rule around 6 years ago doesn't count in it. Another exception is that while I don't make specific articles about games I pirated, I will use (my experience with) it for examples in the posts I do write.

I pirated Persona 4 (PS2) and didn't write articles about it, but I always provide examples from it when talking about Persona series. Will probably get P4 Golden on PC sometime in the future though.

Still, I don't follow this rule all the time even outside of those exceptions.

That's also the reason why I didn't write about Anime so much, I use one of the unofficial apps to download anime, (and recently Torrenting,) so I don't blog about anime as much as I watch it.


Looking at how often I try a new game from my backlog, I already have games in my Backlog from HumbleBundle for the next couple of years. Most of these games won't go past my first impression posts of them though.

the game studio that developed them must still be in business, it can't have sold out to another company,

Nice Idea!

Just noticed that this comment could work as a post on its own.

If I went as far as reviewing a game, I've either purchased the game on Steam but got a refund, already own it or will buy it. :)