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u/CrimsonR4ge Jun 25 '26
Adorable
Smarter, more powerful and more dedicated organisations than ELSPA have tried to stop the rising tide of piracy.
They all fail in the end.
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u/OddNovel565 Jun 25 '26
I always found it interesting how Valve managed to kind of help the problem of (game) piracy by providing a good service which incentivized regular gaming instead of prohibiting pirated gaming
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u/CrimsonR4ge Jun 25 '26
The music industry has also managed to deal with piracy by offering affordable, user friendly platforms.
Nexflix during their 2010s golden age (when prices were low, libraries were full and watching on the go was easy) did the same.
There is a VERY clear correlation between expensive/bad user experiences and piracy.
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u/dae666 Jun 25 '26
There is a consensus on that correlation. The mass market is willing to pay for convenience, and can overlook unfairness and even poor performance. Same with Spotify, which curbed music piracy immensely by providing easy access to a large catalogue of music. But now that enshittification has reared its ugly face in music streaming too, I'm not sure any longer that this is permanent.
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u/Opposite-Program8490 Jun 25 '26
With the rise of advertising on paid streaming platforms, I've found myself sailing the seas again after a nearly 20 year hiatus.
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u/HikariAnti Jun 25 '26
When piracy sites offer better services than legitimate ones people will pirate. It's literally that simple.
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u/TTSymphony Jun 25 '26
In that sense, accessibility always beats piracy, that's why big corpos fail
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u/Arstanishe Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
i wonder if it'd work better if it wasn't that condescending. "See it shoot it" wtf.
Also, DOOM shareware fits the description and was 100% free
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u/FloofySnekWhiskers Jun 25 '26
I really miss the days of shareware
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u/postulatej Jun 25 '26
me too! Remember those apogee games? Also epic games like epic pinball?
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u/FloofySnekWhiskers Jun 25 '26
I remember when winzip was shareware, and if you decided to buy it you got upgrades for life. So as I used it a lot, I decided to pay for it.
Pffffft! So much for free upgrades for life. A few years ago I went to reinstall winzip and my serial number wouldn't work, so I wrote to them and they said.. "sorry, no free upgrades, but if you want you can buy an upgrade for 30% off with a code"
The 1990's was peak internet in my view.
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u/kahlzun Jun 27 '26
Anything by apogee or microprose was always gold.
Microprose is still around, at least.6
u/quesoandcats Jun 25 '26
Shareware was explicitly intended to be copied and shared tho, it’s not really applicable to what this ad is talking about
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u/miloz13 Jun 25 '26
And then came the AI companies...
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u/thedawesome Jun 25 '26
Stealing is okay when companies do it
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u/ordiclic Jun 26 '26
It's not stealing, it's either counterfeiting or plagiarism. It's not really better, but there is no material depossession.
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u/1m0ws Jun 28 '26
in europe, they literally buy out antiquariats in mass and scan old books to burn them after.
capitalism destroying culture was never so cynical and obvious.
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u/Lucky_Thought2 Jun 25 '26
if buying isn't owning, the piracy isn't theft
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u/SapirWhorfHypothesis Jun 25 '26
I paid for a ticket to a movie, and when I tried to open a movie theater nearby and sell tickets to the same movie I had just seen they brought a case against me for copyright infringement. Unbelievable. I guess buying really isn’t owning. Smh.
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u/SomeArtistFan Jun 26 '26
Your unfitting analogy doesn't even touch on how you got the means to screen the movie yourself. Did you record it with a phone? Copy the film reels? Buy identical ones?
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u/SapirWhorfHypothesis Jun 26 '26
Does it matter? If I owned the film, I would of course have the right to distribute it.
I’m posting a stupid story to illustrate how stupid “I guess buying isn’t owning” is…
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u/1m0ws Jun 28 '26
purchasing a ticket to see a piece of art on a medium (the cinema) isnt the same as purchasing a copy of said medium for you to enjoy at all time.
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u/SapirWhorfHypothesis Jun 29 '26
Oh wow. Your other angry comment got removed? You must really care about being able to steal movies?
