this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
167 points (90.7% liked)
Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
54716 readers
269 users here now
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
Rules • Full Version
1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy
2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote
3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs
4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others
Loot, Pillage, & Plunder
📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):
💰 Please help cover server costs.
 |
 |
|---|---|
| Ko-fi | Liberapay |
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
No, because that might be an incentive to buy it. Being a pirate is probably more fun anyway, though.
Perfect answer, don't give Bethesda and Microsoft your money!
Oh why not, it's a really good game. Did Beth do something evil or something?
Yes, a LOT of things! Fallout76 is the worse example (the internet historian video about it is good), Fallout 4 to some extend, the endless rereleases of Skyrim with no additional value, their shitty launcher, their constant selling of rippoff merch and so on. It's a terribke company that was good ages ago and still profits from their prior reputation, well and now it's owned by Microsoft too!
Fallout76 was a bad game. Not really evil though. And I heard it got much better, admittedly long after launch. I really enjoyed Fallout 4 but I get that I was in the minority there. Either way, I don't think a company should be totally panned just because they made the main character voiced instead of silent. Re-releasing Skyrim got old, but you don't have to buy it, lol. I don't know what you mean about their launcher. Was it bad? You could always start the games from the exe as well. You'll be happy to know there's no launcher for Starfield anyway.
I think they've made something amazing with Starfield, although it starts quite slowly.
Pirate the game if you want, no judgement from me, but don't justify it by pretending its some moral good.
I agree with you but the Fallout 76 had some evil things related to merch, special editions and etc. That's the part of Bethesda as a company doing shit and not the game developers side.
Well, everybody is entitled to a own opinion but I highly recommend that Internet Historian video because you certainly don't seem to understand the degree of garbage they did with Fallout 76, I am definitely happy they don't force there launcher anymore tho!
From the article it looks like that was an issue with ZeniMax Online Studios
Horse armour......
That's actually mostly on Microsoft. Fuck Microsoft.
The predatory game monetization tactics of today began with Microsoft. After experimenting with paid DLC for its first-party titles on the original Xbox, Microsoft planned to launch the Xbox 360 with a storefront populated by the newfangled "microtransaction." Speaking to WIRED in 2005, Microsoft described the microtransaction system as one that would provide a profitable new revenue stream for publishers - one they would be foolish to skip out on. According to USGamer, Bethesda was the first third-party publisher to accept Microsoft's idea, offering a pack of in-game horse armor for Oblivion players at a $2.50 price point. Oblivion Horse With Elven Armor
This resulted in outcry from fans who found $2.50 far too expensive, especially for a cosmetic item in a single-player game, where no other players would even see it. Speaking about the issue later, Elder Scrolls director Todd Howard claimed Bethesda had tried to price the pack lower, but someone at Microsoft insisted on $2.50.
It seems like the only thing Microsoft really forced onto Bethesda was the price tag, Bethesda was all too willing to start loading up their game with microtransactions.
agreed, Microsoft bad Bethesda good =)
(I am biased, I have a lot of hours in Skyrim)
They milked Skyrim for all it was worth tbf. And while they are fully dependent on mods to keep up that popularity they don't give a lot back.
What exactly are they supposed to "give back"?
Better mod tools and more quickly
Money
Why?
Why should people be paid for the work they did that made the companies lots of money in continuing sales?
Nobody forced them to do that. Some people just do things out of passion. I actually prefer those. It's not all about money. They probably wouldn't say 'no' to a paycheck from Bethesda but on the other hand they never promised them that or signed any contracts so I don't see a reason they should be expected to do that.
On another note, we have an example of Malukah who was hired to perform as bard in ESO so that's pretty cool and well deserved.
They have no obligation to do it no. But it would be nice.
Probably crunch but that's every studio
Yes, because that's built into the copy protection. You thought they cracked the game, but the game just limits you to the one role now.
In the past, some publishers intentionally spread the fake game, where there were annoyances, or limits in the game, there was one where it bugged out or something when you came to the endboss, etc. The weird thing about this is that the p2p community just went with it, and there wasn't a correct version much later on. Everybody just shared the faulty game.
Earthbound did that thing with the final boss. A pirated copy would have more enemies on the screen and it would also crash before the final boss
Game dev tycoon had a thing were the pirated version of the game would be harder as it was coded that pirates would steal the games you make. I thought that last one was absolutely genius lol. You can now toggle the pirate mode in the settings to experience it yourself.
Yup, I was thinking of Earthbound when mentioning the Final boss.
Developers have been creatively messing around with pirates for decades now. Serious Sam had that invincible scorpion. Talos Principle had an elevator that didn't actually go anywhere after playing the game for several hours.
Dungeon Master: Chaos Strikes Back had phantom sector copy protection that the game would periodically check to make sure the reads were random. If the checks were always the same, after a while, it would kill off your party, and not give you the option to reload. (You could still reboot the computer and reload that way.) I remember playing this game as a kid, with a pirated copy, because we were poor, but had good pirate connections. I figured out how to fool the system by taking out the disk when it was trying to read it, and only putting the disk back in when it really needed to load, like when I'm going up or down stairs. According to the pirates that finally cracked the protection, it was the hardest challenge they ever had.
Alternate Reality: The Dungeon had FBI agents that showed up as soon as you started playing your character.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=6yNxhth5f9I&
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Because shooting chickens out of your gun in crisis warhead was fun.