I can’t explain it, something about the freedom of acquisition takes the pressure off and lets me just launch it and try it out.
Maybe it’s easier to pay some money and hit “install”, than it is to find a torrent, download it and go through the install process, so there’s a selection bias there.
Maybe it’s the fact I downloaded it exactly when I decided to and not when a sale happened or it was in a bundle.
But even then, when I decide I want something right now and I pay full-price, something about that just puts a psychological barrier in between me and enjoying the game. Like now I have to validate the purchase, and if I want a refund it has to happen within 2 weeks, and within 2 hours of play (for steam). It’s just an unpleasant feeling.
Even worse is the subscription model. I absolutely hate the pressure of having to try all the games I put on my list before the end of the month so I don’t have to renew to keep trying them, that just feels like wasted money. But then about a week into the month I’ll lose my energy for trying new games and I’ll let the sub lapse and never try a bunch of the games I wanted to. It’s the worst way to pay for games, even if on paper it’s the cheapest for trying a bunch of them legally.
Very occasionally a game will come along that I know I want and will happily pay for immediately, and usually that means I’ll give it a decent try.
The best experience for me is pirating a game and loving it so much I then buy it, that guarantees I’m going to play it a lot. The latest game that happened to me with was A Dance of Fire and Ice. I bought it like 5 times, once each for me and my two kids, and twice on phone, and I was completely happy to. I even built a custom rhythm controller for it.
Funny story though - the pirated version of ADOFAI puts savegames in user folders, but the steam version puts them in the game folder, so it merges the progress between users. So for that reason, the pirated version is better. I can’t explain the discrepancy.
No, for me its the opposite, when I buy a game I’m more likely to actually play it because I want to get my money’s worth of enjoyment, while with a pirated game, there isn’t a need to play the game, even if I do have fun with it.
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eh, a few years back I pirated Geometry Dash, really liked it and played it all the time, so I bought it on steam
I guess I’m talking about launching and trying the game, rather than finishing it. Like once I start playing, the chances I continue are mostly about the game itself, and probably more about my mood at the time than I’d like to admit. I’m talking about games languishing completely untouched. As someone that’s been collecting a steam library for 20 years, I’ve got well over 1000 games and I haven’t played even close to half of them. I play almost all of the games I pirate. I’ve only started doing that a lot in the last year or two, but even in that time I’ve bought a bunch of stuff I don’t play. The pirated ones just call to me stronger.
The pirated ones just call to me stronger.
I think it’s just you.
I guess I’m talking about launching and trying the game, rather than finishing it.
I wouldn’t buy a game if I’m not going to play it though.
I may buy a game on great sale to maybe play later
If I pirate it, it’s because I want to play it asap
At least half my library on both Steam and GOG are games that I pirated, played the hell off and then just bought. Most I don’t even touch after buying them, I just do it to support the developer and actually own something I enjoyed.
Pirated game must be launched to verify that it actually works and this remove 90% of mental burden that makes so many games in Steam library to rot
Oh true, I never considered that. Once you install the crack you’ve got to test it, and that gets you over that first-launch hurdle.
For me personally i find that i play pirated games more lften than the ones i bought, i hate having to use the launchers it is a complete pain in the ass, they all require updates everytime i open them, they’re very sluggish and often try to shove ads and offers down your throat (with exception of steam). I own the dishonored series legitimately but i still play the pirated version.
One of my favorite games is Titanfall 2 and i don’t play it anymore so that i don’t have to put up with the cancer of the EA app
I personally never pirate games. I don’t like dealing with the cracks and the bugs that often come with it. I don’t play more than a few games a year though so the cost isn’t too high. Pirating mostly involves movies and T.V. For me.
I used to avoid it too, but I was less worried about the bugs and more about possible viruses. When I realised there was a crack scene with certain uploaders that are trusted by the community I lost a lot of that worry.
I am more of the gang that gathers pirated games but never gets to play them, am I actually hurting the industry this way?
No… I am just more likely to buy a game I pirated if I actually like it enough to keep playing more than a few minutes.
Simple common sense suggests that rented (subscribed) software of any kind is likely a very bad deal for the consumer. Rental where all the control rests with the publisher and not the user or creator (a la Steam) is just as bad.
Before big publishers emerged, we had exactly the try-before-you-buy situation you describe. It was called shareware. It had excellent quality control since any game that didn’t hold the player’s attention didn’t generate income. And the creator got all the revenue rather than the publisher and distributors keeping 80-90% or more.
These days, I just settle for waiting until a game appears on GOG. It’s a decent compromise.
Yeah, I remember the Duke Nukem Episode 1 shareware, one of the first games I remember playing actually. There were others but this was the first one that really gelled as a functioning game. A lot of the others were sort of incomprehensible to my small child brain. It’s wild that I can remember these old games then just search them and they’re immediately playable with no setup needed.
Pirated hades. Played for some hours, had a blast. Bought it on sale and now I’m still playing.
Wish I’d pirated it first. I bought it on Switch after the glowing reviews and played a while before deciding it wasn’t for me.
It gets better the more you play actually. The hidden features unlock after few playthroughs.
Honestly these days it’s much more difficult to find a good pirate copy compared to getting a working copy you pay for that yeah, if I put in the effort to pirate a game, I’m going to play it. Though I do enjoy having a really large steam library, so I usually just buy something just so it grows.
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Agree. I changed the way that I purchase games by setting myself a rule:
- Buy it only if you are going to play it TODAY
Previously I had a library of games I had never played because I bought them on sale and they just sat there, unplayed, making me feel sad and stressed.
Purchasing only when I want to play now is both less stressful, and less expensive!
This one is dangerous because then you bought it and played it for today and never boot it up again after lol
Oh well, I should’ve said “acquired” there. I mean I bought it on sale, then forgot about it because I wasn’t jazzed to play it right then and there. With pirated games, the act of acquisition is the download, so they are generally available when I’m thinking about them.
I think it’s the work that goes into it, at least for me
Money abstracts it too much. Sure that game cost $20, let’s say an hour of my job time. But because it’s the weekend and money has obfuscated this fact a bit I just buy it and move on.
But a game that takes an hour or more to find, download, install, and properly get running? I just did that work on my own free time with no obfuscation, so I’m more likely to want to reap the reward of it
For example: spent a couple hours turning my old hodgepodge of emulators I’ve been using since 2014 into a nice Retro arch installation that my steam deck can also fully utilize a couple weeks back. Because of that I spent some time downloading old games to play, mix of old faves and ones I never got around to.
After all that work it’s all Ive really been playing lately, and the cycle shall repeat I’m sure
very much like you
I guess so, as it’s fine to leave a game in the gog/steam library for a long time, but several games taking up tens or hundreds of GB on disk is a hassle.
On the other hand, I also notice that I have much less commitment, I discard them easily and often without giving them a real chance.
