Breaking News: Bethesda Reports >73% of players Playing Cracked Versions of Starfield

[Axanthic]

Title

[Mightylink]

Funny, BG3 didn't have this issue... maybe just make a good game worth buying? *shrugs*

[Siddha]

breaking news... OP is a trolling liar

[Zartanyen]

Originally posted by Quill:

Post the cracked files if it's true ya coward

It was cracked D1 of EA like within a few hours and I think that was from questionable sites like TPB.
I know on the invite only ones ( the ones people pay for a invite to) it was there and working.

[Zartanyen]

Originally posted by Mightylink:

Funny, BG3 didn't have this issue... maybe just make a good game worth buying? *shrugs*

You think BG3 didn't have a D1?

[Zartanyen]

Originally posted by Jarrod:

Originally posted by Roger_Dabbit:

This is literally one of the silliest arguments I've ever seen regarding pirating.

And one of the most accurate.

Let's say there are 3 types of people:
#1 Casuals who are "scared" of yarr harring because of "viruses" and other misunderstood things. (vast majority of all people)
#2 Poor people and/or people with a grudge, who will not buy a game no matter what (minority of pirates)
#3 Normal people who know how to yarr harr but still buy games (vast majority of pirates)

#1 is a given, companies will get their buys based off of hype and reviews.

#2 these are people that companies will NOT get sales from no matter what. It's not a "lost sale" when they were not going to buy the game anyway.

Then there's #3. These people are the ones who would gladly buy games, but would rather try them out for themselves before buying. Since (for some reason) demos are pretty much dead, THIS is the best way to try out a game. If you go on yarr harr forums, you'd see COUNTLESS people talking about how they enjoyed a game so much they bought it just to support the devs. Especially in cases like Darkwood, where the devs released a DRM-free version of the game themselves just to help people without much money. Companies like that easily get sales. If you make a good game, and have a good moral compass, you're going to easily get sales from #3.

Let's go back to the demo part again. Why don't companies make demos? Is it because it "isn't worth the time and effort to make a demo as it doesn't gain much sales"? I bet you some publisher would give that excuse on why they don't make demos anymore. So tell me, if this "demo crowd" doesn't make enough sales, despite it being ready, available, and 100% safe for people to try, why would anyone think that piracy, which is a way to try games before buying them, would make a worthwhile impact to their games' sales?

Also anyone who says "it hurts indies" clearly has never looked at a piracy forum once in their life. Pirates constantly talk about supporting indie games after trying them.

I won't say it's "victimless", because that's a strawman argument used by huge corps to act like it's a huge issue when in reality it isn't. However the morality of the situation is absolutely something to think about. Bethesda does not care about you as a user, you are dollar signs to them, that's it. So if all you are is objectified money, why should you sit here and defend them so hard?

I would say a lot fall into #3.

Theirs also a #4 you have a lot who will just do it for games that have denvo or some other nonsense kernel level junk as a lot don't want this extra intrusion and performance inhibiting garbage on their PC.

A lot use this as a demo version to see if they want to buy it or not as 2 hours is laughable in a game like this .( can spend that in character creation in a game like this or BG3) You like the game you buy it as it's annoying to get all the updates and do them manually, or for others just out of laziness wanting all your games in one place like here.

Usually set sail helps with sales in the end on a lot of things from games to subscription services. Fact, HBO during game of thrones practically promoted the skull and crossbones as it added to their subscription base, they did nothing to stop it and in a interview described why they didn't as it was actually helping sales.

[strangest1ofall]

Originally posted by mattius:

Originally posted by Mad Max:

Oh no... the poor multibillion dollar corporations...

Good thing you were here to defend their honor.

You've obviously zero idea of how much work goes into a game like this - Numbskull. You don't walk into large chain stores & help yourself. Theft is theft.

Theft under $950 is decriminalised in California.

[Silverlight]

Originally posted by strangest1ofall:

Originally posted by mattius:

You've obviously zero idea of how much work goes into a game like this - Numbskull. You don't walk into large chain stores & help yourself. Theft is theft.

Theft under $950 is decriminalised in California.

Yeah even in law theft is not theft.

Most petty theft in a retail store can't even be followed up on.

Source: I've worked in 2 different retail stores.

[Adalbert]

Originally posted by Jarrod:

Originally posted by Roger_Dabbit:

This is literally one of the silliest arguments I've ever seen regarding pirating.

#3 Normal people who know how to yarr harr but still buy games (vast majority of pirates)

Yeah this

I'll admit that I pirated Rimworld, really liked it, then bought it later, then bought it's expansions. I'm not sure I would have bought it if I couldn't have tried it beforehand.

Also it doesn't help that games don't have demos anymore.

Edit: Also, just to be clear, I didn't pirate Starfield and I'm not going to and I wasn't interested in the game now or when it was first revealed.
I'm only interested in seeing if there's any chance of TES6 being good.
..
But I'm still likely going to buy it at a heavy discount and play for the first time, with mods, years later, like I did with skyrim. And still be dissapointed, like with skyrim.