Here’s the thing. When you pirate something, the money you would’ve paid, but didn’t, to the company would have gone to the company profits.
See that, I said profits, not employee salary, profits.
The people who made the game, were already paid, while they were making it. Unless there’s some sort of revenue share agreement, or the workers are unionized to receive compensation on exceptional performance of products, or the workers partially own the company thus receive part of the profits every year, then none of your money will go to the developers. Literally not a cent. Companies who make record profits have massive layoffs of thousands of developers, you know why? Because employment and pay are decoupled from revenue. All the money goes into pockets that had no involvement on the creation of the game. The game they are working on right now, is not being paid by the revenue, but by investors, who are gambling on the next game’s revenue. The developers will be paid or fired, regardless of how much money old games make.
So, when you pirate a game, no one goes hungry. No one runs out of healthcare. People laid off from their work will go hungry or lose their healthcare regardless of how much money the game they coded makes (some even would point out that the highest record breaking games usually come from the studios with the worst layoffs). They were already paid, there’s no more money to go from you to them in the current capitalist scheme. This is why it is always moral to pirate a game made by a mega corporation (or owned by one), it’s reclamation.
Here’s the thing. When you pirate something, the money you would’ve paid, but didn’t, to the company would have gone to the company profits.
See that, I said profits, not employee salary, profits.
The people who made the game, were already paid, while they were making it. Unless there’s some sort of revenue share agreement, or the workers are unionized to receive compensation on exceptional performance of products, or the workers partially own the company thus receive part of the profits every year, then none of your money will go to the developers. Literally not a cent. Companies who make record profits have massive layoffs of thousands of developers, you know why? Because employment and pay are decoupled from revenue. All the money goes into pockets that had no involvement on the creation of the game. The game they are working on right now, is not being paid by the revenue, but by investors, who are gambling on the next game’s revenue. The developers will be paid or fired, regardless of how much money old games make.
So, when you pirate a game, no one goes hungry. No one runs out of healthcare. People laid off from their work will go hungry or lose their healthcare regardless of how much money the game they coded makes (some even would point out that the highest record breaking games usually come from the studios with the worst layoffs). They were already paid, there’s no more money to go from you to them in the current capitalist scheme. This is why it is always moral to pirate a game made by a mega corporation (or owned by one), it’s reclamation.