It’s copyright infringement to do so. No need getting the Beehaw admins in trouble; Google paywall bypassing tools and read away.

Been playing a lot of The Finals lately. Normally my time would be spent in Destiny 2, but the current D2 season is gonna last for a looooong time, so I’m not in any hurry to grind it out just yet. But The Finals has absolutely blown me away so far. It can be buggy and unbalanced at times, but it’s so damn fun. Demolishing an entire building to bury the cashout station in rubble and prevent a steal is so satisfying.

Embark has also recently said that they’ve got a lot of updates in the works, so I’m really excited to see how Season 2 plays out.

I’ve got a feeling that the legal issues, even if they’re in the clear, are going to pose a lot of problems for the longevity of the game. But, I’m really hopeful that this sparks inspiration for other devs to take on the monster collecting genre. Pokemon has dominated that space for so long that they practically define the genre at this point, so it’ll be nice to see new monster collectors come out with their own unique styles.

I mean sure, but how often is the virtual keyboard pulled up in any “creative” app? It always auto-hides if you’re doing anything other than interacting with a text field.

What does this have to do with “creators”, though?

If you think E3 was a more welcoming venue for indie studios, you’d be mistaken. Getting a booth or presentation slot at E3 was insanely expensive. If Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft didn’t think it was worth their money to have even a booth presence on the show floor, you can probably imagine how prohibitive it was for smaller studios.

Well, The Game Awards are voted for by the players, not some panel of industry suits.

That’s fair. I guess you and I got different things out of E3, then. I mostly only followed the news on the game announcements, and not so much on the experiences on the show floor.

For me, I only really tuned in for the ads, because that’s how I would keep up to date with the gaming scene before I had the internet in my pocket.

I kinda have the same takeaway for Keighley’s shows. I don’t even really care too much about most of the awards (Like, who cares about Best eSports Coach? Why is that even a category?) except for GOTY and maybe a few others like Best Performance. I’m mostly just watching for the trailers, myself.

I mean, that’s exactly what E3 had always been in the first place, too. Developers/publishers only showed up to advertise upcoming releases. Only instead of 3 hours of ads a year, it was 3 days of ads. Yeah, we got a lot of cool insider interviews from E3, but even those are just ads.

If advertising is the issue, E3 was a far worse offender than any of Keighley’s productions, imo.

That sounds like the kind of thing a Republican would say!

What’s wrong with Keighley’s events? I’ve been enjoying them, myself. This year’s Game Awards was kind of a snoozefest, admittedly, but I feel like his shows have a pretty good vibe for the most part.

E3 has had a foot in the grave for the last ten years. The availability of the internet kinda invalidated any need for expensive physical conventions. When they changed their rules to allow the general public to attend, that was a pretty clear death rattle, imo. And the Big 3 all pretty much pulling out entirely and doing their own streamed announcement events didn’t help matters. Covid also ended up killing whatever momentum E3 had left. Basically everything was stacked against E3 for a long while now.

Super disappointing, but also super expected, honestly. See you in the next life, giant enemy crabs.

Nearly all pirated content was most likely originally purchased once, and ripped. There’s no evidence that much of it is from shoplifted DVDs.

There’s no evidence that “much” of it is from purchased DVDs, either.

Right, but in this instance you’re not damaging the government through these actions. You’re damaging private entities. Civil vs criminal.

EDIT: Although, piracy often crosses both civil and criminal statutes in many cases, because copyright law is weird like that.

Like which one exactly?

“people who were not going to pay” is not one singular group, but you use this as if everybody who isn’t going to pay is part of the same demographic. Some people won’t pay because they don’t want it in the first place. Some people won’t pay because while they want it, they can’t afford it. And some won’t pay but will take it anyway because they feel entitled to it.

Painting all these groups with the same brush is disingenuous at best, and intentionally deceptive at worst.

How much should they be paid for it?

However much they’re asking. They put a price tag on it for exactly this question.

In this lens, can piracy be considered a form of civil disobedience?

Not really. Civil disobedience is about refusing to follow a law, not choosing to break a law. There’s a difference between the two concepts; one involves going about your day as normal and ignoring laws, and the other is going out of your way to break a law. Piracy is no more a form of civil disobedience than looting a grocery store is.

Does you license plate say “PRIVATE”? Because this is some real sovereign citizen logic, using definitions of terms that the rest of the world doesn’t agree with.

Ever read the message at the beginning of a rip? You know, the one with the FBI logo on it. Remind me what it says?

according to you, piracy is stealing, because it has to be stolen at some point.

The origins of any movie you pirate come from theft, full stop.

These are not the same statement. You’re getting the before and after mixed up, likely on purpose.

Again, I have to ask: How do you think those digital goods are made in the first place? Somebody labored to create it. They deserve to be paid for it.

Not sure why this is such a hot take.

The fact is that the person in question is still taking something without paying for it. A sense of entitlement (I want it badly enough that I should have it for free) doesn’t change anything in this equation.