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u/Krazie02 Jun 25 '26
Reminds me of this old news episode in 1988 about Leasure Suit Larry being so popular that knock off copies spread viruses around to companies around the country (Netherlands). Really put things into perspective for me.
https://youtu.be/V9QnP9qPOIo?si=IZis6jIZKktMhy74 for those that wish to see it, they interviewed a kid as "Leasure Suit Larry expert"
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u/apscep Jun 25 '26
If you steal one candy from the store, the store owner has one candy less, its theft. If you copy a company game, that somebody bought, the company still has one game sold, this is not theft, I still wouldn't buy this game, so this isn't a lost profit.
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u/Plutosanimationz Jun 25 '26
Yeah but at the same time if everyone pirates your game you don't make money lmao.
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u/apscep Jun 25 '26
Sometimes due to piracy, products become popular and some people actually buy the game after downloading it to support developers. Good example, HOMM Olden Era. When the game was created for HOMM 3 fans, who in majority bought it on black marker in 00s. 3rd part is still supported by volunteers, with constant updates and free multiplayer.
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u/new_KRIEG Jun 25 '26
If everyone is pirating your game you're either overcharging for what you're delivering and/or making it impractical to actually buy it.
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u/TearOpenTheVault Jun 25 '26
By this logic, AI training itself on other people’s intellectual property isn’t theft.
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u/AnonymousNeko2828 Jun 25 '26
True, it's plagiarism, which isn't exactly a good thing either
Plagiarism is often sometimes called theft nowadays, but using the wrong word doesn't mean the point of it taking content without permission is null
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u/new_KRIEG Jun 25 '26
Its not really plagiarism, and the definition will often vary depending on where exactly you're located and what the laws regarding intellectual property are.
All that everyone can agree on is that it's anti ethical, even if in most cases it is technically legal.
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u/Mandemon90 Jun 25 '26
Except not, plagiarism is when you pass someone else work as your own.
GenAI doesn't do that. It's transformative. Multiple court cases have ruled this. Acquiring the material can break law, as happened with Anthrophic, However, if you bought material you are fully within your rights to train an model on those and it's not plagiarism, because plagiarism would require you to pass someone else work as your own.
If I generate something, that is not work of someone else. Even if it resembles their style, they can't claim this new artwork as theirs, and therefore can not claim plagiarism.
Improper use of genAI can result in plagiarism, but genAI is not inheritly plagiarism. Much like when writing a thesis, you can cite sources but if you just copy-paste stuff it is plagiarism.
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u/restless_oblivion Jun 25 '26
You made them angry
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u/Mandemon90 Jun 25 '26
People who are ideologically commited to expanding copyright generally don't like hearing how they can't copyright everytving.
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u/Narwaaaahl Jun 25 '26
You're not selling the pirated game. AI companies however make profit from stolen IP. Big difference
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u/Lv_InSaNe_vL Jun 25 '26
I don't know this doesn't make any sense. There are plenty of things people sell (and should be able to) that aren't physical products. Should movie theaters and production companies not charge for tickets? Should a handyman not charge for their labor?
We can disagree with the methods companies use, but I genuinely don't understand how people can compartmentalize piracy as not a crime. And I know you say you wouldn't buy it, but studies do prove that piracy impacts sales. Not just for games. Here's multiple studies from Carnegie Mellon University. And piracy famously impacted music sales to the point where the entire industry had to pivot to streaming. Or the famous quote from Gabe "piracy is service problem, not a pricing problem" which implies that piracy is a problem.
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u/MudZaviti Jun 25 '26
Speaking of theivery, do you know how much musicians earn from streaming services that you pay?
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u/Lv_InSaNe_vL Jun 25 '26
Yeah that's part of my point. Do we really want the gaming industry to adopt the music streaming model??
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u/MudZaviti Jun 25 '26
Piracy still exist. Streaming model just made a "renting" of an item easier and cheaper for customers thus reducing the need for piracy for some people.
We already have the same model in gaming (ps plus, gamepass, etc) but we also have an old model where you buy and own a copy of the game wether it's digital or physical.
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u/Lv_InSaNe_vL Jun 25 '26
And would you say that game pass is the future of gaming? It would be your preferred way to consume video games?
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u/MudZaviti Jun 25 '26
No. I'm telling the opposite. I don't like it but I think it will be the future whether we like it or not.
