I got suckered into playing 800+ hours of GTA Online and paying thousands of SEK for shark cards over a year or two before I realized what a terrible game it is.
I was addicted to it, and paid money every month to buy shark cards.
When my work situation improved however, I took a few steps back and realized that I had wasted a lot of money on it and that I was only chasing the dragon that was just out of reach, kept away from me by carefully crafted mental mechanics of the game.
I was disgusted and refused to participate further.
I uninstalled it right away and have never looked back.
I never spent a dime on it, but I did play for over 3000 hours before rock star blocked linux. I enjoyed the grind rather than the reward, so it sort of became my little safe-space game when I was really stresses out. could always just go hang out with my buds for a few hours and grind out a million bucks. I’m still kinda torn up about the anticheat situation tbh, I would gladly play alone if there were any way to play the same game. but story mode just doesnt compare for me, completly different game :(
Yup. I’ve been boycotting Nintendo and EA for the past twenty years. EA due to the destruction of countless talented studios (Origin, Bullfrog, Westwood, Pandemic) and Nintendo when they were caught by the EU doing anti-competitive price fixing (which they still seem to be doing today).
I have missed out on nothing. A game is just a game; a piece of multimedia content to entertain. There are countless astonishing games out there; missing out on a few doesn’t harm you.
People really need to learn to vote with their wallets. And no, I don’t think sailing the high seas and yarharhar legal questionability is acceptable. You don’t need to play the game. There is nothing that important you’re missing out on for the “cultural zeitgeist”.
Piracy still increases the fandom and increases sales (contrary to what IP owners will tell you). So piracy is still supporting these organisations and feeding into their success.
Vote with your wallets. Don’t support business practices and businesses you don’t believe in. Give your time and money to those that deserve it.
Obviously this is a problem for radio astronomers. I keep hoping we’ll build the proposed Lunar Crater Telescope so we can have a truly silent view of the universe.
For multi-mode (full duplex) you would still need a power amp repeater every 500 meters, which requires a lot of power and create noise. You can’t be quiet with noise.
Yes, because there’s no way to transmit power or data anywhere without being loud af in any signal spectrum. It’s physically impossible.
Even with fiber, you need a laser to beam the signal, and a powerful amp on the moon to recieve the signal and boost it with fuck ton of high power repeaters to the other side of the moon which is also loud af
Be that as it may, it’d be minimal compared to the interference that terrestrial radio observatories have to deal with.
I guess I’m just saying that I don’t understand why you’re being so negative about the concept when it’s clearly going to be orders of magnitude better than existing antennae.
I’ve been boycotting Ubisoft for years, haven’t missed a damn thing.
Yeah, there are so many great games by non-shitty developers. Skipping Ubisoft, EA, and Activision entirely is not only possible but there are more great games left than one can play anyway.
Yeah, I think it was in Assassin’s Creed 2. At the time, people were unable to play the single player game they bought at launch because Ubisoft shitty authentication service couldn’t handle the load.
And by OFF, we mean actually off. The last thing I want is the game to push out a minor update 5 years after its last update, and all of the mods I have are now broken.
Yeah, you should be able to pick a specific version number for single player games. I’m fine with it defaulting to “latest”, but at least give me the option to stick to a specific version.
Also, fuck the “Would you like to share all data with the publisher, or only limited data” bullshit. It’s a single player game with no multiplayer whatsoever. I shouldn’t need to share any data with the publisher. If I see this shit, the game immediately gets blacklisted in my firewall.
That is a reason why offline installers are so important. At the very least we should be able to disable auto updates and still launch the (outdated) game.
Reminds me of one of my biggest pet peeves - a bunch of games will pop up a warning “Oh no, you’re not on the Internet! Some stuff won’t work!” on start up, always. Hate it, unless I’m trying to connect to a multiplayer mode of some sort.
The most frustrating for me was Immortals: Fenix Rising on the Switch. I refused to create an Ubisoft account and actually had to put my system on airplane mode so it would stop trying to force one on me.
If there is something better than opensnitch for this on Linux someone tell me. It‘s so annoying to block applications from accessing the internet on it. I‘ve tried like 4 different methods.
I used to buy Steam games without a care in the world. Now to spend even 5 bucks I make myself go through a quality control checklist so vast it would impress a space shuttle commander. There's just been too many abandoned games, terrible sequels, fake reviews, unnecessary game launchers and disappointing Steam sales. That's not to say there isn't still an excellent bunch of games on there, but they're all hidden deep in the forest and I have to go sniff em out like a basset hound.
