Indie Game Developers Would Rather You Pirate their Games Than Buy From Key Resellers

[Tristerin]

17 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

I didn't argue morals, I argued ethics.

Prove what?  The Op literally has game devs making the case.  I don't need to prove something already proven.

*edit*

I'll add a video once I get home for additional proof, though.

Potentially, which is why I try to avoid anything made in China if I can help it.  Nice strawman, though.

Hey, you are trying to judge my ethics with no actual facts just assumptions.  You know there is a saying about that word as well right? 

 

BTW time for educating, the Dictionary Definition for Ethics is "moral principles that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an activity"

 

Im glad that you virtue signal your attempt to not support Child Slave Labor however with your "avoidance when possible as if that makes your morality moreso than someone who doesn't try to avoid it at all"

 

Ill patiently await your video proof, about how I have been immoral or unethical.

 

Lets not forget, we both buy PC parts that originate from China, so once again...Child Labor.  We both "must" support it with your line of thinking.

 

 

[Shingen Pendragon]

As indie game lover that's sad developers lose money on shady sites like G2A and others (Gamivo, Kinguin). I bought few games on Kinguin and G2A and never had a problem with any of them, still on my steam account but i heard many of people got key removed from their account because reseller sold stolen key etc.
Also when G2A said they gonna take your money from wallet if your account is not active.. Instantly deactivated my account on G2A.
I buy games mostly on Cdkeys, Instant gaming, Greenmangaming, Voidu and of course steam and believe devs don't lose money because buying it there outside steam.
 

 

[Jito463]

1 minute ago, Tristerin said:

Hey, you are trying to judge my ethics with no actual facts just assumptions.

No actual facts?  I went by YOUR post.

3 hours ago, Tristerin said:

Also Me: G2A, the few times I have used it, has not failed me once and has saved me sums of money.  Will absolutely use G2A in the future if I feel it necessary.

You literally said you have used it and would do so again.  Unless you're lying, then that is not in question.

3 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

BTW time for educating, the Dictionary Definition for Ethics is "moral principles that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an activity"

I can quote the dictionary, too.

Quote

that branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions

The key part in bold is what I have been referring to all along.  The end results of your actions.  I'm not trying to directly blame you for CC fraud, I'm trying to show that supporting sites which condone such behavior (as G2A effectively has) is - directly or indirectly - supporting criminal activity.

 

It would be like if you knew a website was using profits to fund drug running (as an extreme example), then chose to continue using that site because it saved you money.  You'd be responsible for supporting that behavior, even if not directly participating in it.

5 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

Im glad that you virtue signal your attempt to not support Child Slave Labor

You brought it up, yet I'm somehow "virtue signaling"?  Do you irony much?

6 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

Ill patiently await your video proof,

 

These are both discussing the recent debacle whereby G2A attempted to bribe game reviewers into putting out a puff piece, but they do address some of the backstory on their shadiness.  Search YT for G2A and you can find any number of videos describing their shady behavior.

[Tristerin]

@Jito463 me admitting to using a service that you then decide to judge my morality.  Insert anything in "service" and this is our argument.  Wear your Chinese made cloths all you want while espousing your superior morals, superior ethics than those around you....virtue signaling trash is all that is.  (You are literally assuming you know that the keys Ive purchased were ill gotten - prove that while the solid H20 reverts back to its previous state of liquid.)

 

Do you even know the definition of virtue signaling.  Clearly not.  (notice it wasn't a question).

 

Get mad all you want.  Think you know my morality/ethics all you want.  You are likely a superiorly immoral person, standing on a soap box because you think you are better than others because your morals are higher ground.  Take your morals, and shove them just like it was only a few hundred years ago and it was morally, and ethically, and legally, okay to own another human being. 

 

If its TLDR: I don't give a crap about what YOU think is Moral or Immoral.  I give a crap what my heart knows the moment a decision is made, because I am my own god.  If that's beyond you to understand...I go back to my original post where I actually don't care, as stated.

 

 

[Jito463]

47 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

Get mad all you want.

Except I'm not mad.  You, on the other hand, appear to be getting very upset.

48 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

I give a crap what my heart knows the moment a decision is made, because I am my own god.

And that makes it even sadder.

 

I've presented my case, I'll let it go at that.

[Tristerin]

11 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

Except I'm not mad.  You, on the other hand, appear to be getting very upset.

And that makes it even sadder.

 

I've presented my case, I'll let it go at that.

Hahahahahahahahahahaahahahahhahahahahaahahah

 

k - enjoy your day bromeo

[Drak3]

3 hours ago, Tristerin said:

You wear clothes made in China?  You support Slave Labor.  See how this works?