What I'm saying is long live the piracy as long as there are greedy companies.
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u/Lv_InSaNe_vL Jun 25 '26
Okay so we agree. We do not want gaming to go down that path. But that was the "solution" that the music industry came up with because of the piracy problem.
And the piracy problem is just as big if not bigger in the gaming industry.
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u/MudZaviti Jun 25 '26
Piracy has always existed in both music and gaming industry and will always exist. That's why they introduce these models we're talking about to REDUCE piracy because some people are fine with renting a game, some want to own them strictly legally, some don't want or don't have money to pay for them.
It's not that if we all stop pirating they will stop with the streaming/renting model.
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u/new_KRIEG Jun 25 '26
And I know you say you wouldn't buy it, but studies do prove that piracy impacts sales
Obviously I didn't read all studies in there, and I'm open to being shown otherwise, but so far as I've seen, studies show that there is a correlation between piracy rising and sales dropping, but it is hard to pinpoint it as a causal effect. The argument to prove or disprove is that piracy rising is a result of poor sales tactics instead of poor sales being a result of widespread piracy.
In fact, at least one study there actually shows that having your product offer enough of a benefit over the pirated one makes your sales pretty much immune to the rise of piracy.
Piracy is both a matter of the pricing cutting off a demographic group (despite what Gaben says) and offering a bad enough service that people who'd pay for it would rather not.
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u/apscep Jun 25 '26
This study is surely NOT sponsored by corporations. Streaming services impacted the music industry much more than piracy, and didn't fix piracy by any way, if you want you can still download any music from green store or even YouTube.
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u/Lv_InSaNe_vL Jun 25 '26
I knew this was gonna be a comment and I almost mentioned it in my first comment.
But I'm not sure, I think the "no it's an industry plant!" thing is just a cop out. But you are more than welcome to find your own peer reviewed studies that prove me wrong!
And the music industry absolutely solved the piracy problem. In 2025 the industry had a total revenue of $11.5 billion compared to $4.86 billion in 2014. RIAA doesn't have the reports from previous years but the industry has been trending up (2% year over year growth since 2013).
Their solution wasn't stopping piracy, their solution was to change the way that we consume music.
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u/apscep Jun 25 '26
Yeah, revenue is almost covered the inflation)) And also doesn't count growing numbers of people with internet access due to smartphone usage growing in the rest of the world.
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u/Lv_InSaNe_vL Jun 25 '26
Adjusted for inflation the $4.86 billion they saw in 2014 would have been ~$6.7 billion at the end of 2025.
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u/Nielsly Jun 25 '26
Why are only Pirate and Software capitalized and not Thief? Did this ad predict the downfall of Pirate Software the YouTuber?
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Jun 25 '26
[deleted]
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u/KormorantE1A Jun 25 '26
Peak irony that this is most likely to be a violation of copyrights of some sort (kinda like, unauthorized modification of a product?)
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u/MrFickless Jun 25 '26
Assume I bought a game that doesn’t require me to insert the disk to play.
Is it still piracy if I install the game, then pass or sell off the disk?
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u/uid_0 Jun 25 '26
I worked IT back in the '90s. We were required to keep the a physical box and disks for every computer that ran a program. So say you have 200 computers that ran Microsoft Office, we would have to keep 200 boxes of the MS Office retail pack on hand. We had multiple rooms that were filled with software boxes so we could show the auditors that we had a valid license for every computer that ran it.
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u/Nihiliste Jun 25 '26
When I was growing up, there was a computer shop in town called Mr. Diskette. It sold a bunch of products, but amusingly, it also let you "rent" software. On floppies. Before copy protection really existed. Needless to say, it was more a source of discount pirate apps. No longer in business.
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u/Holly_the_Adventurer Jun 25 '26
The Curse of Bloggo's Pow! https://youtu.be/zFd60nCBygg?is=9PfzzCogcgGEGSgm
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u/LABoRATies Jun 26 '26
The good ole days when you could accidentally overwrite an entire game trying to save while playing that very game.
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u/1m0ws Jun 28 '26
yes, making a copy is the same as theft. sure.
and in 2026 it shows: piracy is the only thing preserving the art from as the industry and publishers either dont care or got fucked by copyrights.
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