Well ok but I did say it was long. Tbh, my checklist is almost a minigame itself now 🤣
So once I've found a game that looks interesting, I do the following:
Google video search for the game's title and filter to past week, then month, then year and that shows me how many people are actually talking about this game right now and who's doing the talking.
I look at the Steam reviews and initially filter to only show negative ones. I find it's a lot easier to see if the game's been review bombed that way. Also, a lot of negative reviews complain about features I find positive so that's helpful too "This game was way too easy! I finished it in 30 hours and I still had all my hair at the end, harumph!". I also check phrases like "Abandoned by the devs" or "Yet another asset flip" or "Beware! The EULA is a privacy nightmare".
I then switch to positive reviews and read the short ones. The dissertations are just way too much detail at this stage (or any stage really for me).
At some point early on I check the Steam update history. If the last update was years ago I factor that in. I also try to keep on top of relevant news like that time the entire staff of Annapurna Interactive quit, making a sequel to Stray unlikely.
Also, if it hasn't had that many recent updates I'll join the Discord and see how active that is. That's usually so revealing. Often in a positive way like with the G-Rebels devs.
Then I go through my top YT game reviewers like Raptor, Scarlett Seeker, Splattercat Gaming, Orbital Potato and Nookrium and see if they've talked about the game.
I look for the title on Allkeyshop to see if there's a cheaper EU unlockable Steam game key available.
I check for trainers in case I need an escape hatch if it turns out to be too grindy or tedious but still worth playing.
If all the searches have been positive so far I'll wishlist it around this point. If there's a demo I'll play it. If it looks amazing from the start I'll install the demo after looking at a couple of gameplay videos.
I also have a 21:9 monitor so I hop into the Steam discussion group for the game and look for confirmation that it's compatible.
If it's too expensive I'll check SteamDB and look at it's price history. My personal limit is <7 bucks for an old game and <18 for a relatively new one (unless something exceptional suddenly appears like Eriksholm).
I'll check if there any Steam sales coming and if the theme is likely to match the game I'm looking at.
I really do actually do all this by the way. It's the only way I've been able to get more sensible about the games I buy.
Actually that’s not a bad list at all. But reading this I am asking myself: isn’t that more a list to detain YOURSELF from adding too much on your pile of shame :D
Oh yeah definitely :) Also I've noticed there's kind of a new feeling of satisfaction when a game does somehow make it through this assault course and I buy it finally. It feels like an achievement in itself.
I would throw in isthereanydeals and gg.deals into the mix. Those provide good historical tracking of multiple stores for games, so you can really be sure you are getting the historical low during a sale.
If I spend a fiver on a game and it entertains me for two nights I still consider that fine value to entertainment ratio. If I went out somewhere in real life with the boys I’d be spending a minimum of $50 and that’s for a single night out. So I buy a lot of indie games in the $5-10 range without much guilt over it. Weird single-dev projects with pixel art and a 5 year span in early access are my favorite kind of art.
Now if you’re asking me more than about $20 for your game then yeah the quality control checklist comes out. But my standards are much lower for the $10-tier and I’ve found some really good games in that tier. Not ones that I’m still playing, maybe, but ones that I had a good time with for a few days to a few weeks and that I remember fondly.
I’m more of the just stick to the indie goats type of guy, those which give you unlimited replay ability, but reading your comment made me fondly remember Yes your Grace!
A little game which i got through in two days and probably never touch again but absolutely loved. It made feel more like a King (of a really small realm) than a crusader kings or civilisation.
I pretty much only buy games that are either very well-known to be good (famous on the level of Skyrim, Stardew Valley, etc.), or that I saw a “let’s play” of.
I’ve started just waiting a bit. If a game is actually good, waiting a few months won’t really matter. If the game is dead by then, it was never worth the money in the first place.
Same. I’ve got a huge library of rpg games I can play, don’t really play games that I need to have day 1, I just watch a few hours of someone play it and I’m good.
No man’s sky did make a full 180 recovery though, I bought it after the fix for me, my kid and some friends so we could play together.
That’s my experience with 99% of old school point and click games. At some point in every one it devolved into me running in circles and trying every item on every object.
