#AND THE DEV SUPPORTS PIRACY

[moreeels]

breaking my silence I THINK DOORS IS BETTER THAN PRESSURE......!

[the-shifting-long]

@ anybody who's started getting interested in slay the princess after watching Markiplier play it: trust me. trust me on this. stop watching his playthrough. don't even think about his playthrough. ideally wait for the pristine cut to be released (completely free expansion to the game.) but if you're impatient it's complete as-is. go play it yourself. as blind as possible. trust me. TRUST ME. the game is SO MUCH BETTER when you're the one behind the wheel, making all the choices, and you don't know what will happen when you make them.

it's a very, very, very good game, if you can't afford it the devs are perfectly fine with piracy, there are two of them, they have plenty of the money they need to support their future projects, you can always buy the game later or official slay the princess merch to support them financially, i'm telling you this for your own good, trust me, you want to play it yourself and you want to avoid Markiplier's playthroughs until you do.

[ayakashibackstreet]

I love piracy I love piracy I love piracy I love piracy

[directdogman]

opinion on people pirating your games?

I could think of a few legitimate reasons someone might pirate my work. Maybe they're barely keeping their head above water and can't afford $6-8 for entertainment, maybe they live in a country where it's harder to buy games on Steam, maybe they have no way to make online purchases, or maybe they just feel like it. In a digital age, you can't really do anything about piracy. If someone REALLY wants to pirate a piece of work, they'll find a way. I like to keep easy to find piracy links out of the main community hubs, but other than that, I just leave it be.

Either way, I don't judge. Everyone's circumstances are different. I'm very fortunate that with merch + games sales combined, I'm able to feed myself and pay rent while focusing on my passion full time. Not a lot of people get that opportunity, y'know?

If anyone reading this has pirated my work and wants to help the game (but can't financially support DT), the best thing you can do is share with others why you like the game and get other people talking about it! It doesn't cost me anything if you pirate DT (since it's all just bits, bytes, 1's and 0's), but recommending the game to others sure does help me!

At the end of the day, I'm glad people like the game enough that they'd want to pirate it! I remember pushing DT a lot in the beginning and struggling to get people to try the FREE demo! What really makes me happy is that people DO play DT and have fun doing it! That's what game dev is all about :)

[transfaguette]

always sucks when one of the biggest companies in a space is also The Worst

Unity, which for a long time the majority of indie games and several AAA titles have been developed in, recently announced a new “Runtime Fee” that would charge developers $0.20 per install of their game, starting January 2024. Retroactively!!!! Yes you heard that right. Got a new computer and want to reinstall your favorite game you bought 3 years ago? That’ll cost the dev $0.20, when they themselves make no additional money. A bad actor could, in theory, install a game hundreds of times just to hurt a developers bottom line. But even just in benign scenarios, its enough to threaten the viability of small indie studios. Even if devs wanted to jump ship now, number one they’d have to port all their games to a new engine, a monumental task on its own, and they’d have to learn a new engine and new workflow, new pipeline, etc. This is catastrophic to the indie scene.

And this isn’t handled through the platforms they sell their games on like steam or itch.io, it’s woven into the backend of the engine itself. Unity claims they have systems to detect piracy (but they’re proprietary and secret!) and developers won’t be charged for illegitimate installs. But none of us can be actually sure of that. They are literally making “piracy costs the devs money” a real actual legitimate argument.

And to top it all off, their ghoul of a CEO dumped his shares right before the announcement. They Knew this would be hated and they’re trying to get away with it anyway.

Do note, this only applies to games that already meet the threshold for profit sharing. If you are a hobbyist or making a project for school etc, this won’t affect you.

What can you do? Keep in touch with your favorite developers and indie publishers on social media. Hopefully with enough backlash and support for indie developers, they will retract.

[ot3]

Didn't the devs of D.Elysium start to encourage people to pirate the game cause they got fired? or did that fiasco get resolved, i genuinely don't remember.

i don't remember whether or not they ever specifically encouraged piracy but the situation is absolutely not resolved in any way to the best of my knowledge. or at least not resolve in a good way, im unaware if the devs are still fighting for their IP in any way but they definitely haven't won in any case. either way though i don't think anon's ten dollars is gonna be a big deal. i support anyones desire to pirate whatever they want but sometimes buying something legally is just more convenient. chase your bliss.

