Tl;dr: skip to the bottom for links.
I originally posted this here, and linked to it in a subreddit where evidently a community of pirates hates piracy.
This post is intended specifically for the retro gaming communities, though it’s applicable for anything related to information sharing. In these spaces there’s a strange kind of self-harm going on circa 2024, in which a nontrivial amount of people(sock puppets?) are fomenting anti-piracy sentiment, and defending aggressive industry juggernauts, as if these corporations aren’t actively harming and seeking to eliminate these very same communities.
This is strange since retro gaming is all but founded and completely dependent on the free sharing of information and culture, which often includes piracy for better or worse. The word ‘retrogaming’ is nearly synonymous with emulation. It used to be that older games would rarely, if ever, be preserved on new systems. Even to this day there are still many games considered to be “abandonware”. It’s arguable that the growth of emulation - and piracy that most often accompanies it - played and plays a critical role in the renaissance of both indie retro-styled games, as well as the plethora of classic games which have officially had re-releases.
Ironically even as these behemoths are actively trying to destroy emulation, many companies have chosen the lazy route of using emulators to re-release their classic games, rather than making the extra effort to either open-source the classic engines or port the source material themselves.
As a sidenote, here is a list of legal video game engine recreations and source ports, however many of these do require you to own a copy of the original game to make use of them.
What it comes down to is that they don’t want to compete. With a retro handheld I can suddenly have access to thousands of games either through native ports, emulation, or open projects like PortMaster. What’s even better is that I can trust that whatever other computer hardware I decide to use in the future - whether PC, single-board computers, Android devices, or the plethora of retro console and handhelds flooding the markets these days - I can preserve and bring all of the content I already own into all of these devices and keep playing without a hitch.
Importantly, these communities enable the wonderful world of romhacking - free sharing of info, whether legally sanctioned or not - is a benefit for creators as well as consumers, and can easily be a gateway for the latter to grow into the former.
By contrast what the game console racket wants is to scam you into buying the same games you’ve already purchased over, and over again, through planned obsolescence, ignoring the environmental impact of these awful business models.
They want to leverage proprietary software and weaponize copyright law to eliminate competition and keep their users in a walled garden, where the entire experience is controlled from top to bottom by them. Their business strategies are dependent on the de-legitimization and elimination of the free sharing of information and culture.
Piracy is only bad for those who want to horde wealth and build monopolies.
If you’re a content creator or someone who aspires to create, you might feel like piracy is a danger to you. My hope is that if you read everything linked in this post, you might come to recognize that the free sharing of information can do the opposite - it can be an asset to your career. At a glance the Free and Open-Source Software movements are living proof of this. There is no need to remain attached to a Faustian pact.
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Study Shows Piracy Can Sometimes Be Beneficial To Markets & Consumers Alike
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Piracy Doesn’t Create A Loss To ‘The Economy,’ But To A Particular Industry
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Game Developers Can Beat Piracy By Copying Their Actual Competition
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Step One To Embracing A Lack Of Scarcity: Recognize What Market You’re Really In
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How Being More Open, Human And Awesome Can Save Anyone Worried About Making Money In Entertainment
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Saying You Can’t Compete With Free Is Saying You Can’t Compete Period
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How to turn an open source project into a profitable business
After streaming industry fragmented, I have zero interest to play ball.
Your licensing deals ain’t my fucking problem. You switch content around ain’t my fucking problem. Your ads ain’t my fucking problem. Your price increases ain’t my fucking problem.
There is a lesson about ownership and physical possession of content ie zero depending on a another man’ server.
You can’t trust a corpo, they don’t respect the media enjoyer.
It is a service issue and I will never trust them again.
Once Gabe is dead steam will do the same, and I am planning for that too now.
Media ain’t rent or food or healthcare, these parasites think they can price gouge and fuck the customer like we are some idiot clowns.
Is we?
Once Gabe is dead steam will do the same, and I am planning for that too now.
Why do you make it sound like Steam being decent is because of Gabe Newell, and not because of the culture there?
Oh shit no, Gabe, please be immortal!It’s actually pretty scary how quickly culture can devolve when the guy who signs your paycheck decides what the culture is. Most people working at valve could afford to retire if the culture got bad enough.
For a worked out example, see early Google versus modern Google.
Imo we’re extremely lucky gabe isn’t bobby kotick. It seems his son is not an absolute fuck, so that’s good, but we’ll have to see.
I’m always a “support the creators” dude. But what happens when the media disappears? Or if you’re not allowed to own it, which is the primary way creators get paid? (Sure you can subscribe to Netflix or whatever but that will contribute to all of the $18 in the showrunners’ royalty checks every year.) I generally don’t support piracy, but the current landscape makes it hard for me to condemn it anymore in the majority of cases.
On what specific basis is it moral to profit off reproduction of an idea, which can be infinitely reproduced without reducing the individual instance? The moral onus should be on those locking people in jails and ruining their lives to defend IP so we can get classics like Solo: A Star Wars Story, as opposed to the… somehow worse than that freedom would render?