When I played Day of the Tentacle I got stuck. Eventually I caved in and ordered the official hint book. Mind you, back then this entailed mailing a physical letter and the money somewhere. I guess my parents helped with that. And then you had to wait for your order to arrive. And the post was a lot slower than today.
I waited weeks for the book to arrive. And then, the day before it came, I finished the game. Use physics book with horse was the last puzzle I needed.
But the money wasn’t wasted entirely. The game’s story was written down from the pov of one of the characters. Pretty funny.
Hint books were an experience back then. I remember the hint book for myst had this whole narrative about some other person who got trapped in the book, which was supposed to be like the player. It was this whole story of how they solved all the various puzzles. I remember it being quite long but I was also like 9 so maybe it was just like 10 pages
Yeah, basically every game that runs on scummvm is a good candidate here: leisure suit Larry, kings quest, police quest, the dig, sam and max, Indiana jones and the fate of Atlantis, all the sierra and lucasarts ones
Myst series is another good one. Journeyman project trilogy. These all ruled when I was like 12 years old
I miss when games were confusing and aimless by default. I know there are still games like this but I feel like the default now is a game that’s like “oh hey, go down this hallway full of locked doors! Except one door is unlocked, that’s a secret area, good for you! But otherwise go down the hallway to the next hallway!”
Also the end of the hallway is glowing, and there’s a pulsating dot on your minimap. And if you take 5 seconds longer than needed, your character says to himself: “maybe I should go to the end of this hallway”.
Oh man, king’s quest. Those games were literally impossible without a guide and you needed to go to areas in very specific steps to not softlock the game.
You’d play leisure suit Larry or whatever and get 3/4 of the way through and get stuck. Then you’d check a walkthrough and realize you didn’t check the trash can on the first screen of the game for a key item and now you’re fucked and literally have to start over from the beginning
Or you’d get to a death condition and get a screen that just mocks you: remember to save early and save often!
I gave up on point and click games when the solution to a problem in Monkey Island 2 was to put a fucking dog in your pocket. Even the look Guybrush gives when he stuffs the dog in is like "bet you didn’t think to do that initially huh…?’
The funny thing is that LucasArts games were done as the “antithesis” to Sierra games, as the latter were chock full of cheap deaths and “Did you remember to do some little side thing 2 hours ago? No? Progress locked, fuck you” situations
Kinda. The website was inactive for a few years there, and only recently started updating again. The author was focusing on Patreon, which was reportedly porn of the VGCats characters.
I don’t understand. You have two friends, each with a good arm, that’s two good arms. Tape your friends together and have them coordinate and BAM: two-handed gaming.
sadly they live 80km apart from each other, and both are right handed, so they couldn’t face each other while playing. We’d need a pretty weird dual-monitor setup if we’d tape them together.
Maybe its the 'tism but I never gave a shit about most microtransactiony things unless they have a “pay-to-win” element. That’s why I gave up on GTA online.
But if its just like “exclusive skins”, I could give a shit. My default skinned character can still win against a guy in a bear-suit with a golden AK and that’s really all I need. I have no particular FOMO of not winning the fashion part of the game.
I do wish games I could turn off their constant begging for my money though.
My default skinned character can still win against a guy in a bear-suit with a golden AK and that’s really all I need. I have no particular FOMO of not winning the fashion part of the game.
Twitter user strahfe recently shared a patent by Activision that suggests buying cosmetic items could increase your chances of being placed in games against less-experienced players. The patent reads: “The microtransaction engine may match a more expert/marquee player with a junior player to encourage the junior player to make game-related purchases of items possessed/used by the marquee player”
I’m not heavy into conspiracies, but I’m suspicious enough to not give Activision the benefit of the doubt and bet that they’ve done this in secret if they have a patent for it. But really… if we’re even thinking about these kinds of things, the game is a lost cause.
An argument I heard, and adopted is that it’s never “just” cosmetic. Your enjoyment of the game is impacted by how you perceive your avatar. This is why fortnite skins sell so well to new players. It’s not just cosmetic to drop $20 on Cuddle Team Leader. It makes a user feel silly and increases enjoyment running around as an obvious pink mascot costume. It prolongs how long you play both by increased enjoyment, and sunk cost fallacy. In any game with cosmetics, purchases drive playtime.
Used to play games and I was so focused on gameplay, I always thought “why even have a lot of art in there”. But then you realize if the art sucks, you wouldn’t even be giving it a chance.
