Does Santa just steal games when he gives them to children?

Does he just make copies or are the elves really good programmers that can duplicate the games?

@alavapenguin: He steals the games from the bad kids.

Santa is a pirate.

Santa shows up in the middle of the night to intimidate parents into buying the games. He also forces the parents to tell their children that the games are from him, lest they want to suffer his wrath. Santa's naughty list isn't for the kids, it's for the parents, and it's full of incriminating information.

He definitely gets free copies from publishers similar to review copies.

He gets his shit from Cdkeys.

The elves buy one copy of a game at a discounted price using SlickDeals. Then, they put that disc in a BluRay/DVD drive hooked up to a computer. They put a blank disc in a second BluRay/DVD drive hooked up to that same computer. Then, using the Power of the Cloud, they rip the ISOs from the original disc to the new one. Rinse and repeat for all copies of all games.

Santa gets that shaft at GameStop like everybody else.

Santa flies his sleigh to an unnamed eastern European county and knocks off a couple of trucks for all of his gifts.

He's a silent partner in everything. You know,like the mob.

Kris Kringle is the CEO of Kristmas Corporation (a subsidiary of Amazon) and negotiates low prices on bulk buys as well as 100% buy back pricing.

This explains a lot.

The elves make all the toys

You're a big flightless bird now, and I think it's about time someone sat you down to have a talk about Santa...

Santa pre-orders.

Santa makes his own liberal laws in his kingdom on the Northpole. Who are you to suggest hes stealing?

There is no such thing as game developers

Santa works with G2A.

This was a how a young Drew (me) cracked the case and figured all this out was thinking through this legal conundrum.

They're "requisitioned."

Santa has a bulk buy deal with publishers.

Santa CLAWS his way to the front of the black friday queues like everybody else.

He doesn't steal them, but his elves need to work crunch 364 days of the year.

Yes. Next question.

Santa only ever gave me homebrew games so I assumed everyone else got those too?

It has been a long time since Santa visited my family. We were too weird for Santa. We were visited by the Xmas Weasel (and for the record, the Easter Pig, came by at Easter). The weasel and the pig would bring games. I don't think Santa brought any games before he gave up on us, and passed us over onto the Xmas Weasel.

Barter trade agreement. Santa's elves produce all the physical goods that get included with collectors editions throughout the year in return for legitimate copies of the games.

You have to send letters into Santa so he can preorder them for ya'.

Slightly off topic, but...

The origins of Santa are very interesting, as he (in his original folklore form) is actually a direct (but secretive) attack on the catholic/christian church (conspiracy theories, but boy there is a lot of evidence that are interesting at the very least). He's definitely based on "pagan" religious traditions ("pagan" being anything that is not ordained by the Catholic church, of course, not actually satanism or anything like that... usually). And those religions believed in the power of words, and the power of thought in shaping reality (I.E., if you create a character that goes against the morals of Christianity, but dress it in Christian tradition, you can erode the power of that faith... and hey, it worked in this case - materialism, etc are Santa's game - directly against biblical morals. And originally, Santa - or whatever he was called at the time - would torture bad children and/or take them to hell, not just give them coal).

This is just a taste of the origins:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joulupukki

I recommend the "Last Podcast on the Left" episode about Santa Claus to explain more, keep in mind they are mostly having fun and stating some things in jest and some things as fact - so take it all with a grain of salt, and listen for the tone to distinguish when they're talking about fact vs. making fun of evil or stupid people/things. It is mostly a comedy podcast about horrific stories and issues - may sound odd, but I highly recommend it if you are not weak in teh stomach (not the Santa episode so much, but the others can be a bit hardcore). It's well into the Top 100 podcasts last I checked, so they're established and one of the best podcasts around if you like learning weird, crazy new things.

So Santa is capable of superluminal travel, thus violating causality, and violating the law of conservation of mass/energy. The elves must harness the output of a contained white hole to be able to produce so much matter and energy.

There is a clause in publisher deals known as the santa clause where senty clause gets free games.

Absolutely.

This sounds like it could be the final Yahoo question on an episode of Mbmbam.

Guys you are all wrong, Santa is not real.

I...I want to know more?

Right, everyone knows it's Krampus who is the real one. He takes the video games of all the bad children he eats and gives them to the good children.

Sorta. He steals anything rated M for Mature the parents got from Amazon and Best Buy. Then he gives kids the lame wooden ones the elves make and plays the hard stuff himself.

I...I want to know more?

@notnert427: Once, many moons ago, we did get gifts from Santa. We were like almost every other family. Gifts would be under the tree, addressed to us, written in my dad’s handwriting (dad has a very distinct scrawl). I however, was not a patient child and was a big time present peeker. My dad was a firm believer that no one should open anything until Xmas day, no earlier than 8 am. Part of the reason Christmas was so much fun, was finding out in advance what everyone had and then re-tape everything up without anyone noticing it. It was a battle of wits.

One year dad decided to keep all the gifts at work. For some unknown reason, dad had a co-worker fill in the name tags on the gifts. So, that year we got gifts from a Santa without dad’s handwriting, all addressed as being from S. Claws. Turned out the co-worker was terrible at spelling. My sister wanted to know was going on. Dad came up with some story about Santa being a) really busy and b) not a fan of dad’s 8-track tape collection of world music, Simon and Garfunkel albums and western movie soundtracks and c) less of a fan of the 8-track KA-CHUNK noise. Santa’s duties were being passed off onto S. Claws, the Xmas Weasel.

Ten years later, dad told us why he chose the weasel. We had a stuffed Loony Toons Tasmanian Devil on the piano, which dad mistook for a weasel. Turns out, dad has no clue of who the Loony Toon characters are. To him, Foghorn Leghorn and Elmer Fudd are the same character.

We ended up keeping the Xmas Weasel as a holiday tradition, as my dad ended up working decoy gifts under the tree and booby traps into the holiday traditions All in an effort to prevent me from finding out what my gifts were before 8 am Christmas day. Sometimes bags of aluminum cans were placed over a door frame to dump on an unsuspecting nosy child. Other times, some gifts were buried in a snowbank in the back yard. (I think my brother didn’t get all his gifts until the end of March that year). And one fiendish scenario, had all the gifts attached to black box sirens with mercury switches. Ahh, those were good times

As for the Easter Pig, he came to because we had a pet rabbit that my brother turned out to be allergic to. So we had to get rid of the rabbit. and dad picked an animal without fur to bring the baskets of candies and gifts.

The real question is how santa makes his money back to keep up with operational costs.

Santa is a businessman. A marketing marvel. Companies know how important his party is and how good of a look it is when all those facebook moms post their kids with huge smiles while holding a videogames in their .. steam accounts.

Therefore, every videogame publisher throws their games at Santa in a hope of getting some of that X-mas goodwill & following purchases from the customers. Do you want Mario Kart? Maybe you saw a few of these 80's photos of happy kids holding that game in their hands . Now do you want to feel as happy as that kid was?

Haha, I'm so glad I asked; that is hilarious. Thank you for sharing. Your dad sounds awesome, and that upbringing had to be all kinds of fun.

BTW, this whole thread is Giant Bomb greatness.

He gets them from G2a. It's the only way he can afford keys en masse. The elves are the workers who get the stolen keys. It's a giant scheme covered up by an amazing PR department.

Santa is an indie dev

Dang santa is shady

Santa fuckin' jacks that shit.

Watch the fuck out Game Stop.

@expensiveham: The fuck are you talking about.