Just to be clear, pirates are gonna do their thing. We were all kids once. Money and the economy is very hard. I get it," wrote the designer. "It wasn’t the piracy that bothered me. It was the people that flagrantly walked in here and wagged it in the faces of people who were waiting to play legitimately. That was the part that aggravated me. That and the Reddit responses that keep talking like i’m a millionaire. I’m very much [not]. I don’t own a home. I rent.

Sounds like a valid response to me. I got into piracy partially because of lack of money and partially because back in the day, I understood how badly record companies were ripping artists off and then using that money to sue their fans. Video games have always been a different beast, just like movies. They often employ so many people at so many levels that it’s not so easy to just say “If you want to make sure they get their cut just go buy it on Bandcamp Friday” in comparison to musicians. (back in the day we also bought merch and concert tickets to support artists, just less of that money makes it to them these days)

I often use piracy to be able to test out a game without risking spending money on something I end up hating, and giving myself enough time to decide that. I actually played Baldurs Gate 3 twice before I was able to afford buying it at full price shortly after release, but it was well worth it to buy an official copy even though I had already played it a bunch. I still played it even more after buying it. Well worth the full-price game.

If you’re going into it with an attitude of that all game devs are rich and that they’re somehow ripping off their fans and so you can feel justified in pirating and taunting them for it, fuck me, grow up.