There is one thing I can't quite understand, maybe you can enlighten me

I don't like the idea of pirating. I try to own all my games. I have ROMs of old games from the 80s and 90s but I figure the companies have already made enough money on those games by now.

Some people don't want to break the law. Maybe their ISP is a huge dick about torrents or they already have a strike or two.

You can argue if you "own" a game if you bought disk with full data on it, but when buying from steam you're getting "license allowing you to use media" or some shit. If steam goes down, your "ownership" goes down with it. Now I'm not telling you what to do, but I think your logic doesn't account for that.

Well it might be like that on paper, but I'm yet to hear from a person IRL or on the internet that anyone called or notified them about that. Do you know somebody who faced such thing?

I don't have a steam account. I'm a console guy. I try to buy all my games on physical discs.

Where did you get the idea that "free market" meant corporate welfare?

Entirely depends on whether or not the paid product has features the pirated product does not have (achievements, multiplayer connectivity, ease of downloading through an online collection), and if you value those features more than you value that amount of currency.

If you're selling apples on the street corner, and I walk by and wave my hand in front of your apple cart and magic an identical apple into existence, a perfect reproduction, your apples are not worth any amount of my currency. But lets say the apple I create has an extra thick skin that is unpleasant to bite through, necessitating one to cut the apple first. Is avoiding the step of having to cut the apple before eating it worth the amount of currency the apple seller is asking? If so, purchase. If not, pirate.

Ok genius, then isn't a pirated version of a game an objectively superior version to the one you would pay for? It is the same product except you can get it for free.

If I am at a store and there's two identical pairs of jeans except one is $10 and the other is $1000 I'm going to choose the $10 every time. The only reason you should ever pay for a game is if you want to support the developers so that they are financially encouraged to make more games.

Well, I do pay something like 15 to 20$, every little bit helps right? At times I just like to show support, other times I just want to have it legit in my collection, whatever. Most of the time I do pirate, but eventually I do buy if the game is really good, if there's some kind of online component that I want (not always, most of the time I don't care for it), if it has a significant update, or if I just feel like it. I dunno man, the human brain is fickle like that.

See

How is wanting the money used to pay for a crafted product you enjoy to go to the craftsman of said product corporate welfare? Are you memeing me?

I just like the novelty of playing on an actual console. The only time i'll definitely emulate something is if the game is either too expensive to get or if it runs/looks like ass when it's played on console. It's also feels nice to build a physical collection.

If that's what you really wanted, you would cut the creators of said product a check.

That's probably the dumbest thing I've heard come out of this board, and I've seen some shit
Little Johnny Normalfag isn't preordering games at full price and picking them up at midnight on launch day because he wants to "support the devs"

Why not just give trade the money for the game, rather than break it up into two steps. I suppose that could work though if you believed you wanted a fairer price for the product but still wanted support its maker. Then you could cut a check with you're perceived fair price while pirating the game. Would be really weird though.

Why does he do it then?

Impressive trips. Well I do agree that multiplayer can be a major factor, but achievements or ease of downloading?

I really have no idea.
It probably has to do with some kind of hoarding.

Because video games aren't worth $60USD+

Because there is so much piracy, clearly companies are setting their prices too high.

If you look at the music industry since their price reductions and product options increased, e.g. ability to buy individual songs instead of whole albums, they are flurishing and piracy is a lot less than it used to be.

Adobe also reduced piracy rates by changing to their creative cloud subscription service which is much cheaper than their once off huge licensing fees, e.g. $800 USD+ depending on region down to $9USD+ Depending on your situation (student discounts).

Vidya needs to drop their prices if they want to reduce piracy.

I pirate most things unless it's the rare game I'm looking forward to based on past experiences from the series/developer. See: Nier;Automata
And if I pirate something I like a lot, and I mean a LOT, I buy it afterwards.

Why buy at discount? Because I'm not made of money nigger, I pay bills and as much as I'd like to throw money at everything I'd like to I have to scrape and save.

So you should never pay for a singleplayer game ever under any circumstances (assuming you don't care about garbage like achievements).

If everyone bought with the same philosophies as you then this industry would be even worse than it is now since everything would be always online, denuvo-protected, microtransaction filled garbage. Supporting good games is the only way to ensure that good games are made.

Buying games = donating to the developer. Unlike physical objects, games are trivial to make copies of so they don't have the same kind of value unless they're copy-protected but denuvo games are shit anyways.

It's because they actually want to own a physical copy but for as cheap as possible.

Now what I really don't get is people who "buy" digital shit.

The same reason people keep going to watch new Transformers movies when it's just the same Hollywood CGI crap it always is. It gets overhyped, kids and dipshits alike get excited, go to see it day one, then look back on the experience and realize it was crap.

Tell that to the executives.

I guarantee you the reason why AAA video games haven't scaled back and dropped their prices is simply because the executives *refuse* to get on with the times.

First, you need to define the "creator of the game".