Few differences:

Clothes are more of a necessity than saving a couple of bucks on luxuries.

Sourcing clothes not made in China is substantially harder than sourcing software from legitimate retailers.

[Tristerin]

26 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Few differences:

Clothes are more of a necessity than saving a couple of bucks on luxuries.

Sourcing clothes not made in China is substantially harder than sourcing software from legitimate retailers.

Not really, at all.  Clothes from China are not a necessity, more like saving a couple bucks on body covering.  There are PLENTY of US based, and other Country based clothes manufacturers...to think otherwise is to be willfully ignorant.  We all do it to save a buck.

 

Sourcing clothes not made in China is ONLY substantially harder because people haven't come together on this issue to stop Child Slave Labor Laws in Asia.

 

[BigDamn]

they gonna have to be careful what they wish for. you tell me to pirate and imma pirate

[mr moose]

10 hours ago, Sauron said:

You could just have both so if you don't have time to sift through the trash you can subscribe to a journal and if you know exactly what you're looking for you can read it for free.

We do have both, people do publish all sorts of trash in off journals, that's why I said it was important to have journals that rely only on subs to cover running costs.  Anyone can have anything they want published in many "journals", but the only way to maintain quality journals in an unbiased fashion is to separate the revenue side from the author/editor side.

 

9 hours ago, Thaldor said:

"At the same time releasing information to the public and educating masses through it has never, in human history, been as easy and as cheap as it is today. But there has also never been so much monetary greed involved in information as it is today" (I remember reading that from some place)

 

 

It might be cheap and easy, but where that money comes from is still of vital importance in establishing non biased conditions for publication.

 

Wiki pedia is great, but suffers under the pressure of social narrative.  People are too scared to edit certain topics due to their nature.  It's also disregarded way too easily by people who don't like what they read.

[Sauron]

2 minutes ago, mr moose said:

We do have both, people do publish all sorts of trash in off journals, that's why I said it was important to have journals that rely only on subs to cover running costs.  Anyone can have anything they want published in many "journals", but the only way to maintain quality journals in an unbiased fashion is to separate the revenue side from the author/editor side.

But there are studies that are not freely available to the public, and in some fields of research maintaining a subscription to all the journals you need to get access to essential research is quite expensive. I don't have a problem with journals selling their curation but scientific papers should all be freely available to anyone who wants to read them in my opinion.

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Sauron said:

But there are studies that are not freely available to the public, and in some fields of research maintaining a subscription to all the journals you need to get access to essential research is quite expensive. I don't have a problem with journals selling their curation but scientific papers should all be freely available to anyone who wants to read them in my opinion.

Then how do you propose they fund themselves without risk of introducing a bias mechanism:

 

Making everyone who wants access to the journal pay a small fee for access is the best current option I can see.

[Sauron]

1 minute ago, mr moose said:

Then how do you propose they fund themselves without risk of introducing a bias mechanism

You said yourself there's value in curation and scrutiny and I agree, the scientific community values these things and for the most part is willing to pay for them - within reason and within their ability. I don't believe the revenue of these journals would significantly decrease if the things they publish were also available in some unorganized repository somewhere; on the other hand those who have no choice or are simply interested in fact checking something they heard would greatly benefit from it. The alternative is that they simply won't get to read those papers.

 

There is quite a bit of evidence that piracy or as in this case simply public availability to anyone who is willing to look for it doesn't adversely affect the sales of digital material. The journals would be fine.

4 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Making everyone who wants access to the journal pay a small fee for access is the best current option I can see.

There's also another problem with this - exclusivity to a business means that ultimately what is published by whom will depend on who can offer the most attractive deal to the author and not exclusively on curation. You get to read what the journal could afford to publish by snatching it away from the competition.

[ARikozuM]

21 minutes ago, mr moose said:

We do have both, people do publish all sorts of trash in off journals, that's why I said it was important to have journals that rely only on subs to cover running costs.  Anyone can have anything they want published in many "journals", but the only way to maintain quality journals in an unbiased fashion is to separate the revenue side from the author/editor side.

That's where I will have to disagree. Having any research paper behind a paywall makes it protection. Research should not be protected. Every piece of research, regardless of quality or issue, must be made available. It needs to be put into scrutiny by the entire community, not just a few dozen "leaders" of the industry. 