[unclerippuascension]

hi just saying this bc im starting to see a few posts in the tag talking about it, but if you are thinking about or telling people to pirate pizza tower because of what mcpig said five fucking years ago and the two ~problematique~ enemies in the game, you're a scumbag, full stop. like mcpig isn't the only one getting money from this game, you guys know that right? the other devs and the composers (one of which is apparently black and non-binary!) also get part of the profit. this isn't like pirating old games that companies no longer support and aren't making money off of anymore, you're taking money away from a game that's barely a year old made by people who most CERTAINLY deserve to get paid for their efforts over the course of half a decade. i don't care if you think mcpig is an awful meanie raycist or whatever, just don't let some stupid moral crusade screw over people who don't deserve it.

if you wanna play the game, then just buy it; and if you're really that against the idea of giving mcpig money, then don't buy the game and play sugary spire or something. the answer to this kind of video game discourse isn't always piracy, believe it or not.

Try to start some clown-ass debate in the replies or reblogs and I will block you on fucking sight.

[game-boy-pocket]

Just going to say, I am very pro video game piracy. But there's fucking caveats.

I mostly am only pro piracy for RETRO games. Games for consoles that are not longer being supported. I think re-releases are fine if you don't mind input lag and a lack of sanlines, or potentially bad CRT filters, but making you buy them again even though you bought them digitally already, or tying them to a subscription service is not fine. It's because I pumped so much money into the Virtual Console releases on the Wii, and again on the Wii U and 3DS only to be told I have to wait for releases again but need to pay a yearly fee just to access the games and connect to the internet every few weeks, that I got fed up and started buying real retro consoles and everdrives loaded with roms.

I think piracy is also great or playing romhacks, which SHOULD be officially supported. It's fucking stupid that so many Japanese devs are so behind the times and clueless about modern gaming culture that they'd rather people play illegally than support hacks/mods officially.

Now what I don't support is pirating brand new games on actively supported consoles. That's just asking for trouble. And that goes double for games that struggle to make many sales. I don't want to hear anybody bitching about F-Zero, Star Fox, or Metroid if they don't pay for those games. As for games that DO sell well enough but you don't feel like supporting them, at least wait for the console to stop being supported, there are billions of games you could be playing instead on older hardware, are you so fucking spoiled that you can't play a game that wasn't released in the last 3 years? Jesus man. And use your fucking VPN.

Be a pirate but don't be a stupid pirate.

[aaron-dee]

Citra and Yuzu were against preservation.

The fact is without piracy, there is no preservation.

Yuzu had active anti piracy built into the emulator preventing certian games from launching, Super Mario Wonder took a few days to be supported on Yuzu despite there being no real reason for it, Ryujinx was playing it fine pre release so there was no reason for this other than yuzu devs flawed views on emulation, this extends to their goodbye message in which they actively show anti preservation and anti emulation stances by saying "We hope our actions will be a small step toward ending piracy of all creators’ works".

Say it with me kids, there is no preservation without piracy.

Fuck Yuzu. Rest in piss.

[0x28]

it's funny cause you don't see devs rallying against foss or software piracy or anything compared to certain artists throwing a fit over art "theft", despite the fact that the former would have more ground to stand on based on the fact that software does need to be actively maintained and abandonware is likely to be buggy after years of being unmaintained. but like u finish drawing an image it's done. it's not going anywhere. it's not gonna break. literally nothing that happens to anyone can undraw your art. at least devs could argue about the ongoing labour requirement they would like to be supported with but I've straight up never seen one express those views

[gravedirtandbriarthorns]

Also we were talking about piracy (of the illegal downloading variety) and I hit my dad with fact that I pirated the art program I use and then because I liked it so much i saved up to go back and buy a legal, licensed copy of the software to support the devs despite already having a completely functioning copy, and this man had the nerve to come back with "Sure, you didn't get a legal copy because you wouldn't be able to update it."

And I'm just sitting there like. Yes, your child who has used the exact same cell phone for the past 7 or 8 years despite it the speakers blowing out and the charging port not quite working right unless you wiggle the cable is just so and the screen being cracked and the corner of it having a bunch of dead pixels and would probably still have the same model if not the exact same, repaired phone except it's so old finding someone who will service it is a pain bought a program because I couldn't update the perfectly functioning copy I did have. The child who, their whole life, as worn sneakers held together by duct tape because "they've still got good soles, theyre just coming apart a little"? The child who wore the same pair of broken, duct tape and superglued glasses until being forced to get a new pair by a big enough change to their vision because the lens were perfectly fine even if the frame liked to fall apart at the slightest breeze?

Like do you hear yourself?

[tgirltuesday]

MINORS & AGELESS BLOGS DNI

🍉 FREE PALESTINE 🍉

~ ABOUT ME BELOW ~

I am 25 years old and use she/it pronouns.

I identify as queer in regards to my sexuality.

I'm happily engaged and monogamous. I would be more than delighted to make any friends on here though.