If you mean the developers themselves, unless they're self published they probably aren't going to see a penny of any game sales. They were paid by the publishers to do a job, they did the job, they move on unless they signed a deal where they get paid in advance of royalties which is a terrible idea unless you know for a fact your game is going to be huge. If you mean the publisher, who is the one actually responsible for whether or not a project happens, then you still have the middle man of whatever storefront you're purchasing from taking a large cut of the money; so if your goal is to give the "creator of the game" your $60 as a sort of market activism, it is far more efficient to send them a check directly.

Lots of older developers (who have long since sold the rights to their products) like Carmack still get checks in the mail from people who pirated their games, and felt like supporting them directly instead of whatever company currently holds the rights to said product.

That's the question right there. If those features hold no value to you, piracy is the best option in the case of an asymmetrical product.

No, buying games = donating to whatever storefront you're purchasing from, and giving the publisher whatever is left over. I explained this in detail above.

It's called being poor and having morals.

Better they receive my five bucks than nothing at all.

I try to buy direct from the devs as much as possible. Steam takes a big cut of the sale so on one occasion I pirated and sent money to the dev's paypal because I wanted them to get the whole lot of it and couldn't give less of a shit about their publisher or steam.

its good for getting multiplayer games at great discounts whereas the pirate version would have nonfunctional multiplayer or only let you play with other pirates

game devs dont get money from secondhand games, the jews at gamestop do

Their executives are retarded, every single case study goes like the music and adobe examples.

Same with DRM, DRM always decreased sales. Hell GOG rallied sales by memeing the opposite despite having poor product offerings.

It's like these execs either hate money or are grossly incompetent.

I was talking about heavily discounted games.

Also fuck gamestop, I only shop local. I cant stand the fucking promo videos and general jewry that I have to witness whenever I walk in there.

I'm also too broke to get a new console, that's pretty much it for me.

That's fair but I'm not going to mail checks to developers. And you're right that I'm not donating to the developer, I'm encouraging publishers to realize that it would be most profitable for them to pay developers to make good games.

Be honest with yourself, none of what you do means anything. We're just a number on a list somewhere that no one looks at.

There are plenty kinds of people and you just described two of them
Because they want to buy shit cheap, that's it.
Yes, but there are people that just don't like/want to pirate for several trivial reasons.
There are people that just want to own shit legally, they don't care about the developers or anything as long as they get whatever they want.

How? Most normalfags I know don't even know it exists. I doubt the few who care could have a significant impact on sales. Pirates gonna pirate anyways most of the time, so it doesn't really improve sales either. It's pointless and costs money.

I don't buy games because I want to support the developers, what kind of communist shit is that? I buy games because they're a service, and much like prostitution it's a service I use heavily. Now pirates offer a similar service but it's not always on par with buying it directly from the company (though sometimes and not even rarely it's actually better). Either way you look at it it's just someone obtaining a service through various means, if the company never drops patches and has horrible DRM then I'll pirate the fucker because it's a better service, but if say there is a regularly updated online or even generous patching and support by the developer then I'll invest in a (hopefully discounted) legit copy. Again: I'm not trying to feed anyone, I don't give a fuck about the developers of all but my favorite games (and those fags I'll get so gay for them I'll pre-order), I just want to play video games in the most convenient way possible. More power to the piratefags for not wasting their money honestly. Video unrelated.

...

Wrong. Many devs report massive spikes in profit from sales. They sell more copies at a lower cost for a net gain, as opposed to selling practically no copies at full price, because no one wants to pay 60 dollarydoos for a game they might not like.

Unless you're talking about people selling used games, there's no way to sell a copy of the game where some of the money isn't going to or hasn't already gone to the devs.

1) online multiplayer
2) autistic, cringeworthy retards who genuinely want DRM because it's also social media so they can "show off" their achievements and play time to others

actually, re-thinking that it's more like retarded superficial normalfags. autistic doesn't quite fit in there

user…

Most normalfags can't even pirate things. Companies in those cases wanted to get the money from pirates and as a positive side effect of lower prices and greater offerings drastically increased sales.

Adobe specifically doubled their profits which is an amazing feat for a mature company that controls the majority of the market without doing something shady.
archive.is/hmCuH

The more I think about the kind of shit normalfags do and enjoy, the more I realize how much better my own pitiful existence is.

I may be a kissless virgin, but at least I don't have to pretend that The Big Bang Theory is funny and that Beyonce's music good.

i just want to watch the industry burn

I bought sanic racing transformed at full price on steam after pirating it as well as trails in the sky because developers deserved as much money as they could get.
I bought street fighter 4 on sale because i just wanted to play online against humans.
You should NEVER buy games from ded developers (VTMB).

This idea that you're "supporting the devs" by paying for a product is retarded. When you pay for a game, that money goes into the pocket of the publisher. No, they're not the same thing. Devs are just regular employees, they get paid either on commission or on salary to make a game, the initial investment from publishers/investors is what pays them. Additionally, third party sellers bought the game from some distributor at a discount/or they're selling at a loss to try and undercut the more popular platforms. Either way, the publisher already got paid for the copy that you bought from some shady third party.