[mr moose]

16 minutes ago, Sauron said:

You said yourself there's value in curation and scrutiny and I agree, the scientific community values these things and for the most part is willing to pay for them - within reason and within their ability. I don't believe the revenue of these journals would significantly decrease if the things they publish were also available in some unorganized repository somewhere; on the other hand those who have no choice or are simply interested in fact checking something they heard would greatly benefit from it. The alternative is that they simply won't get to read those papers.

 

That's flawed, you can't have something freely available and accessible by a fee at the same time,  all you get then is those who pay essentially becoming donators to a charity, in which case you end up with a bias because those who pay can start to leverage what content gets published.

 

16 minutes ago, Sauron said:

There is quite a bit of evidence that piracy or as in this case simply public availability to anyone who is willing to look for it doesn't adversely affect the sales of digital material. The journals would be fine.

There's also another problem with this - exclusivity to a business means that ultimately what is published by whom will depend on who can offer the most attractive deal to the author and not exclusively on curation. You get to read what the journal could afford to publish by snatching it away from the competition.

 

there is no evidence, there are just as many studies published out there on the financial repercussions of piracy that say everything, even that big study the didn't publish didn't make claims of that nature and was deeply flawed in it's execution (probably why they didn't bother publishing it).  And on top of that all those studies are available to anyone interested in reading them.  I read the eu study, it was freely available even though they didn't table it officially.

 

11 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

That's where I will have to disagree. Having any research paper behind a paywall makes it protection. Research should not be protected. Every piece of research, regardless of quality or issue, must be made available. It needs to be put into scrutiny by the entire community, not just a few dozen "leaders" of the industry. 

It's not protected, everyone can have access to it, There is no lock or barrier other than buying a copy.   You don;t even need to buy a subscription, you can buy individual papers form most journals.

 

You can have transparency and a paywall.

[Thaldor]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

It might be cheap and easy, but where that money comes from is still of vital importance in establishing non biased conditions for publication.

 

Wikipedia is great, but suffers under the pressure of social narrative.  People are too scared to edit certain topics due to their nature.  It's also disregarded way too easily by people who don't like what they read.

Social pressure on some matters is kind of mindfully handled in Wikipedia, they lock the page to the last "non-pressured" state and after that every edit will be going through moderation (who are those who have shown quite extreme amount of interest and devotion to edit Wikipedia and who do it as volunteers) check which to pass the edit must be neutral in language and extremely well sourced.

 

And what really isn't disregarded by people who don't like what they get? Like we really have people who really think the Earth is flat and no amount of proof can make their mind change. That is the level of disregard in the world currently.

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

That's flawed, you can't have something freely available and accessible by a fee at the same time,  all you get then is those who pay essentially becoming donators to a charity, in which case you end up with a bias because those who pay can start to leverage what content gets published.

If even donations are seen as bias, isn't also that seen as bias that quite many scientific journals do get some amounts of donations from companies and academies and they usually collect higher subscription fees from organizations? Also it probably wouldn't be that hard to make it with fixed amounts, like one donation is even 5, 10 or 100$ and no one with a single donation can donate more. Or just publish the full list of donators, that way it's quite a stupid move to start leveraging because everyone can see that you donated quite a significant sum of money and now probably try to use that to bias things and if bias is seen and proven and it helps you, well talk about easy case to find out who introduced that bias or at least has quite deep their hands in it.

 

Quote

 

It's not protected, everyone can have access to it, There is no lock or barrier other than buying a copy.   You don;t even need to buy a subscription, you can buy individual papers form most journals.

 

You can have transparency and a paywall.

There are quite many scientific journals that require you to be in profession that journal is aimed at. Mainly these are medical journals because, well, there is a lot of shit in the world of medicine (and I mean stuff like varenicline as a "good" medicine to help to stop smoking (you wanna see shit, go through that things "scientific trials" sponsored by Pfizer, which clearly doesn't have any bias towards their product, and IIRC they have also flooded the field to the level that any meta-analysis to the side-effects finds that from X amount of analyses only couple analyses found side-effects, while the rest were more or less paid by Pfizer directly, in-directly or for some magical reason the maker has been working for Pfizer in the past or after or even while doing the paper) or the still quite close to the dark-ages in brutality area of medication: the mental disorder medication (oh, the great unbiased trials you find from there and the safety of those pills)). Of course in case of medicine and medical stuff there is the argument that people will read them and blow things out of proportions and more or less shit will hit the fan harder than with all of the anti-vaxxers around and the internet would do what the internet does best, find information and dig out every reason to not trust the papers ("oh no, pharmaceutical companies couldn't make their own unbiased research and trials anymore" what a shame [/s]).

