NTSC-RePlay 014: Avast Me Hearties!

[speedlolita]

[Brad]

I feel like Microsoft have made every effort to allow me to play their games for a reasonable price and so I wouldn’t pirate anything that they currently make available.

I feel like Nintendo hate gamers and do as little as possible to milk as much cash as they can from people though so my brain tells me (wrongly) that I can pirate anything they put out. I don’t actually do that because there’s nothing I want to play from them at the moment but if I wanted to I would.

Sony appear to be going the Nintendo route currently but I have no strong opinion.

Electronic Arts make me want to actively distribute cracked versions of their entire library.

[Neon Ignition]

I suppose MTX and GAAS practices have curbed it as well. If you copy the game you'd likely only get 10% of it anyway

[Asura]

I suppose MTX and GAAS practices have curbed it as well. If you copy the game you'd likely only get 10% of it anyway

This is literally the case. When Season Passes were brought in, the first ones for each title were free one-use codes in the box; the purpose was that new buyers got them as part of the package while people who bought the game second-hand had to buy them as DLC.

This came about because due to achievements and other analytics, publishers noticed that for many of their games, they had around 8x more people with the "completed the tutorial" achievement than there were copies of the game in existence (remember how suddenly every game had an achievement everyone gets in the first few minutes?).

This only lasted for a few months though as publishers noticed nearly everyone who bought the game second-hand bought the pass, and soon they started charging everyone.

[Hirst]

I'll pirate stuff if there's no way of me getting it new or affordably used as a physical item - with the exception of properly independent stuff where it's unlikely there'll ever be a physical release and I want to support the developers or things where it would make no sense for there to even be a physical release (online only games etc).

I can split it into a few categories:-

Retro Games/Fan Translations: If I could go out today and buy a new boxed copy of Slap Fight MD for £40, I would do. Last time I checked, it was £500 and the developers aren't getting a penny of it so I don't really see any moral obligation to not just stick the rom file on an Everdrive. It's the difference between me playing a game and not playing it and it affects nobody. It's the same for fan translations - if they'd given me an English version I'd have bought it.

Video on Demand: This one is increasingly frustrating to me in that shows I enjoy simply aren't producing a physical release for me to buy, even though I'd be extremely happy to buy one. I don't watch much Netflix but about 80% of what I see on it are foreign shows where there's no English-subtitled release outside of Netflix. I don't want to be in a situation where I want to watch it in a few years and it went away.

Soundtracks: The amount of times where I'd love to own a soundtrack and I simply can't buy it (unless they've stuck it in a card sleeve with some daft £150 version of the game where it can't be bought separately). I do like when they make the high quality audio files available for download for a few quid though, happy to throw some coins at that so I can put them on CD/MD/tape myself.

[Neon Ignition]

The idea of not releasing VOD content on physical media seems a bit shortsighted. Take Disney+ approach to it, the idea is that it locks fans into subbing for access as they can't buy the shows on disc but really if they could would they cancel their subs? No, because of the constant stream of new content hitting the service first. They're simply making a case for fans to pirate the shows to permanently have access rather than utilising an obvious revenue stream that would have little to no negative impact on the service. If it did have such an impact films wouldn't get disc releases either.