I presume you're talking about sites such as G2A. For the most part, I don't understand why, but I understand sites like these were popular for cheaters to pick up cheap CSGO keys whenever they got vacbanned.
Those sites also have a reputation for being a dumping ground of keys bought with stolen cards. Just seems like an unnecessary risk for a few bucks savings.
I haven't pirated in years so things may be different now, but you typically couldn't play online (outside of virtual LAN or something), so to get an online game on the cheap I suppose.

It doesn't cost anything to produce more cd keys, so that $5 is pure profit after the distributer's cut.
Sales are good to nudge fencesitters and impulse buyers who otherwise may not have bought the game, and there are also the people who refuse to buy things over x price. Then there are the retards that buy cheap games to make their steam library look bigger.
It's better to sell an extra 10 games at $5 than sell 0 games at $10.

They have moral issues with piracy or think they'll be punished for it. I'm not sure, maybe my folks raised me too well or some gay shit like that, but pirating games just doesn't sit well with me. Plus, I've found that pirated games tend to have more bugs and worse performance than authentic downloads.

citation needed

I agree with everything you say. But how then do you protest a game? For every person who refuses to buy a game, there are a thousand schmucks who will buy it. If you buy the game, they have no reason to listen to you; they already have your money. If you don't buy the game, they have no reason to listen to you; you were never going to give them your money. Maybe vidya really is just plain doomed.

it's purely anecdotal; i'm not trying to present it as hard fact or anything you should follow. it's just my experience. i might be imagining it, for all i know.

supporting the source is part of the product and it makes certain people more willing to spend money (for example a 2 dollar wristband that costs 0.04$ to produce, but a dollar goes to some trendy charity)
with video games though I highly recommend not buying them and then directly supporting the devs somehow instead of going through like 20 middlemen with storefronts and producers.

If you don't buy the game within about the first month of a game's release, you're not helping the devs. They've already been paid for their work, and since the bulk of a game's sales tend to come in the first few weeks, most investors considering fronting the money for a sequel will primarily look at the game's initial sales as an indicator of interest.

Honestly, I believe that if you want to support the devs and send a clear signal that (insert whatever game) are the kind of games you want to see more of, you should buy them on week 2 of launch (so most reviews are in). Even up to 6 months ~ year later is still good though.

After that, it doesn't matter what it is, pirate that shit if you can. The game has already long been deemed a success or a failure after that point. So your money isn't going to help anybody. Never throw new money at old games. If you're going to spend it on games, spend it on something new that you want to see more of.

Exceptions can be made if you really like a certain independent developer who may still get royalties, or if you're a console player and want to keep a physical library. The day is quickly coming when physical media is dead and they stick everybody on a licensing agreement while bundling games up into tiered (and increasingly expensive) hierarchies like fucking cable channels. Build your backlog while you still can.

Some key resellers in other countries offer more payment methods for those who don't want to use credit cards or use something other than paypal and still want to own their games legally, these are commonly used on spicholes with high piracy rates.
Also

There's no protesting, unless you can amass enough people to get behind your reasoning. For example, look at DmC; that game sold poorly because enough of the fans decided, "hey, this game is fucking garbage and it's NOT what we want". Granted, they still sold a lot of copies, but they didn't meet sales expectations. As a consumer, all you can do is 1) let your well thought out grievances be known, and 2) willingly decide to refrain from making a purchase when, and hope that your position is enough to get like minded consumers to also refrain from making a purchase so that your accumulative "protest" manages to eat into their sales.

Consumers have power, but consumers are fractured.

I'd rather cast my lot with the jews at GameStop, than the jews running MS or Sony. GameStop will only fuck you hard if you're exceptionally stupid or if you try to sell games there. I never sell my game purchases, don't preorder, and their salesmen can go get fucked. I just walk in, pick up a physical copy of a used game for $5~$20, and get the fuck out.

Microsoft and Sony will push everything to be digital, and once they do - you're going to have all the negatives of Steam, unchained and amplified 10x (because, fuck you, you have no choice in the matter) - and won't even have the option to pirate to back up your digital library in case your license agreement expires, gets terminated, gets stolen, becomes too fucking expensive to maintain, or when the ToS finally become so fucking oppressive that you would rather nuke your entire game collection rather than press the "Accept" button on the updated ToS.

So yeah… Go GameStop. I hope they keep fleecing retards on game trade-ins. They are the gris for my mill.

yoooo is that a sakura wars dreamcast? shit………

Certainly can't enlighten you but I can give a couple reasons since, like most things, it's likely a pretty simple answer.

1. Some people enjoy having a solid copy of something. It's like a physical representation of your gaming repertoire. You can look at your amassing collection and have a strange sense of satisfaction at what you've "accomplished" or "experienced."

2. If we're still talking physical copies then circles of friends will typically split a game or borrow games from among one-another, and it's enjoyable to hear someone's thoughts on a game that you lended them so you get to have conversation about something you enjoyed (or hated).

3. Piracy is a hassle. If you have the money to spare, then making the purchase to be (mostly) assured that what you'll get is safe and working is typically the preferred option to people who either aren't particularly interested, or don't have the confidence in their ability to pirate. Especially when, regarding pirating on a console, the idea of "if you fuck up you get a brick" is too intimidating a curve for people not well-versed in piracy.