And usually those journals don't also sell individual papers for those asking, because members only. Of course there is that "you wouldn't understand any of it" but then again is that a valid argument? As a sort of antic: Do I need to know how internal combustion engine exactly works to drive a car or to change its tires? Do I need to be a doctor to be able to do research about what are the real numbers behind the "(<3%)"-approximation or to write an article about some medicine and I would like to make sure that the papers are really unbiased so I don't end up writing about a drug trial that was knee deep in private funding by the manufacturer as an unbiased drug trial? (Dr. Google is bad, but there are other reasons why somebody could like to take a look at those papers other than trying to prove their doctor wrong or to find some magical alternative, which are all valid reasons to leave medical papers behind paywalls and "professional walls")

 

So I still say that one place where piracy is actually saving the world (or at least making it more transparent and quite many sides standing on their tip-toes) is scientific papers.

[mr moose]

44 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

Social pressure on some matters is kind of mindfully handled in Wikipedia, they lock the page to the last "non-pressured" state and after that every edit will be going through moderation (who are those who have shown quite extreme amount of interest and devotion to edit Wikipedia and who do it as volunteers) check which to pass the edit must be neutral in language and extremely well sourced.

 

And what really isn't disregarded by people who don't like what they get? Like we really have people who really think the Earth is flat and no amount of proof can make their mind change. That is the level of disregard in the world currently.

If even donations are seen as bias, isn't also that seen as bias that quite many scientific journals do get some amounts of donations from companies and academies and they usually collect higher subscription fees from organizations? Also it probably wouldn't be that hard to make it with fixed amounts, like one donation is even 5, 10 or 100$ and no one with a single donation can donate more. Or just publish the full list of donators, that way it's quite a stupid move to start leveraging because everyone can see that you donated quite a significant sum of money and now probably try to use that to bias things and if bias is seen and proven and it helps you, well talk about easy case to find out who introduced that bias or at least has quite deep their hands in it.

 

There are quite many scientific journals that require you to be in profession that journal is aimed at. Mainly these are medical journals because, well, there is a lot of shit in the world of medicine (and I mean stuff like varenicline as a "good" medicine to help to stop smoking (you wanna see shit, go through that things "scientific trials" sponsored by Pfizer, which clearly doesn't have any bias towards their product, and IIRC they have also flooded the field to the level that any meta-analysis to the side-effects finds that from X amount of analyses only couple analyses found side-effects, while the rest were more or less paid by Pfizer directly, in-directly or for some magical reason the maker has been working for Pfizer in the past or after or even while doing the paper) or the still quite close to the dark-ages in brutality area of medication: the mental disorder medication (oh, the great unbiased trials you find from there and the safety of those pills)). Of course in case of medicine and medical stuff there is the argument that people will read them and blow things out of proportions and more or less shit will hit the fan harder than with all of the anti-vaxxers around and the internet would do what the internet does best, find information and dig out every reason to not trust the papers ("oh no, pharmaceutical companies couldn't make their own unbiased research and trials anymore" what a shame [/s]).

And usually those journals don't also sell individual papers for those asking, because members only. Of course there is that "you wouldn't understand any of it" but then again is that a valid argument? As a sort of antic: Do I need to know how internal combustion engine exactly works to drive a car or to change its tires? Do I need to be a doctor to be able to do research about what are the real numbers behind the "(<3%)"-approximation or to write an article about some medicine and I would like to make sure that the papers are really unbiased so I don't end up writing about a drug trial that was knee deep in private funding by the manufacturer as an unbiased drug trial? (Dr. Google is bad, but there are other reasons why somebody could like to take a look at those papers other than trying to prove their doctor wrong or to find some magical alternative, which are all valid reasons to leave medical papers behind paywalls and "professional walls")

 

So I still say that one place where piracy is actually saving the world (or at least making it more transparent and quite many sides standing on their tip-toes) is scientific papers.

 

Mindfully handled but easily dismissed.   I still don't see a better model being propositioned.  Currently companies of all discretion fund research, it's a double edged sword, they have to in order to further their products and the industry and the government can't provide the amounts needed. The system is still transparent, you can look at their research, their results, where it's published, how much they paid and to who.  

 

Most organizations get charged more for access because more people are accessing, I used to have access to the Monash university library of subs, Whilst not absolute it was quite large and gave thousands of students access to many journals. It stands to reason they would have to pay more for such access.

 

 

[ARikozuM]

14 minutes ago, mr moose said:

 

Mindfully handled but easily dismissed.   I still don't see a better model being propositioned.  Currently companies of all discretion fund research, it's a double edged sword, they have to in order to further their products and the industry and the government can't provide the amounts needed. The system is still transparent, you can look at their research, their results, where it's published, how much they paid and to who.  