And this extends to skins and stuff. If it’s “just cosmetics”, that still means there is some art that is now hidden unless you throw money at your screen. And depending on how much it is, the game might be way too boring without it. So you’re still buying bits of a game after the fact. And voila, we’re back to the reasons why DLCs suck.
Cyberpunk winning best ongoing game is such a joke. Yes, I enjoyed the DLC but if any game with DLC and updates can be part of that category then that category has no meaning at all.
Friends Per Second podcast had an interesting discussion around it. The term Indie isn’t well defined. Maybe never was. Most people probably see DtD as indie even though it had a publisher. A new category could be “independent” which actually has games that were published independently.
It has nothing to do with DLC. I think it deserved the award. Instead of just letting the game die that it shouldn’t have released in the first place. They fixed it.
I think we might have different expectations here. I think if a company sells a broken game, they should fix it without praise. The consumers paid for it. Specially should they not get an award for that. There should be a category for “most stable release” instead.
Yeah, what actually happened here is they put out a broken, unfinished game 3 years ago, have spent the last 3 years on damage control and fixing it (which means it never changed overall price on the store like a 3 year old game should) and now they want you to buy an Xpac and the ultimate edition so they can sell it again, still for full price. It’s not worth an award, it’s scummy.
I think the reason it gets praised is because it’s very rare that poor games get as much time and investment into fixing in this day and age. Most companies will just move on to the next game or even use AI to write their apology letters and then abandon the game entirely.
Awarded to a game for outstanding development of ongoing content that evolves the player experience over time.
Its best ongoing game, not best live service game. I think things like Stardew Valley or No Man’s Sky fit into this just like Cyberpunk did because devs should be praised for when they go above and beyond. I’d argue CDPR owed that to their fans but still, they mostly pulled it off.
Yes, Cyberpunk, sorry I didn’t clarify. And I agree with the 2024 take too.
As someone who is industry adjacent and has worked with people who work on games that are actively updated and improved for years…idk the Cyberpunk win doesn’t sit right with me. I have all the sympathy for the devs at CDPR and what they went through during the initial launch of the game, but this win just shows upper management at dev companies that they can get rewarded for releasing unfinished projects and finishing them later.
It’s also funny that they won against FFXIV, an actual good example of a game that was nuked to the ground and rebuilt with continuous support because of it’s initial failure.
There’s a huge indie scene with loads of ongoing games that would be far more deserving of the award than Cyberpunk. Cyberpunk literally stopped major developments with 2.0, the rest you’re going to get are easy to include content and QoL. Compare that to Dwarf Fortress that has 20+ years of development and is only 50% done with the final vision. You could probably also stick Terraria there because despite the devs saying multiple times that they’re done they’re still updating the game. I’m sure there’s more but those two were just at the top of my head.
The only merit CP77 has to be on that list is fixing a broken game. Do you think CP77 would’ve won the award if it had release in the 2.0 state and gotten 3 years of additional development? Would it even make it into the nominees list? I don’t think so.
I’m convinced they had Cyberpunk win it because they don’t have a “Best DLC/Expansion” category (yet) and felt like Cyberpunk deserved to win something for the way 2.0 and Phantom Liberty revitalised it.
Also, fixing your fucked it game isn’t ongoing either. CP2077 in this category is a disgrace. They shipped a buggy game, released DLC and actually finished the game and then won an award for it. Bullshit.
No. Intellectual property is not real, so nothing is being stolen by you.
If it’s a small developer, and you like the game, make sure to support them if you can. If it’s a mega studio, don’t feel bad about not paying anything.
If intellectual property is not real, then why do you support the idea of paying small developers instead of large developers? Their intellectual property is just as fake as large studios, right?
I really wish pirates were more honest with themselves. Just admit that you're taking something that doesn't belong to you and own it. I pirate content all the time, but I don't do the mental gymnastics to justify it. Just admit that you stole something and that you don't care, it's not that hard. I have an old PC in my closet that has about 200 movies and a bunch of cracked games on it that I've pirated over the years, and I don't care that I stole them. The Robin Hood complex some pirates have is just weird, imo. You're not sticking it to The Man; The Man is still bankrolling more per week than the team who made the content you stole is making in a year, regardless of your seed ratio.
By the way, large studios also have developers who rely on their jobs to put food on the table, just like the small studios. If you think anybody at EA aside from the C-Suite execs are significantly richer than the average indie dev, you'd be mistaken. Next time you're playing a pirated AAA game, look at your character; the guy who spent several weeks of his life sculpting and rigging that model is probably just as concerned about paying his rent on time as you are.