I don't think there's any kind of rationalization or mental gymnastics really involved, some people are just too lazy to pirate.

That's not accurate.
The piracy bit might be placable at that, though I feel it doesn't get into the nuance, but the pay full price bit absolutely does not.

People buy a game typically because they want to play the game, and don't want to put in the effort to pirate it, or simply consider piracy to be immoral.
People buy a full-priced game typically because they want it when it first comes out.
People buy a discounted game because it is a better deal for them.
I don't believe for a second that the majority of people buy a game with the intent of "supporting the devs" as their main reason for doing so.

some people do, but not the majority, ye

about piracy tho
i personally pirate in 2 cases:
- if i wouldn't buy the game anyway because it's shit or a franchise i'm not familiar with
- to try it out how it werks on my pc
- if i don't have money to buy it (poor country. the reason why i'll be pirating nier, although i would buy it if i had the money)

The whole "voting with your money" is an appeal of the free market, however, buying a product to support the devs specifically isn't necessary. Buying good product automatically supports that good product, by virtue of it actually making money.
There's no reason to sit there thinking "I WANT TO SUPPORT X DEV". That's fucking retarded. Just buy the game because you think it is worth the cost.

fuck, meant 3 cases
…

Pretty much how I look at piracy, yeah.
I don't usually pirate if I can't afford it, though, myself. Mostly because I am a patient type, and don't mind waiting for something. But games I know I won't buy? I'll pirate that.
Sometimes that makes me end up buying the game, too, if it turns out to be good and has some factor of benefit if I get a proper version. It's why I bought Dragon's Dogma, for instance.

About those "shady 3rd party places". Valve allows you to sell keys to your own game on 3rd party stores even at a discount. Those 3rd party online stores you're talking about give developers and publishers a bigger cut than steam does. So it is more likely that you're getting the game for cheaper and supporting the devs even more if you buy from a 3rd party key store. Why does Valve allow this and what do they gain from it? The answer is new users for Steam. Some 3rd party sites do sell stolen keys and I wouldn't be surprised if they sell both legit keys and then some stolen keys in between to get a bigger cut themselves.

Best way to be certain the key you're buying is legit is to consider if it is possible to get the game from anywhere else other than digital distribution or other 3rd party key stores. Indie games without retail releases that are only sold through digital distribution like Steam or GOG are usually a safe bet. In those cases only people who have access to any steam keys are the devs themselves.

I usually buy the game if it's by a small developer who isn't rich, and I really enjoyed it. In fact I liked a game so much I bought a game twice one time…and some games by him that I didn't like that he made to support hobby so he could get back to working on his other game.

Same here, though I'd add "I don't want to support the developer(s)" as an additional point.
Though on rare occasion a game will fulfill its requirements but I simply don't want the game enough to spend money on it but still at least want to see what it's like. Otherwise I buy the vast majority of things I enjoy.

The majority of people barely know what publishing house is distributing the game they're buying, some of who even know the name of the development studio. Beyond that, though, forget it. They'll talk about Blizzard, 343, Infinity Ward, etc, as if they're a single entity. They don't know the names of anybody working there, and couldn't be bothered to know the difference between a talented member of the team or some hack collage intern.

They don't give a fuck about the devs. They just want it because it's what their friends are playing, general media hype telling them it'll be the best thing since Jesus invented sliced bread, or because it's the latest installment of some series they've had some previous experience with and don't like leaving their comfort zone/tradition/and or haven't quite figured out just how shit the series has gotten.

Keep in mind most people don't even know who the devs are. Even on youtube where people are expected to do a little research they still say the publisher made it. I can't tell you how many people think nintendo made xenoblade.

I'd rather buy discount when I have the money instead of having a clunky unplayble shit that I need 2 hours to fix

Ill just continue not participating in the latest gen gaming and continue fucking around with GTA san andreas mods like ive been doing for the past 10 years along with minecraft and souls/borne

free market is about the desire of the consumer, not the need of the vendor. It's the vendor who has to adjust to the consumer, not the contrary. Apply that logic to huge quantities of products and that's how you get prices for any goods you can think of. These prices change depending on the demand and some other factors (shortage of materials, etc). Whoever is participating in the market with the mindset of "I want to support that" is a moron living in a bubble or an extreme libtard who didn't get a single thing about how the market works.

Also not everybody has the know-how to pirate games, even in easy cases.

A number of reasons
Some people would rather pirate the game if given the chances but don't want to risk bricking their system
Some people have oppressive e-police and are too fearful of actually pirating shit
Some people have extra cash from whenever they bought full price games with some of those (((gift cards))) and just use them as an excuse to buy the games at half the price
Then as pointed out some just like to own the damn thing physically but wouldn't be able to do so by paying full price

It's a shame Segata didn't live to see that Dreamcast.

Do you even know how percentages work?

Devs get increases in income during Steam sales, it's a fact. Some time ago, the RoR dev went back to /agdg/ after release to chat a bit, and he posted a graphic showing his sales and income in Steam's developer console. The spike happened around in a sale, and he mentioned he made most of the money from that.

