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.
A subset of users on the r/piracy subreddit responded harshly to the designer’s expression of disappointment, with some claiming that he must be fabulously wealthy. “This is like a man in a solid gold suit spitting at a homeless person,” decided one poster.
Lol, only /r/piracy would be dense enough to come up with that analogy.
It’s not that dense. Between Kraftons actions and this homie’s resume, all parties seem to be in it for the cash.
Krafton won’t be getting my money. I’m not rewarding them for their unethical behavior.
“Thanks for pirating a game that I’ve spent years working on,” game design lead Anthony Gallegos replied to one such self-reported pirate. “I’m disappointed that you’d do that when it’s kind of how we make our living. I hope you rethink your life choices.”
Thanks for working for a studio that sold their soul to a foreign publisher for $500 million and a $250 million bonus.
(And no, I’m not pirating the game.)
They are salaried anyway, they should be happy if people are enjoying what they created, pirated or not.
Maybe if they didnt have such weird data farming people would be more willing to pay for it. They basically justified all of the Krafton worries people had (outside of firing the devs).
People can run their own justifications for piracy, but god this has always been a shitty one.
It’s like not considering veganism because “The cow’s already dead. It’s been chopped up in that steak on the counter. Me refusing to eat it won’t change anything.”
Indeed, if the game isn’t financially successful, you can bet that publishers will shy away from similar titles and also the devs in the future.
Still, Krafton is one of the worst publishers I can imagine. So not giving them money is fair here.
Personally, I’m waiting for the full release before I pirate it.
After all, pirated games don’t get updates, so I want it to have most of the bugs already worked out by the time I get my permanent copy.
the game itself still gets updated. download pirated game -> update drops -> wait unil someone uploads it -> download latest version
If its too niche you might have the situation where nobody uploads the updated version and waiting will just get you the same version as if you didn’t wait.
repacks will generally use patch updates but I find it’s easier and less bug prone to just use a steam emu or patched steam and just replace the steamapps/common/game folder each update
Why? If you know you’ll play it it’s only $30 now, almost certainly higher at release. The Early Access is running great for me (on Linux no less) and the closest thing to a “bug” I’ve found so far (3 hrs in) is that some of the voiceover doesn’t 100% match the written text.
Seriously, it looks and feels excellent already. My understanding is that only a few biomes are finished, and they’ll release more over time. But even the story beginnings are already solidly in place.
it’s only $30
I’m quite poor, though. $30 is pretty significant for me.
Go on the Discord server, you’ll probably find folks giving away free keys periodically. I don’t know that for certain but it’s common for popular Early Access games.
Eh, like I said before, I don’t really want an unfinished, early access version, anyway.
I don’t want my games to have updates. I’ll wait until it’s finished and stable and then I’ll pirate it. Best experience all around.
So sad to hear no VR support. That’s what made the original so amazing for me
I would suspect the market slowdown in VR purchases might be pushing some publishers to spend less money on it than when the Oculus Rift and Valve Index were fresh and new. Meta’s relative dominance of the arena and it’s tightly closed systems are also impacted by people who don’t want to give money to Meta. If the Steam Frame is successful, we might see a turnaround on that, but currently I think the VR market has been stagnating a little under Meta’s dominance. Zuckerberg abandoning the Metaverse entirely also is evidence of a market that exists but isn’t large enough for most publishers to justify the extra costs to include VR support when they won’t sell enough copies to offset those costs.
