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The one about video-game piracy.
Sep. 8th, 2019 08:49 pmThat's right, y'all, I'm getting on my soapbox again. This time, it's about video games and whether piracy is ever ethically justified. (Note: piracy is still very much illegal. Please don't break the law for stupid reasons. It's not worth it.)
So let's talk about this via actual examples, and who does or doesn't benefit in each case. This post will be very, very long, so I'm putting my examples behind a cut. (And it took me three and a half hours to research and type this post, so y'all better not complain about me leaving out a game you like. Research and write your own damned post.)
( Read more... )
So there you go. That's 6 specific cases of games that were all originally released 15 or more years ago. Four of them are illegal to pirate, but still easy to obtain legally. One is abandonware. One is illegal to pirate, but difficult or impossible to obtain legally at anything like a fair price.
In my personal opinion, any game that is still available brand-new from the original manufacturer, either in its original form or as a port/remake, should be purchased the good old-fashioned way. Most new games nowadays have free demos available; this isn't feasible for ports, but those ports have been reviewed and Let's Played to death if you want to get a feel for what the game's like before you buy. Don't pirate them. Pirating a game that is still actively being sold by the developer hurts the devs. Yes, even the $70 AAA titles. The Telltale Games debacle shows that game-developing is a massive gamble, and if a company loses too much money on a game, they can, in fact, go under. (And in the case of Telltale Games, leave their entire employee base unemployed and without benefits or severance pay, then start right back up again--without giving former employees ANY of these things that they had earned--as if they were a brand new company.)
If a game is legally abandonware (and you should check Wikipedia to see if it was ported or remade after 1994, because you never know), then downloading a ROM for free is not, legally, piracy. Any game that has had NO ports, re-releases, or copyright renewals in 25 years or more is, legally, no longer under copyright under US law and can be legally distributed for free. This only applies to video games, and only in the United States. And again, if there's been a port, re-release, or copyright renewal to a game within the past 25 years, it's still under copyright, and downloading that ROM is piracy. Because of this law, the Internet Archive actually has a lot of abandonware DOS games available for free download, 100% legally. (And yes, they check to make sure it really IS abandonware according to US law.) So since it's not piracy, it should be totally OK for you to get that free ROM in these cases, but be aware that heavy-hitters like Nintendo can afford to sue you anyway if they catch you.
If a game has been out of print for more than 10 years, is hard to find for anything less than $100USD on the secondhand market, and the publisher has flat-out refused to port it to a new system, then there is no legal way to get that game for a fair price. This means that either you need to cough up way more than any game is worth, or break the law, if you want to actually play that game. There aren't any games worth that expense to me right now (except Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, but I still have a copy of that game from when it was new). Path of Radiance could be, but I'd rather just improve my Japanese, buy a Japanese GCN, and get a Japanese copy of the game than spend $175 for a game when the console it's on is literally available for less than $30 on eBay.
Furthermore, scalping copies of games that have been out of print for a decade is bad, and you should feel bad. I'm looking at you, Guy Who Sells A Used GameCube Game For $1500. Charging more than $120 for these games is just plain extortion. Stop doing that.
So let's talk about this via actual examples, and who does or doesn't benefit in each case. This post will be very, very long, so I'm putting my examples behind a cut. (And it took me three and a half hours to research and type this post, so y'all better not complain about me leaving out a game you like. Research and write your own damned post.)
( Read more... )
So there you go. That's 6 specific cases of games that were all originally released 15 or more years ago. Four of them are illegal to pirate, but still easy to obtain legally. One is abandonware. One is illegal to pirate, but difficult or impossible to obtain legally at anything like a fair price.
In my personal opinion, any game that is still available brand-new from the original manufacturer, either in its original form or as a port/remake, should be purchased the good old-fashioned way. Most new games nowadays have free demos available; this isn't feasible for ports, but those ports have been reviewed and Let's Played to death if you want to get a feel for what the game's like before you buy. Don't pirate them. Pirating a game that is still actively being sold by the developer hurts the devs. Yes, even the $70 AAA titles. The Telltale Games debacle shows that game-developing is a massive gamble, and if a company loses too much money on a game, they can, in fact, go under. (And in the case of Telltale Games, leave their entire employee base unemployed and without benefits or severance pay, then start right back up again--without giving former employees ANY of these things that they had earned--as if they were a brand new company.)
If a game is legally abandonware (and you should check Wikipedia to see if it was ported or remade after 1994, because you never know), then downloading a ROM for free is not, legally, piracy. Any game that has had NO ports, re-releases, or copyright renewals in 25 years or more is, legally, no longer under copyright under US law and can be legally distributed for free. This only applies to video games, and only in the United States. And again, if there's been a port, re-release, or copyright renewal to a game within the past 25 years, it's still under copyright, and downloading that ROM is piracy. Because of this law, the Internet Archive actually has a lot of abandonware DOS games available for free download, 100% legally. (And yes, they check to make sure it really IS abandonware according to US law.) So since it's not piracy, it should be totally OK for you to get that free ROM in these cases, but be aware that heavy-hitters like Nintendo can afford to sue you anyway if they catch you.
If a game has been out of print for more than 10 years, is hard to find for anything less than $100USD on the secondhand market, and the publisher has flat-out refused to port it to a new system, then there is no legal way to get that game for a fair price. This means that either you need to cough up way more than any game is worth, or break the law, if you want to actually play that game. There aren't any games worth that expense to me right now (except Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, but I still have a copy of that game from when it was new). Path of Radiance could be, but I'd rather just improve my Japanese, buy a Japanese GCN, and get a Japanese copy of the game than spend $175 for a game when the console it's on is literally available for less than $30 on eBay.
Furthermore, scalping copies of games that have been out of print for a decade is bad, and you should feel bad. I'm looking at you, Guy Who Sells A Used GameCube Game For $1500. Charging more than $120 for these games is just plain extortion. Stop doing that.