Whenever a game goes on sale, it appears in Steam's internal ads and in Steam's store frontpage. That's a fucking lot of publicity. Even if you are a jew and decide a measly 15% discount for your game is a good idea (fuck you, CrossCode devs), you get extra advertisement and extra sales. Maybe you make one fourth of what you would usually make per copy, but you will sell perhaps twenty times more. There is a reason devs put their games on sale, because it's not like Valve forces them by pointing a gun on their heads.

Nope, there are some exceptions (Falcom) but for the most part I don't give a shit about "supporting the devs" I buy games I like because I'm a physical media fag and want to actually own my games.

I'm not sure why so many retards are trying ITT to meme that devs only get one time salaries OR royalty style payments but not percentage cuts AND a combination of both of the aforementioned methods. And judging from a lot of the other replies it's obvious they don't understand shit about how the economy works.

If they are buying used on consoles or cheaper? They want a copy of the game. Unlike digital sales, retail sales are already copies paid to the developer. The shop isn't giving them a percentage of sales, they will if they order more copies - but otherwise no. Discounted ones are just old copies that have been there for a while, and buying second hand is just a way to secure a copy which is fully reasonable. Ownership is something disappearing in the industry, sadly.

If it's on PC? Then they are terminally retarded.

Why is this hard to understand?
Oh well

Well, depends on the publisher and the developer company. I am fairly sure AAA devs with AAA publishers don't really get many royalties, and if they do, I would be surprised if your average codemonkey ever gets to see a dime of it. That said, indie developers, small dev teams and small publishers tend to pay the devs in royalties.

For example, RoR devs did some dumb thing and accepted Chucklefuckfish' publishing offer just before they got their game Greenlighted. Chucklefuck didn't give them money for the development of RoR, so it would be absolutely retarded to think they just gave them the game for free. I think he mentioned Chucklefuck took 20 or 30% of the benefits, and Steam took the other 30%, but the rest went directly to the three devs (which were "the absolute madman who did almost everything", "the guy who did the (superb) music" and "the face who joined late in development and contacted publishers and people", respectively). They made like 100k during the first month, I assume after Steam and publisher cuts, and all thanks to sales.

Those things aren't mutually exclusive. I say exactly what I think, complain endlessly about popular culture, get hyped over shit like Sonic Mania that most normalfags couldn't give a fuck about, and no-one treats me badly for it.

Spending less money while having the convenience of ownership. Im not made of money or hard drive space, so having games on tap with Steam or a disc ready whenever, theres no need to keep a disk full of pirated games on the off-chance since torrents arent always seeded (sufficiently) or pre-patched. I've also got plenty of games to play for now and being a couple of months behind the curve is no real detriment to myself.

Steam has proven this to be false many a time. Indie titles especially do well when sold at a massive discount because theres simply the sheer volume of sales to compensate for the lower profit.

tbh if you pirate you're violating the NAP and the publisher's CEO has ever right to drive by your house in his privately owned M1 Abrams and launch a couple shells.

Whenever I have strong feelings about certain aspects of a game - whether I bought it or not - I send an email to the developer/publisher explaining why I did or did not buy the game, and what I want changed or kept for a potential sequel.

I realise this does fuck all in practice, but at least I'm contributing more information to the company than most people. Maybe if enough people did it, we could help keep the cancer at bay.

I pirate because I play way too many games and paying for all of them isn't viable. One game is a quarter of my monthly wage, I don't live in a first world country, unfortunately enough.
Occasionally I do buy games on sale because it's cheap enough to be considered a spurt of a moment, and even then, only if it's a multiplayer-heavy game like BFBC2, R6 Siege or FFXIV (in fact, those are the only games I bought with one exception). Buying from reseller means it's almost always as cheap as a heavy sale, and even if I didn't buy from the reseller, the dev already got paid for that copy anyway so I don't really care.
One exception I mentioned before though, is Dragon's Dogma: DA which I bought at full price. I pirated the PS3 version, liked it, played the leak 1 week before release, got everything I expected, immediately smash that Preorder button. I poured almost 500 hours in it. No regret. The only way CAPCOM can make me regret my decision is to use the money from the Steam sale to reboot the game into Dragon's Edgema: Grimdark Arisen.
You should also remember that the US and a few EU countries don't make up the entirety of the world, there are a billion people playing games internationally, and maybe only a third of them can sustain paying for their hobby full-price (though it's fucking retarded, why would you do that with the current state of the industry?), the other 2 thirds have to either resort to piracy or sale. Look at China, they may sound like a super power but aside from a few cities, the country is piss poor. Look at Japan, millions of people playing but how many are willing to pay for doujins and overpriced garbage VN? A dozen thousand or two maybe, considering that 7000 sales first week for a VN is considered "great success". And guess what are the most popular games among the normalfags right now? Fucking F2P MOBA and 15 bucks FPS.
The international economy is at a dogshit state right now and a lot of people can't afford more than bare necessities, people don't notice it because the bar for internet access right now is so low that it's considered a bare necessity and even a third world shithole has at least a 12Mbps connection so people can pirate games and play F2P trash. And naturally, they pirate because it's free shit, and they buy sale-off or from reseller because it's the only viable way to buy shit they really want. The people who buy games that they cannot afford at full price and that has no downside when pirated though, only want an epeen to wave around online and maybe even in real life. Those people might as well kill themselves.

