Piracy > Supporting Assholes.
By yukoasho 188 Comments
Anyone who knows me, or has read this blog for any amount of time, knows that I've never seen a justifiable reason for piracy. It's theft, plain and simple, and no corporation has ever been bad enough to justify theft.
That opinion has changed.
As some of you now surely know, UbiSoft pulled the ultimate game of splitting hairs, pulling off the best "lawyer speech" bait-and-switch scam for From Dust ever. Basically, while you technically don't need to be online to play From Dust, you DO need to be online to start a game. The game employs a persitant online connection throughout boot-up and initial menus, meaning you can't get access to the main menu unless UbiSoft's Orwellian DRM is looking at you.
Needless to say, the internet has gone into a rage, and people are shaking Valve down for refunds. I imagine many of those people are also downloading From Dust torrents as I write this.
Good for them.
While I will never support pirating games from the good guys, the PC landscape is dreadfully lacking in good guys. Whether it's activation limits, always-on DRM, or turning your purchase into an extended rental, PC games makers have made it abundantly clear to their consumers: You are guilty, no matter what you've done. You're a thief, even if you've never stolen anything, and we have no issue with treating you as one.
You know what? Fuck 'em.
No more.
If the pirated version is better than the retail version, why shouldn't you pirate? If the only way to ensure that you'll be able to play a game in 5-10 years is via torrent, why bother paying?
It took enough time, but perhaps this is the end result of rigid, inflexible morality. I tried to play the straight and narrow, but how many people can take me seriously when they get screwed like this? Really, how many people can be asked to waste money when the support isn't there, especially when other industries that have similar issues are still posting huge profits, all the while never taking it out on the paying consumer? How can anyone look at this and assume that the "problems" piracy poses are anything more than the industry's justification for more and more control and the right to serve less and less?
Am I justifying? I dunno. I probably won't do much in the way of piracy myself, if anything. I don't do a ton of PC gaming anyway, and the console manufacturers have 1st party overlords to keep them in line. And I will never turn a blind eye as companies that do right get fucked over.
But the days of my looking at UbiSoft, EA or anyone else who tries to fuck over the consumer with even an ounce of mercy are done.
You wanna pirate From Dust? Go ahead. You wanna pirate the PC Battlefield 3? Knock yourself out. I'm honestly done giving two shits either way, but I will never use this blog to parrot the industry "party line" again.