1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy
2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote
3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs
4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others
📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):
💰 Please help cover server costs.
 |
 |
|---|---|
| Ko-fi | Liberapay |
So damn based. Makes me NOT wanna pirate their games. Hell, I'd even purchase even if I wouldn't play it (if I could rn, but currently I've got hefty cat veterinary bills to pay).
Edit: OH MATE! THEY'RE THE POSTAL STUDIO! Goddamn I played it so damn much in my early teens. Goddamn I gotta pay my bills faster!
For the sake of piracy, and their message, don't buy from key Gen sites, as well. They not only are flat out stealing, profiteering like mother fuckers, but over and over again.
Don't pay for organized crime when you can do it yourself if ya gotta. Cut the scalpers out.
I didn't know this, and I recently bought a key through one of those sites. Put in my card details at checkout and got the key, and got a message from my bank saying the transaction has been declined due to security reasons. So my money never ended up going to them, but I still got the key. I unknowingly scammed the scammers!
Bonus points! Double piracy!
They fucking deserve it.
These aree same guys that asked people to pirate instead of buying from key resellers, because most of those keys were bought with stolen credit cards. In that case the game company doesn't get to keep the money, but does have to pay exorbitant fees.
How much do you think it would cost for them to accept cheques instead?
Ask Frank Abignale.
When I was in business school, one of our lecturers in our ethics class was one of the main consultants that worked the Steam project to create regional price differences and other geofencing. It was a very interesting class. The takeaway is that it can be seen as morally responsible to charge someone is a poorer country less for the same game. It is called price discrimination and it is done in many industries including air travel and pharmaceuticals. Otherwise, you would price an entire market out of a product. In many respects, the richer countries are subsidizing the poorer countries. The argument that the price should be the lowest one on the board anywhere is not realistic because a company needs to generate margins high enough to make the opportunity worthwhile otherwise it is not going to produce the product. In other words, Companies will not make a product if they are going to lose monkey selling it, but they will charge one market more to sell to another market at a loss if there is other intrinsic value like user adoption to create a community. They are selling digital content in this instance, but it still took money to make and money to distribute, so the argument that the product is easy to replicate over and over again is a moot point. Getting some money in a market versus no money is beneficial. If people pirate that games en masse by even just purchasing them VPN at a lower rate hurts the developers. I believe in some piracy under certain circumstances, such as when you truly can’t afford something when you are growing up. It is in the marketers best interest to let kids get hooked at a young age.
The last thing I want them to do is lose monkey.
lol. I’m sticking with the typo.
Wait, are you telling me that business ethics are actually a real thing? I thought somebody made that up as a meme. Every corporate executive I've ever worked for has been a borderline, if not full blown, sociopath obsessed with nothing more than getting richer at everyone else's expense. Maybe they all skipped that class?
Bold of you to assume they even went to business school.
All the big wigs I've met were "self-made millionaires" -meaning assholes that used, manipulated and fucked over enough people to reach their current positions.
Also, tax evasion.
I am finding that the people that are starting to rise to the top of my company are backstabbers. It wasn’t always like this, but the company keeps absorbing other companies and some of their cultures are toxic in a passive aggressive way.
I’ll tell you that the teacher was an attorney who worked for a very reputable business consulting firm to help businesses make unsavory decisions. A key takeaway from the class is that you can do anything that you can get away with and if you don’t, your competitors will. They basically said that you need to get away with it in the eyes of the law, but also your customers. They may be the ones forcing you to do the right thing. You also have to do good in the eyes of your employee culture. If your employees don’t like the direction of the company’s values, then that can prove detrimental. So, in many respects, you can be forced by external factors to act an ethical manner.
Alright so anyone have any recommendations? For me to buy their games of course
Postal 2 + all the DLC, unironically the most fun you'll ever have with a game.
Valve does a relatively good job with regional pricing. But after last year's readjustments price in India is at the very least 50% more expensive than it used to be.
No, our economy didn't improve to warrant this change, it's in fact tabled heavily, and disposable income has also shrunk but a lot. It'll get a lot worse too, as our policies become worse and worse.
There are other countries in similar situations where the prices were adjusted to be cheaper, but not in India, sadly.
So while Valve usually does a good job, they didn't this time. We can't expect individual developers to manually keep track of global economies and set their own prices, so it's very understandable for then to just say they trust Valve for this. I just hope more of them realize that Valve is not perfect in how they go about it.
This is sometimes the case with god forsaken countries like Venezuela, we've had the same prices as US since forever and we're the worst economy in the whole continent and rank among the top 10 in the world, so yeah sometimes is just bad luck or maybe even due to international policies that regular costumers are not aware of.
They should be like the devs of Hotline Miami and just straight up provide the torrent lol
Imagine EA providing the torrent and thanking Skidrow for the great work on removing Denuvo lol
I mean, by nature we didn't need permission, but thanks I guess!
at least you won't go to hell for this one
Too late, see you there
Yeah, I'm fucking paying these guys. I played Postal 2 heaps (it wasn't available in my country).
NGL, I'm gonna send some $$ their way for this.
regional pricing isn't always applied. Egypt still has USD pricing making a $60 game a quarter the median monthly income making that $60 game the equivalent of $700
Same in Vietnam. The average gamer demographic makes like 15k-25k VND/hr. That's like $.60-$.1.10 an hour. So 55-110 hours of labor for a video game. Everyone here is a pirate, and rightfully so.
Holly shit, this is pretty damn awesome!
Remember if you like the games and have the means to, you should still donate what you can to support both them having this attitude toward this, and further development of future games.
See I hate that the game company’s lose out but some games I’d rather have a legitimate copy so I can get my achievements and shit so key resalers are the only cheap way of getting a legitimate copy of the game, Wish there was a way to differentiate between the stolen keys and non stolen keys.
What purpose do achievements serve even? Are there rewards you are after?
Achievements have only ever been annoying pop-up from my perspective.
What is the appeal?
A sense of achievement
Before I show myself out, I'll just say some use them as a progression indicator without looking up a guide while others enjoy that sweet dopamine rush.
While you're probably joking, sometimes it feels that way. (Referring to 1st sentence.)
It's a joke in that it's a pun but it's still true, in my opinion.
Honestly they are just nice to have and pretty enjoyable to try and 100% a game.
It's still criminal in my country, which means even if RWS does not complain, the ISP can still complain and the police will still arrest.
The law is incredibly stupid at times.
Germany?
Going based off minimum wage of the country I’m in compared to the us minimum wage of $7.25, it’s like charging $60 for the game.
These numbers are estimates, but it kinda shares an idea of pricing. I’m not sure if the us is still 7.25 though.
Still legally 7.25 unless there are local laws superceding it. Though effectively, most places are starting at 10ish minimum, often closer to 15 for fast food/grocery type jobs in my area.
Yeah I figured I’d just the the absolute minimum for both countries.
I respect that, even though I really don't enjoy their games so I probably won't 😆
I don't know how it is in the US, but in my country Steam regional pricing doesn't apply and the game can be about 5-7% of my paycheck for a AAA game (before "microtransactions" that is) which doesn't seem like a lot at first, but it still seems like a lot in my mind.
OTOH Running with Scissors sucks major ass
Would you like to sign my petition?