If the game is being made by a big publisher, those devs will NOT get that money. Publishers hire en masse (on contracts) to make the game, pay out the devs when it's done and then let most of them off. The only time they get money from their work is if its self-published or if the publisher offers bonuses based on reviews/copies shipped.

I mostly do these to developers that I dislike or for games that I have doubts about whether I'll like it or not, but I don't want to pirate their games because of moral reasons. Please don't bully.

I meant to say developers and/or publishers

Can we end this meme?

I can understand the thought process of sending a check to a retired rockstar like John Carmack solely out of respect, that beautiful autist deserves it, but that's a shit idea if you play modern games that aren't indie passion projects.

I'm sure that $60 check signed by user means a lot when half the staff that made the game is bailing to find more stable prospects, or they're hearing rumor that they're going to be gutted and the sequel outsourced to cheaper devs due to publisher restructuring.

I'm not saying don't pirate. There's a dozen totally justified reasons to do it for any given game, and I'm no saint myself. Just don't lie to yourself that your clever industry defying "support" meant shit if more than a dozen people worked on it.

Buying it for 75% off on fucking Steam is still sending a message that might result in the actual devs working a second time, and is why I do it in the first place.

Reminder that normalfags will pay full price because they only want to play the game, and piracy is "morally wrong".

It is well known psychology that when you spend money on something, even a few dollars, you become more invested in the product and it becomes a lot more fun than it actually is, why do you think fanboys are a thing?

there's a weird misunderstanding a lot of people have due to a few outspoken developers and steam. People in the games industry are extremely mobile. The best thing you can do to support a game and its team is buy it at launch.

may be why 8/v/'s pc gamers are so miserable

Because I can sit in my room naked, browse games, buy them, and be playing them in the next few minutes. Never have to leave the house or even wait for anything to be deliver.

I only buy used when I specifically don't want to support the developer and piracy isn't available. I have no idea why else you'd do it.

What is not to understand here? In the free market customers, producers and merchants need to come to an agreement on the price and I don't agree most of the time choosing to wait for the producer and merchant to compromise.

because stealing is wrong

If they don't get anything at all, why are games sold in the third world places in the first place? In reality the profit margin is smaller, it'S hardly marginal while first world customers are expected to pay huge marksups for large profit margins.

they do it because they're normalfags or very law-abiding OP
or both

Honestly all of this needs some serious labels of
CONSOLE PHYSICAL
CONSOLE DIGITAL
COMPUTER PHYSICAL
COMPUTER DIGITAL

Because all of these function so differently from each other that you can only argue each of them independently. Like that guy who said a 5$ sale doesn't support anyone. It might not support anyone if its a physical sale, but we know through the numbers for stuff like digital PC sellers that games on digital PC sales are HUUUUUUUUUUUUGE profits directly to the developer (Recettear for example).

This is something I've been wondering, don't they get paid by the hour? I mean unless they're indie or self publishing that money will go into the pockets of the companies that are already paying them or have payed them.

console physical > console digital = PC digital > bigfoot > pc physical

I don't think even you know what you are trying to do.

got anymore yugioh cropped card arts? I could definitely start using these…

I've only ever bought something from a discount key site once, for the most part, I'm really uncomfortable with buying from those sites. In order to not get burned, they require you to pay them an extra $2 on purchases, otherwise if the seller gives you a bad key, they just tell you tough shit. When you have a black market where the merchandise can be totally spoiled unless you pay insurance, you've created a bad market. Even the sellers themselves don't really know the status of what they're selling is. I bought a key once, and I felt uncomfortable with the transaction, at the time I was a very poor individual who had almost no money, if I got burned, that would be almost all of my money gone in that one transaction. I was so poor, that I couldn't really afford to pay the extra $2 for the insurance, so if I had gotten fucked in the deal… The transaction ended amicably, but I decided I'd never do that again.

I download games from pirate sites sometimes, but I prefer to support developers. If I like the game enough, I might buy it. If I don't like the game, I can choose not to buy it, I don't have a time limit on how long I can try it, and if I don't like the game, I'm not subject to anyone's policies on returned games (such as Steam's invisible limit on returns on your account; you don't know how often is "too many returns" before they flag your account as abusing the return policy!). That's not to say that I don't pirate, I do pirate software. I'm sorry, but the prices on software are just ridiculous. Software comes out at about the same rate of distribution as a lot of developers make games, but developers charge the typical $40 to $90 for their game, whereas software developers also produce products every 1-4 years, and instead of charging $60 they charge $300+. Some of them have even abandoned the one-time fee in favor of licensing fees… Photoshop, for example, costs a subscription fee now. They've done away with the idea of you buy and it's yours, now everything is with either time limited keys or month-to-month subscriptions. To that I say "go fuck yourself." I like to write software as an amateur, I don't publish my software typically, but the fact of the matter is, if I want to publish it, the only two versions of Visual Studio where this would be commercially viable is VS Professional or VS Enterprise. Professional is $1200 and Enterprise requires you buy 10 or more copies at once. If I were to buy a shitty OEM machine, they'd throw in a copy of Windows for free, but I build my own machine to get better quality parts for cheaper, so I don't get a complimentary copy of Windows. At $300+ for a copy of Windows Pro or Ent… I'm not a corporation or a business, but you can quickly do a comparison on Microsoft's own sites where they show you the differences between versions, and buying a Home version of anything basically makes you a retard.