I live on Turtle Island, also known by the colonial name Canada.

I have multiple forms of anxiety, ADHD, and major depressive disorder. I may also have some form of autism but that hasn't been diagnosed.

I have a deep love of music, especially punk rock, math rock, dream rock/pop, surf rock, rap and psychedelic rock. I love sharing new songs and artists with folks!

Love to game as well. Currently playing Hades II, Slay the Spire, Team Fortress 2 and Stardew Valley. All-time faves are the Patapon series, Katamari Damacy, Bioshock Infinite, Hollow Knight, Lethal League, Undertale, Bastion, The Last of Us, Portal, and Hotline Miami.

I enjoy anime from time to time.

I'm an anarchist and tech enthusiast, and often these two bleed into each other. Namely I'm a staunch supporter of FOSS, right to repair, and piracy. I have a homelab running multiple Linux distributions under Proxmox and am always happy to lend advice on good trackers (piracy sites) or just talk about tech in general.

Studied Social Work for a time but recently switched to Computer Science, I'm learning web dev and game dev.

I'm quite new to my coming out to myself as trans, after a lifetime of being rather ambiguous with my gender. I've not publicly transitioned nor have I started on HRT, so no one besides my partner and closest friends know that I'm trans. I'm hoping to use this as a space to gain confidence in my gender identity by seeing transfems flourishing, express my sexuality as a queer trans woman, and make some friends along the way. I have nothing but support and love for the rest of the trans/queer/ace community, but this blog will mostly see reference to trans women as that is my own lived experience, or at least what I wish to embody.

Please reach out if you want to chat!

[fakeasmr]

As somebody who really wants to play a video game but doesn't want to abandon their principles, I need some advice. For you it's Lies of P, and for me it's Baldur's Gate 3. I want to buy a physical copy, but it looks like they're not doing that. That means I have to spend $70 for a digital copy that I technically do not own. Should I suck it up and buy the digital version, or wait and see if they'll do a physical release?

Buy the digital copy and then pirate a copy you can own forever? Or just pirate it, guess it depends on if you want to support the devs. I get it, the physical deluxe edition of lies of P is console only, but I'm still getting the PC version. I figure if I really want that art book, it'll be on ebay some day.

Anyway, piracy is a part of games preservation and is always a viable option. I don't know if any of this was actually helpful

[quietsamurai98]

I wish all mobile games with rewarded ads were forced to offer an IAP that would just grant the rewards without the ads. No more, no less.

They could even charge 2x, 3x, hell, maybe even 10x more than they make off ads for average average user's entire time spent in the app. I'd still buy it if I really liked the game.

I have a bizarrely intense hatred of video ads that interrupt what I'm doing. I cannot fucking stand them. Watching a video ad fills me with an itching anger that I'm pretty sure is unhealthily intense.

I pay for YouTube Premium to avoid ads. If I'm paying for a streaming service with a cheaper ad tier, you'd better believe I'm paying for the ad-free tier.

I'm a software developer. It's my 9 to 5. I get it. Ongoing support is expensive. Ongoing development is even more expensive. Devs gotta eat, and possibly controversial opinion, but devs deserve to be fairly compensated for their labor.

That being said...

LET ME CHOOSE FOR MYSELF HOW I SUPPORT YOU!!!

I value my time and my annoyance quite highly. Probably too highly. If given a reasonable IAP to just do away with all ads in a game I enjoy, I'll probably take it if it's like $20, maybe even $30. If a game has rewarded ads built into its balance, I will end up watching them. Even if I hate it. And I will probably end up dropping the game entirely as a result.

I don't want something for nothing. I don't want to steal developer's work via piracy, because I know it's not just some nameless, faceless corporate conglomerate developing the games I play. It's people. People implementing new features. People fixing annoying bugs. People making the game worth playing. People who deserve fair compensation. And I know that they are bringing in less revenue off of people like me, because the ads piss them off enough to make them stop playing.

Are people like me the vast, vast minority? Do most moble games make way more than $20 or even $30 off of ads alone for the average player? Genuine question, would love to hear from mobile game devs on this!

[grayrazor]

When I was a kid, my parents bought me Starfleet Command II in a big box from Sam’s Club.

The game had a bad CD key and was unplayable. The dev had just gone defunct, so there was nobody to reach out to for support.

However, that game had a standalone expansion, so we ended up playing that instead.

A game company’s crappy anti-piracy measure drove me to play the pirate game instead.

[salemruinseverything]

actual anti-piracy measures: lame, overplayed, greedy

screen where the lead dev's fursona pops up, confesses to having pirated two of the main inspirations for the game, asks you to support the dev team where you can, and then lets the game play as normal: based as fuck