Games
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
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Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
Authorized Regular Threads
Related communities
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Video games
Generic
- !gaming@Lemmy.world: Our sister community, focused on PC and console gaming. Meme are allowed.
- !photomode@feddit.uk: For all your screenshots needs, to share your love for games graphics.
- !vgmusic@lemmy.world: A community to share your love for video games music
- !freegames@feddit.uk: A community sharing free games giveaways.
Help and suggestions
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- !AutomationGames@lemmy.zip
- !Incremental_Games@incremental.social
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- !CityBuilders@sh.itjust.works
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- !turnbasedstrategy@piefed.world
- !tycoon@lemmy.world
- !VisualNovels@ani.social
By games
- !Baldurs_Gate_3@lemmy.world
- !Cities_Skylines@lemmy.world
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- !Palia@Lemmy.world
- !Pokemon@lemm.ee
- !Silksong@indie-ver.se
- !Skyrim@lemmy.world
- !StardewValley@lemm.ee
- !Subnautica2@Lemmy.world
- !WorkersAndResources@lemmy.world
Language specific
- !JeuxVideo@jlai.lu: French
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Sounds like a valid response to me. I got into piracy partially because of lack of money and partially because back in the day, I understood how badly record companies were ripping artists off and then using that money to sue their fans. Video games have always been a different beast, just like movies. They often employ so many people at so many levels that it's not so easy to just say "If you want to make sure they get their cut just go buy it on Bandcamp Friday" in comparison to musicians. (back in the day we also bought merch and concert tickets to support artists, just less of that money makes it to them these days)
I often use piracy to be able to test out a game without risking spending money on something I end up hating, and giving myself enough time to decide that. I actually played Baldurs Gate 3 twice before I was able to afford buying it at full price shortly after release, but it was well worth it to buy an official copy even though I had already played it a bunch. I still played it even more after buying it. Well worth the full-price game.
If you're going into it with an attitude of that all game devs are rich and that they're somehow ripping off their fans and so you can feel justified in pirating and taunting them for it, fuck me, grow up.
It's similar with me. I have pirated games starting with my Amiga 500 in the early 90s, and still pirate today. But I am also one of the best costumers the game industry has (except in the categories MTX and cash-grab DLC, and I am very careful with early access titles). I own around 2500 games legit (not counting Systems other than PC), and nearly all of those games started as a pirated copy. Without pirating I would never be able to decide which games are worth my money and time.
If a game isn't well rated, I won't pirate it, and if it can't hold my attention, I delete it. If it's my cup of tea, I wait until the price point is where I perceive it as fair for the offering. That can be full price on day one too if is good! BG3, Nier Automata, Witchfire, Prey 2016 and a very long list of other games all got what they asked for.
If I see that a game is flawed, but the devs are actively working on making their game as good as it deserves to be (it helps if they have a good track record), I also tend to pay close to full price. If fixes come slowly or erratically, or they abandoned a game in an unfinished state before, I only buy after it is fixed, heavily discounted, or not at all.
I watched a youtube video which talked about a 2015 study into piracy.
The study was conducted by a collaboration of movie, music, television, and video game studios.
Movie and television showed that the piracy rarely affected legit purchases. It did not help, but it did not harm.
Music had a slight negative dip, where sales among piraters sometimes prevented sales.
But video games is what was really special. They found those who pirate at least 1 game a year are up to 100x MORE likely to not only buy the game, but buy it in multiple forms. So maybe you bought GTA:V on release day on PS3.
Then a few years later you bought it on PS4. Then later on PS5. I think it's also on PC so throw that in too.
Only a pirate would love a game that much. And is probably pirating because it keeps their physical copy unopened.
I pirated a game ~ 6 years ago, kept it in an external hard drive, never player it. Bought it on Steam and played it. I still have the pirated copy somewhere in the depths of my external. It really was the most space taking wishlist entry.
Even in 2015 it wasn't about keeping the copy unopened. Games came in CD but internet was barely getting fast enough to download large amounts of data fast and efficiently. However, CD has little collecting value or preservation qualities. They go bad fast, half of commercial CDs go bad in less than a decade. Organic layer CDs that were used for home burning are dice rolls. Only inorganic archival medium burned at very slow speeds theoretically can go for more than two decades, and it is still recommended to keep redundancies
On the contrary, I think it was, again, about convenience. CDs were part of DRM. A type of DRM that had to have the CD in the PC's CD tray in order to run the game, even if all the information was already locally installed. While later consoles acquired the capability to install the games to a hard drive for faster load times, this type of DRM was also adopted.
It was not rare for people to buy a game for PC, then immediately look for a crack online to play without CD. People were rigging hard drives to their consoles to install games there. Etc. So you could play your library without having to stand off the couch to change disks. Piracy offered the convenience at no cost.