So for the case of games, I buy heavily discounted whenever possible, and in the case of software, I buy only what software I don't think is ridiculous in price. If I wanted to treat myself like a piece of shit, I could always switch over to Linux where everything is free, and communism thrives, but I don't hate myself and I don't think that infecting whatever software I write with a cancer called the GPL is an added benefit. In closing, fuck Richard Stallman, he's a sad pathetic loser who fell in love with and idolizes an anarcho-communist woman who died almost 100 years ago who helped establish the man-hating movement known as feminism, and was personally responsible for an attempted assassination of a president to try and establish a Russian government.

He sleeps on a pile of money that he gets from proprietary software companies, then acts like he's the only one morally justified to take advantage of proprietary software and that everyone should be free and open source software (FOSS) only. Instead he talks about how proud he is of the fact that he's an inept fucking idiot who doesn't even know how to turn a computer on, much less install Linux, and that he just pays a guy half his age to install Linux for him because he's such a moron. He's not written a line of code since the day he left college (if he ever wrote any code at all), all he does is sit on patents and gets royalty/licensing money from big companies and espouses the values of "free software," but he does literally nothing. And someone has even made accusations that Stallmanu is a pedophile. Disgraceful that this is the only notable representative of the idea that software should be free.

I love the convenience of Steam. I just press like 8 buttons and the game will be ready to play. Latest version, all the fixes, no need for hunting for new cracks or versions with all the DLC. I just buy the version I want on Steam, and it's ready.

Because only some good goy rube pays full fucking price for a video game. $60 for 10 hours of entertainment? No thanks.

Also with Steam refunds, I'm not afraid to buy things. Oh no, this $50 game is shit, big deal I only played for an hour so I can just get my money back.

That only happens if you directly use GPL'd code. It's perfectly possible to write permissively-licensed code for Linux. Hell, even some GNU software is permissive, like ncurses.

Didn't he just say he enjoyed her book, in response to a joke question about 2D women versus 3D women?

The FSF sponsors do plenty of FOSS development as well and there's even a disclaimer that they don't endorse the activities of their patrons. Are they supposed to decline unconditional donations? Seems like a counterproductive move to me.

He wrote a lot of code, for example in GCC, GDB, GNU Emacs, TECO Emacs and Bison. He doesn't write a lot of code any more but he wrote plenty. He's a very vocal opponent of software patents, so I don't know what the "sit on patents" bit is about.

I'll throw my two cents in, I guess.
I'm going to look at this from the lens of a poorfag with not that much money.
I always pirate games because I'm broke as shit but still want to play some vidya games. I know it's shitty because devs don't get the cash they deserve for the product I'm consuming but hey, the option is there so I'm gonna damn well take it.

If I like a game and I want a sequel of that game or I don't want a dev to go under because I want them to keep making games that I hopefully would like, I'll buy their game at full price. I bought Banner Saga for this reason.

There are times, however, where it's more convenient to buy a game because I want it constantly patched. It's why I bought EUIV and a few other paradox games.

For the vast majority of people, I'd say this anons' post and the ones like it are spot on.

People buy stuff during massive sales because that's what the product is worth to them. You wouldn't buy a game at full price if you don't think it's worth that much, after all.

That's the irony of it. Richard Stallman always talks about how patents are bad, but the FSF files regular patents themselves, and they have something like 1900 patents. Do you think that HP, Macroshit, Crapple, etc give millions of dollars a year out of the goodness of their own hearts? They are paying royalties because the FSF exploits them.

Also once again, going to point this out. These are actual things that Stallman said.

when you purchase a copy of a game from the source it's normally the publishers getting the profits.
most of the devs get paid for their code and not for the sales.

sage because spoonfeed thread

Ah yes, of course, the fallacious argument that 'the developers already got paid, therefore the publisher is the one who doesn't get paid if you don't buy the software.' If you don't buy the software, it does indeed impact the publisher, they won't pay the developer in the future. There will be less games made by companies that the publisher would pay. In the end, you're hurting two businesses at the same time.