By the way, this isn't entirely directed at you, specifically. Just my thoughts on the general attitude I see in a lot of piracy communities lately.
It’s the same with FOSS. IP is just as fake as physical private property, but that doesn’t mean we can’t pay people for their labour.
If I find a really useful open-source licensed app developed by one or two people as a hobby, and they have a donation link in their repo, I might send them something.
If it’s a really useful open-source licensed app developed by some corporation, there’s no way I’m giving them money. The company has invested in developing the app as open source; they chose to (or were forced to by virtue of open source dependencies) make it public. The devs were already paid by the company. Whether the company takes in enough revenue by other means to pay for this open source project isn’t my problem.
Just admit that you stole something and that you don’t care, it’s not that hard.
You are not wrong, but maybe just a bit of perspective:
In my city, you can go to the public library, borrow a DVD, take it home, watch it. 100% legal. 100% free. No library membership fees. And they have multiple copies of most DVDs, so it’s not like it’s some lottery to use the service.
It feels a lot like downloading a movie without paying anyone to watch it. The only difference is you gotta go outside. Oh, and no guilt tripping.
Anyway, what’s my point? Well piracy is only illegal because some people (not everyone) decided that everyone is going to pay an equal, but not necessarily an equitable, share to fund the development of said IP (unless you have a library in your area to counter this, partially). Worse, that everyone will keep paying a very small group of people money we’ll after the development of said IP has been paid off. Even worse, that small group of people will use their profits to corrupt the legal system to ensure that that protectionism continues to serve their benefit, not others… Point being, you can pirate, and care… care a lot.
Victims are created when piracy affects small production houses struggling to make ends meet. Victims are created of everyone else when the law is abused beyond it’s original purpose to squeeze consumers.
So you too should be honest and not call it theft. Piracy is piracy, good or bad. To compare it to the crime of theft is to perpetuate the marketing of those to stand from a black and white view on the matter.
No, the difference is that you're expected to return it. You're not supposed to keep it forever. That's why there's a "due by" date on checked-out materials.
Absolutely wild how stuff like this is downvoted here. People are disconnected from reality as if the world is a little hippy community. reminds me of this, have fun reading.
It is theft, but the argument is better framed as to whether or not it’s moral theft. Most people who pirate feel comfortable pirating from larger corporations over small time creators/groups, with the usual justifications you’ve provided above. Personally, I’ve justified it at times because I couldn’t afford to purchase the thing, which leads to another argument of “if I wasn’t going to buy it in the first place, is it actually effecting them”.
There is no argument to be made, however, where it isn’t true that if you were to have purchased it, the owner of the idea will make more off of it. Whether you care or not about that owner getting more is a different argument, but you are robbing them of value for the idea, however little that value might have been.
I’m not arguing for or against pirating, but people in the comments saying it isn’t theivery really seem to be arguing whether stealing is wrong or not. Call it what it is and go back to the argument people have been having for thousands of years.
Which, I realize I didn’t address libraries. Taxes pay for libraries to operate, and then the library pays to have copies of the works. If no one wants to read my book, libraries aren’t going to just go out and buy thousands of copies. And trying to tackle libraries would also start to erode arguments for reselling something. And to bring it back to the OP, I’ve read books in a library before that I enjoyed enough to purchase a copy of my own. I’ve also read books I haven’t. But someone purchased that book for me to rent, and in a small part, I’ve paid for that book myself by paying taxes.
It’s not mental gymnastics. Why is it so hard to believe that people genuinely don’t believe in intellectual property? It has nothing to do with “sticking it to the man.” I just do not believe in IP, full stop.
And piracy is not stealing, it is making a copy. When you steal a physical item the original owner is deprived of that item. When you copy something the original “owner” still has access to it.
Not everyone thinks the same way you do. In fact you sound like a terrible person if you genuinely believe that what you’re doing is wrong but you’re doing it anyway.
So if someone spend thousands of hours and a lot of money on researching a new invention that would benefit people, you don’t believe they should reap the rewards of said invention without a competitor stealing their idea? You’re basically advocating for people not to be paid for their work
So unless I make something physical I am not making anything real? So all my work up to the point of a plant being actually built is not real?
Doing anything on a PC or smartphone is not real.
