• WallEx@feddit.de
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    11 months ago

    From my understanding theft has always been to take something and after the other party doesn’t have it anymore. This never applied to piracy.

    For example: I used to pirate games back in school as I didn’t have the money to buy them. So there is no financial loss for the company. Yet they still frame it as bank robbery or something. “You wouldn’t download a car”

    • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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      11 months ago

      Hollywood was so adamant about “not downloading a car”.

      Now they are the ones downloading actors.

      • LoamImprovement@beehaw.org
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        11 months ago

        Actually, I do tend to buy my games when they’re available (and affordable) on the platforms I already use, but I’ve also sailed the high seas just because I didn’t feel like paying $70 for a game that I didn’t think was worth $70 and offered no demo for me to confirm my suspicions, or that was platform-exclusive on a platform that I don’t use.

        I think the thing is, if I could buy a file and know that I would own it in perpetuity, and while the company that sold it to me still existed, would offer the best support they could for it, I’d be a lot more amicable to the prospect of curating a legal digital library. But the way it is now, with exclusivity deals, licensing terms, intrusive DRM, Fomo bonuses, and the implication that pirating old unsupported software is a crime just because whoever owns the rights might decide to repackage it and lease it to you again and again, if they feel like it?

        And keep in mind, these are the same ghouls who insist on making live service games, adding loot boxes and micro transactions, just to prey on the most susceptible people. They’re responsible for good talent leaving or retiring just because they get in the way of people who want to make good games, which would be profitable, but maybe not as profitable as the shareholders want them to be. ZA/UM got eaten from within, Arkane withered down to nothing because they were forced to make a live service game, I can’t count how many studios got tanked or cannibalized by EA and Blizzard/Activision. Corporate is a cancer.

    • Lev_Astov@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Thepiratebay guy made an art project at one point that was a Raspberry Pi that did nothing but copy one song over and over again while keeping a running tally on a display of how much value it had “stolen” from the record industry by doing so.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        It never applied to copyright infringement, which is often disparaged as “piracy.”

        • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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          11 months ago

          Right, but I’m saying “piracy” has the same problem as “theft”. Copyright infringement is even less related to the traditional meaning of piracy than it is to theft.

  • GeneralEmergency@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    If I had a penny for every time I saw this quote decontextualised. I’d have enough to buy a Ubisoft game.

    Which is kinda sad that it’s been that often.

      • GeneralEmergency@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Thank you Valve

        (For the Gamers reading. I am making reference to the fact that steam has already got gamers used to not owning their games)

    • Pogbom@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Listen, I’m super smart and I definitely know what the right context is, but could you explain it for our dumber friends here?

      • JPAKx4@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        11 months ago

        The exec said that in order for subscription gaming to be profitable, then customers would have to be okay with not owning their games. It was posed more of a hypothetical instead of a sinister plan. Now would they prefer subscription model? Absolutely. Do they expect it to work rn? The exec doesn’t think so.

  • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Next year Ubisoft is complaining how people start a subscription just before the holiday and cancel after the holiday, with people playing dozens of games in a short period. This destroys their cash flows and shows great disrespect for the developers.

  • grue@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Copyright itself was never ownership to begin with, and ideas were never property. Copyright is nothing more than a means an end, with the end being to enrich the Public Domain. It exists for the express purpose “to Promote the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts” and nothing else.

    This is the moral basis for the Copyright Clause, in Thomas Jefferson’s own words:

    It has been pretended by some (and in England especially) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions; & not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. but while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural, and even an hereditary right to inventions. it is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. by an universal law indeed, whatever, whether fixed or moveable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property, for the moment, of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation the property goes with it. stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. it would be curious then if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. if nature has made any one thing less susceptible, than all others, of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an Idea; which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the reciever cannot dispossess himself of it. it’s peculiar character too is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. he who recieves an idea from me, recieves instruction himself, without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, recieves light without darkening me. that ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benvolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point; and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation. inventions then cannot in nature be a subject of property. society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility. but this may, or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body.

    • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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      11 months ago

      Holy shit, mic drop.

      Also, is that Jefferson’s original capitalization? I never would have figured him for the type to think he’s too cool for normal capitalization rules.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Also, is that Jefferson’s original capitalization? I never would have figured him for the type to think he’s too cool for normal capitalization rules.

        Here’s a picture of it (the first page, anyway, which isn’t the same as the part I quoted). It appears that he, indeed, wasn’t in the habit of capitalizing the first word of sentences. 'Course, it was so long ago that I’m not sure if it really was a normal rule at the time (especially for handwritten correspondence, as opposed to typeset publications).

        • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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          11 months ago

          Yeah, I know things like capitalization and punctuation were a lot more idiosyncratic at the time, but I can’t recall ever seeing that particular quirk before in historical writing.

  • Tolookah@discuss.tchncs.de
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    11 months ago

    It sounds like they are saying get comfortable with piracy. How else would you want to play a game without owning it?

  • Foni@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    I understand the slogan and why it is used, but I have never had any moral qualms about pirating the intellectual property of a billion-dollar corporation, call me weird.

    • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Basically when it comes to streaming services, what are you paying for? You aren’t getting anything except temporary access that can be revoked at any time. What the slogan is saying is pretty simple in that regard: if we aren’t buying anything but access, then you aren’t stealing when sailing the seas

      • Foni@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        I completely agree, what I’m saying is that even if I could actually buy it, or when this was possible, I would still not have ethical problems with “sailing the seas” nor do I think anyone should have those problems, I say again, the intellectual property belongs to billion-dollar companies

  • Jknaraa@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    Eh… piracy wasn’t theft even before this, because you’re not taking it away from someone else.

  • LittleBorat2@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    Yes please ubisoft make another generic assassin’s creed game that is like all the others and charge me for it on a subscription based model.

    This simulation of a simulation of a game is as important as office365 with teams at least.

    I think they have a solid business case there, congrats ubi.

  • Katana314@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    The term “If purchase isn’t ownership” has no relationship to the article quote. The suggestion of not owning games refers to having subscription-based access to them; as of yet only ever offered as a suggested alternative to purchasing games, which is still very much an option.

    These memes are always using terribly structured logic to justify piracy.

    • ArcaneGadget@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      The suggestion of not owning games refers to having subscription-based access to them; as of yet only ever offered as a suggested alternative to purchasing games, which is still very much an option.

      That is exactly the problem though. How long will it be until the subscription model is no longer an option but the only option? Because i would bet money on that being the actual goal.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        That is already the case for many mobile games, so why the person you’re talking to doesn’t think it will happen overall, I’m not sure.

      • Katana314@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        And I would bet money against that.

        Look at the reaction in these comments. Even if some games get attention from Game Pass, each individual game gets its renown through major fans that play 50 hours a month. What would any of these publishers have to gain from suddenly denying that revenue flow for JUST the people subscribing? Even a single game attempting that model would likely receive major backlash.

        Regardless, I’m going to continue judging memes and arguments like these as pathetic - as they’re already fully assuming at-present a situation we haven’t even started to move towards.

        • Kroxx@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          How have we not started moving towards it when every company is trying their damnedest to get subscriptions? Look at new vehicles, they are paywalling features on an already purchased car, I bet you would have “bet against this” too before it happened. The problem is companies are slowly changing things over time hoping consumers don’t notice until it’s too late.

          • Katana314@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            “Publishers will remove purchase options” does not follow from “Publishers want to add subscription options”. The logic is not there.

            If you can name more than a few games that removed their option for purchase due to something other than music licensing problems, that suggest it’s part of a move to encourage people to use subscriptions, you have a case. Otherwise, it’s fantasy. I can’t even think of a single game that’s done that.

    • lawrence@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I can live with that, I mean, subscription for games, but once a game enters the catalog, it can never be removed.

    • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      He’s basically threatening to move to a subscription-instead-of-purchase model. They’ve toyed with this idea for years, and have been trying to normalize it.

      These memes are always using terribly structured logic to justify piracy.

      Agreed. Nobody needs to justify piracy. Piracy is automatically justified because the reasons people justified banning piracy were bad-faith. Digital IP is theft whose only purpose has failed.

  • leave_it_blank@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    You want to really own your game, not just a license, buy on gog. Not on Steam, not on Epic, not on uplay and whatever else.

    Why is everyone so pissed at Ubisoft, they just say what’s practise for years now! And sometimes counter Ubisoft by quoting Gabe Newell, what the fuck? He made not owning games popular!

    • TurboWafflz@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      There’s a big difference between having to pay a monthly subscription to play a game and just having to use steam to launch it after a one time payment.

      • leave_it_blank@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I know what you mean, but you still don’t own the game, you have permission to play it, at least as long as the platform lets you or it closes. For now it’s all good, but when the time comes people will loose accounts worth thousands of bucks.

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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        11 months ago

        Steam can just bar you from playing those games though if they so choose. The only thing preventing that is Gabe. But that guy will have to retire some day.

        You do not own shit on Steam.

        • Mango@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Except they really can’t. I’ll get whatever game I like even after they tell me no.