 

Most organizations get charged more for access because more people are accessing, I used to have access to the Monash university library of subs, Whilst not absolute it was quite large and gave thousands of students access to many journals. It stands to reason they would have to pay more for such access.

 

 

A lot of research is funded, whole or partially, by the governments of the world. Those papers should be freely available because we, the taxpayers, directly or indirectly paid for it. It should be available to all of us through a government website or external resource. 

 

The second issue is hiding papers or not publishing research because no one will touch it. Oxytetracycline use was once seldomly touched by publications. It took nearly 4 years for someone to pick up the finished paper. This is terrible as it stops us from asking questions about it and doing more research. If a pesticide company funds or donates to most of the publishers, would a paper testing for side effects of the pesticide be easily published? No, it would not. This is why all research papers should be given out for public discourse without a paywall or subscription. You can ask for a donation, like Wikipedia, but you can also make all articles available for free, like Wikipedia. We should have a resource like NIH where every piece of research done can be put up for public review.

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, ARikozuM said:

A lot of research is funded, whole or partially, by the governments of the world. Those papers should be freely available because we, the taxpayers, directly or indirectly paid for it. It should be available to all of us through a government website or external resource. 

 

Government funds less than half of most basic research. If you want products that are more specialized,  like anti depressants or better cpu manufacturing processes then you have to rely on private/corporate funding.

 

1 minute ago, ARikozuM said:

The second issue is hiding papers or not publishing research because no one will touch it. Oxytetracycline use was once seldomly touched by publications. It took nearly 4 years for someone to pick up the finished paper. This is terrible as it stops us from asking questions about it and doing more research. If a pesticide company funds or donates to most of the publishers, would a paper testing for side effects of the pesticide be easily published? No, it would not. This is why all research papers should be given out for public discourse without a paywall or subscription. You can ask for a donation, like Wikipedia, but you can also make all articles available for free, like Wikipedia. We should have a resource like NIH where every piece of research done can be put up for public review.

 

But a paywall does not prevent transparency, making everything free to general public doesn't automatically fix any of your concerns regarding what gets published and what doesn't.  lots of papers don't get published for myriads of reasons, most of the time they are just not of suitable content/quality to be considered valuable.

 

Again, what is better than the current system for addressing bias?  how do you maintain journals and keep up the integrity they are striving for if you take away the only revenue stream that doesn't compromise a journals integrity?

 

 

 

 

[ARikozuM]

1 minute ago, mr moose said:

Again, what is better than the current system for addressing bias?  how do you maintain journals and keep up the integrity they are striving for if you take away the only revenue stream that doesn't compromise a journals integrity?

I keep telling you that they can take their revenue in any way they want, but we should have a central location for which any and all research paper goes. 

[mr moose]

37 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

I keep telling you that they can take their revenue in any way they want, but we should have a central location for which any and all research paper goes. 

And you keep saying this central location should be free,  doing that undermines the revenue stream.  

 

 

 

 

[suicidalfranco]

10 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

I feel like Steam should make a reselling platform. Give half of the sale to the developer and the seller keeps the other. 

that doesn't make sense at all

why should the dev get the possibility to double dip on an already sold product?

It's like going to a used car sales an for some reason VW should get half of what i payed for the used car because... reasons?

[ARikozuM]

6 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

that doesn't make sense at all

why should the dev get the possibility to double dip on an already sold product?

It's like going to a used car sales an for some reason VW should get half of what i payed for the used car because... reasons?

They should get nothing then? I'm fine with that, but I do think indies need a little bit of protection if you're only selling a key after playing for quite some time. 

[suicidalfranco]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

They should get nothing then? I'm fine with that, but I do think indies need a little bit of protection if you're only selling a key after playing for quite some time. 

they already got what they expect to get when the game was sold off the first time. What happens after to that product (destruction, resale, use, or whatever) is none of their concern.

And protection from what?

 

And again: Used car sale analogy

[Likwid]

I think quite a lot of people didn't understand what 30% lost sales actually are.

At the end of the month, he sees that there was 10000 key sold (a number for the analogy) and one more month has passes by and by that moment he sees that banks have got reports that people money gets missing so they cancel all the purchases made by stolen credit cards and by the time they have done that 3000 keys worth of money are lost +tax which company is losing  because of those purchases (that's why they say you should better pirate than buy from G2A) are all lost.

This is probably what he meant, read it in the article like a year ago.

Hopefully  got it right