Publishers don't replicate money ala Star Trek, creating an infinite money fountain to pay developers. They pay developers with the money they get from the profits of selling software. And if enough copies of software get sold, typically a developer gets additional money at a small royalty, often $5 a copy. The price you pay, by the way, isn't even the price that the store you buy it from pays. They sell the game to retailers at $5-25 a copy. The retailer than marks up the game to the price you pay, so that $60 price tag? That's capitalism at work, they pay the publisher $20 a copy, then mark up the price 200%. This is where the term PRICE MARKUP comes from. I used to work for a major retail outlet and filed the shipments on record, so I had to manually input the price of the software on a per-unit basis, so I personally saw how much the company was paying for every unit of software they received from game publishers. It was very rare that a price exceeded $12 a unit, but they were still charging you the consumer $60+ a unit for those products.

By hurting a publisher, you hurt a developer indirectly. No matter how you look at it, there's no such thing as a victimless crime.

I can't find anything about this. Do you have a source?

Because sometimes the deal is enough for you to pay it to enjoy the online perks. One of the major reason I bought EDF 4 when it was on sale. I pirated it when it came out but the game really is a lot more fun with online players.

Holy shit I'm not even a full ancap and I think you're retarded.

Leftism really is a mental illness.

I am refusing to buy shit games again and again yet they still make shit games, how is that?

A-okay. What you consider shit not everyone does though, taste is SUBJECTIVE no matter how many times you want to say your criticism is objective. If enough people agree with you, the company will have to change or abandon it. If no one agrees with you, they probably won't care that you didn't buy.

There's only three companies in the entire video game industry who think that "a download is a lost sale," which is Nintendo, Activision, and Electronic Arts. They don't understand that people who wouldn't buy it aren't going to buy it if you make it harder to get if you don't buy it. And they fail to realize that people who download games to try them aren't going to buy a game that they can't try, because we all know that the demo industry is practically dead…

I'm shocked you are actually playing devil's advocate. The problem with that is that you are defending the devil.

No, I talked about that in other threads. This is the thread where I am going to point out that the whole "day one no buy" is not conducive or helpful to the industry, because it irritates normalfags enough that they feel like "if I buy, it offsets his stupidity." When you act smug enough about not buying a game, you actually incite people who do buy the games, to the point where they feel the need to get others to buy. It's a phenomena that I can't explain, but it's been psychologically shown dozens of times.

Basically, you look like a fucking idiot to people at large when you say "didn't buy it, still enjoyed it" because it's kind of like trying to show off. And people don't like showing off.

The problem with your model is that all vidya is free (barring multiplayer and the few games that are still uncracked). The purchase price is effectively a donation.

eugh

Don't be a retard. When you give money to publishers, you are merely lining the pockets of the executives and investors who wanted to launch the product that you purchased. This does not guarantee that more products of that type will be produced, it only guarantees that your consumer behavior will be observed, and this process has no yield on the overall quality of the production.

In short, you can support publishers if you want, but that does not guarantee that you'll get more of the same, and even if you do get more of the same, it does not guarantee that the next iteration will be made to satisfy the artistic integrity of the developers or meet the standard of the audience. Ever heard the term, "cash grab"?

Sometimes the best teacher is a solid fall on your ass with others reminding you in the future of how you got butthurt that one time.

If they couldn't make their money selling their product for cheap they wouldn't put it on sale.

I once got a letter from my ISP telling me to stop pirating or they would suspend me/terminate our contract, I was downloading 99% just vidya back then I think

Sales are a funny thing. A sale today for half off will mean increased sales of your product 3 and 4 weeks after the sale has ended, because those who bought it during the sale will tell their friends to also buy the game even after the sale ends. Word of mouth recommendations drive sales up, so any "loss of profits" on units sold during a sale will easily be made up for in the long run.

There's paper after paper after paper on the internet about the psychology of retail, successful business tactics, etc. If you ever wanted to see just how slimy and fucked up the methods used to make you buy things is, just do a little bit of reading. Indians and Chinks are just as bad as Kikes and Gooks when it comes to exploiting people.

Marketing is super interesting and everyone should learn about it as if makes you less susceptible to be marketed to

Aye, especially look up the 99 effect. It seems like it should be "duh" but for some reason, your typical layman rounds down a 99 whenever he sees it, so he literally sees everything costing $1 cheaper, which makes him think "it's less expensive than elsewhere."

Also artificial scarcity, and timed exclusivity/artificial exclusivity.

afaik they can't even do that, just send letters

If you're interested check out the radio show/podcasts "Age of Persuasion" and "Under the Influence" they're by a marketing guy named Terry O'reilly and they're both a pretty interesting look at marketing and how it affects people. Age of Persuasion is moreso a history of advertising and marketing throughout the 20th century where as Under the Influence deals with modern marketing

Pirating is nullifying things, buying at discount is still the seller selling me things, he wants to sell me Deus Ex at $1, it was his choice, and if 1000 people bought it, then he got $700 of pocket money and can go on his wikipedia page and boast 1000 more people bought his game. Resellers is old retardation.

You'll buy a shit product because you like the guy who made it? Or because of fucking hype? That IS irrational. You buy something because it is inherently good for you for as far as your perception can see its value before purchase. The free market is built upon personal greed confined within laws, which lead to better living, while communism is built upon lies reinforced by laws, which lead to starvation.

Holy shit they had real ships.

OP is a retarded faggot.

So then you should pirate your pop tarts