Inventing a train of thought that cures every known desease and mental illness is simply not real - because you can’t touch it. This is the equivalent of dark ages church logic.
You are being intentionally obtuse. It’s not that the thing itself literally does not exist at all, it’s that the ownership of ideas is not real. When you steal a physical item the original owner is deprived of that item. When you copy an idea the original “owner” still has access to it.
I find it funny you’re calling him intentionally obtuse right after you seem to just simplify theivery at whether something physical is stolen. If you’re basing it off of something being stolen or not, IP is used to protect the realized gains off of an idea. Yeah you aren’t stealing a physical something, but you are robbing the creator of what the item is valued at. It is exactly the issue that you can’t own an idea that IP is usually heavily protected. Ironically, the intention is to help new ideas(and their profiting worth) from being stolen by someone (or something ie Coporations) with better means to distribute and profit off of the idea. Otherwise, why wouldn’t I just get a copy of a game, underpriced it, and sell it as cheap as I wanted? I’ve put no thought or labor into actualized the idea, so I have no reason to price it beyond my initial investment. It why when someone (or something) sells full rights to their IP, it can be worth millions. They don’t care about the idea. They care about what the idea can provide in the future.
To draw a parallel, saying IP isn’t real is like saying currency has no worth. On the surface, duh of course currency isn’t actually worth anything. It’s not like people can (practically) eat a dollar or make shoes out of a dollar, but we’ve (generally) collectively decided it’s worth something. It instils confidence that when I walk into a store, my currency has a conversion rate of so many dollars per good. If thousands of people added millions of dollars into their bank accounts by just “copying” the electronic money, no one has lost money, but the value of the currency is deflated by those actions because there’s nothing stopping everyone from from just adding millions to their accounts. The confidence that people will be harshly dealt with for deflating the currency like that is one of the innate things that gives currencies (and IP’s) their value. Handwaving it away by saying it isn’t actually real is also just being obtuse.
you are robbing the creator of what the item is valued at
If I value the item at $0 then I have robbed them of $0.
why wouldn’t I just get a copy of a game, underpriced it, and sell it as cheap as I wanted?
We already do that. It is called piracy. We take it and sell it for as cheap as we want ($0).
the value of the currency is deflated by those actions because there’s nothing stopping everyone from from just adding millions to their accounts
I don’t care if the value of IP is deflated. I already believe it to be zero so that doesn’t change anything. Ideas should be free to be shared.
And before you say something like, “then nothing new will ever get made” just remember you are on Lemmy. The developers make it because they want to, not because of the money. People can still make things without profit incentive. In fact I think the world would be a much better place if we had less creations focused on making money and were left with only creators who are driven by passion rather than profit.
FOSS is made because people want it to be made and made available. People who make games and art vary between it purely wanting to be made and wanting to make a profit off of that. If you’re dense enough to think saying you value something at $0 and then still enjoying it like the other people willing to support the IP, then you’re an asshole.
There is a balance between what the creator is allowed to value their idea and what people are willing to pay for that idea. If they can’t find a middle ground, then the transaction shouldn’t occur. If you force that transaction by stealing their idea and efforts, you’re being a thief. What you use to justify your actions is up to you, but you’re a thief nonetheless.
If you’re dense enough to think saying you value something at $0 and then still enjoying it like the other people willing to support the IP, then you’re an asshole.
This isn’t even a coherent sentence. But I’m assuming you mean I’m an asshole for enjoying something without paying when other people do pay? Except if I enjoy something I do pay for it. Just because I don’t think people should own ideas doesn’t mean I don’t support creators when I enjoy something.
If you force that transaction by stealing their idea and efforts, you’re being a thief. What you use to justify your actions is up to you, but you’re a thief nonetheless.
And no, by law I am not a thief. A thief is someone who commits theft, and theft is “the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.” Copyright infringement does not deprive the owner of it, it is simply a copy. At least in the United States where I live copyrighted works are not considered stolen property. You can call me an asshole if you want but by definition I am no thief.
He says it is not real, so it can not be stolen. That is a pretty simple message. What am I getting wrong? He says nothing about ownership. It just does not exist. So don’t tell me I am obtuse when the maximum is that the person was ambiguous.
The results of your ideas are real, the outcomes and impacts are real. The mental labor you do is valuable, but none of it is “property.”
If your thoughts and ideas and concepts are property that can be stolen, then please explain how you can be deprived of them.
Thinking hard about something is labor, but it’s not property, it can’t possibly be property, because it lacks all of the aspects typically required to define property.
Ironically by not advocating for IP you are depriving people from earning from their valuable mental labour.
If I invent something and spend time, effort and money into developing it, I should be allowed to be rewarded for that effort. If a competitor comes along and steals my idea without putting the wok in, I am absolutely being deprived of all the value of my hard work. That’s how someone can steal your intellectual property.
IP laws are not the only way to ensure a creator is compensated for their work. Money isn’t the only possible compensation, and modern IP law doesn’t protect most small time creators. It protects mega-corps and their monopolies on content/products/services.
It stifles competition and progress, not enhances it.
I used to think this way, then I realized physical property is not real either. Both are defined by the state, recorded on paper somewhere, and protected by force.
Just because you can actually physically go to my property does not change the fact that it is only my property because I have a deed.
I’m still not sure how to feel about IP but I’m less dismissive of it for now.
Possession of property isn’t the same as property itself. Although I agree with you that I am sceptical of property in general, at least physical property makes some sense when defined. Intellectual property just makes absolutely no sense.
With intellectual property there is at least (by default) a direct link between the work necessary to create an item and its ownership. With physical items the initial ownership is necessarily predicated on having controlled a means of production.
I can create an IP and I do not need to spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to do so. But I cannot create a substantial physical item without paying the people who own the materials and the factories for the privilege of doing so. Why is previous ownership such a critical factor in ownership of new items, separate from the work to create them?
Intellectual property laws have their own issues but at least with regard to them conceptually, intellectual property is more “pure” than physical property.
Let’s word it differently then. Physical property is literally real, like, you can go to it. IPs are not a resource. The game devs do not run out of copies of a game because OP pirated them. They remain at an infinite supply. If someone breaks into your house and makes off with your microwave, you are now short a microwave; If you pirate software, the developer is not short in any stock of software
As someone who works in intellectual property it is very much real. Unless you think people shouldn’t receive rewards for their mental efforts in much the same way as physical labour?
People should be rewarded for their mental labor, but that’s not the same as saying they have created intellectual property.
A thought or concept is not an object that can be stolen. An idea cannot be a scarce resource that is used up.
If concepts or ideas can be “stolen” then that means somebody is being deprived of them. But unless you somehow erased the idea from all parts of that person’s brain and transfered it into yours, nobody has been deprived of anything, and thus nothing has been stolen.
Ideas certainly will become scarce products if people aren’t protected for having them.
Of course you can steal someone’s intellectual property. If you copy someone’s idea you are depriving that person from profiting from said idea and depriving them of income. There is a limit on how many people can profit from a given idea.
Intellectual property protects those who innovate against predatory practices. You are displaying naivety for who intellectual property is seeking to protect. By not enshrining IP in law you are literally stopping people from earning money from their mental labour.
If IP law didn’t exist why would anybody spend their time and money researching and creating new inventions if someone can come along and steal their idea?
You cannot be “deprived of profit.” That makes no sense. Nobody is owed any profit for simply trying to sell something.
If I create art to sell, and nobody buys it, I haven’t been robbed of anything at all. And that fact doesn’t change if somebody walks past my art booth, looks at my painting, admires it, and then walks away. They didn’t “steal” anything from me. I haven’t been deprived of anything. Unless you want to make the claim that they are a thief now that they enjoyed my painting without paying my anything for it.
If that’s true, then everybody who walks through an art fair or gallery but doesn’t buy any art is a robber and should be arrested and charged.
The idea that IP protects the little folks who are struggling artists is a capitalist myth perpetuated primarily by corporate advocates that are the actual beneficiaries of IP laws. It’s used by mega-corps to lock down massive amounts of content, make billions off of it, exploit actual artists to perpetuate their monopoly on creative expressions of characters.
It’s also used by pharma corps to artifically restrict supply of critical drugs to the population in order to make billions in profits and enrich their shareholders.
And the whole, “nobody would create anything if copyright/patents didn’t exist” is yet another capitalist myth, disproved by countless examples. As if the entire internet doesn’t run on the back of Linux, a free and open source project spanning literal decades, Wikipedia, the largest single encyclopedia of human knowledge in dozens of languages, all the millions of pages of fan fiction and hobbiest artists that have created passion projects with no expectation of making money. Etc etc.
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