Honorable mention goes to Hotline Miami 2, whose devs encouraged Australian players to pirate it after being banned from Australia, even after adding a toggle to censor the game.
A toggle isn't enough for our gov sadly, it's either censored or not sold They think adults aren't adult enough for adult themes, treating games like a children's thing still
Actually the G2A thing is even more sinister. The dev lose even more money because of a cashback fee, so pirating it is actually more economical for them.
Unless it's from Activision, do whatever you want, Pirate or G2A because when they do a so called steam sale they only make games that's over 10 years old barley 10 dollars cheaper
Yea not only can they lose money, enough chargebacks could cause their payment processor to just drop them. MangaGamer used to offer steam keys with games along with their DRM free versions bought on their storefront but there was a scammer that abused that with the advent of steam trading cards that they actually had to find a new payment processor after their previous one dropped them. They went a couple days without being able to sell anything on their storefront. They stopped offering steam keys with purchase after got a new payment processor. If you want to read more about it, there's a Kotaku article named "G2A Scammer Explains How He Profited Off Stolen Indie Game Keys" from 2016. The article mentions that MG had to pay $30 per chargeback as well.
I'm surprised that Mother 3 isn't included here. Shigesato Itoi basically told people to play the fan translation because it's likely the only way anyone outside of Japan is gonna enjoy the game. Yes, someone working on a *NINTENDO* game encouraged people to use third-party emulation. The irony is too perfect.
A lot of the people working at or with Nintendo don't actually like backing the corporate policy. Most of HAL Laboratories get within an inch of being reprimanded by Nintendo management with the stuff they make since it breaks hardware or software guidelines.
One honorable mention would also be the Postal series. Since the games are banned in Germany, Running With Scissors have told Germans to simply pirate the game if they wish to play it, with the option of tossing them a dollar or two via Paypal if they feel bad about it. They also generally don't care if you pirate their games, full stop. If you enjoy their games, they don't care.
They SPECIALLY don't care if you pirate Postal 3, which was developed by another studio using the Postal IP and is generally considered awful, being basically disowned by RWS who just tells you to pirate it (even though they still sell it).
@@Wattstone In addition to ensuring every future POSTAL game will shit on it in some capacity. Paradise Lost, have you found the unlucky sod in the building who made the mistake of waiting and seeing if it was good? I have.
I remember when G2A said they were so confident that there are no stolen keys on their service that they will refund publishers and give them a sizable bounty. Several publisher then came out with proof that thousands of keys were stolen. G2A responded with "okay, but those are a tiny fraction of our total stock, so those don't count."
"Well pay you money to prove our house is on fire" "It's clearly on fire, there's flame and smoke coming out of the windows" "Yeah, but that's only like the kitchen that's on fire so it's not really on fire".
Releasing the game to the pirates but asking them to buy it if they liked it reminds me a lot of the old Shareware model (where you would get the first episode of the game for free and if you liked it you could buy the rest of the episodes). I wish games still worked like that.
I also appreciate some of these companies who realize that it's more important to have more people playing your game than it is to have more people paying for it than can afford it. It's art after all, and studio goodwill is important. That kinda honor system based charity is always nice.
My favorite example of this is Pinball Advance (on the Game Boy Advance, shockingly enough). The game is designed to use SRAM saving to save the player's high scores, however, the publisher shipped the cart without SRAM on it to save on cost, rendering this feature unusable. The actual developer said that anyone wanting to play the game as they intended should just pirate it and use a Flashcart, so they can actually have the saving functionality restored. The actual game itself is sadly not very good, though.
Cave Story too, the developer Daisuke Amaya - who originally released the Cave Story game as a free game, after Nicalis took over the publishing of the game and started giving cease and desist letters and DMCA to people making fan projects that used the game's assets as well as the decompiled codebase, released himself the original Cave Story project for people to use in the making of more fangames.
There's been much more than 2 over the years. The issue with G2A is their method (buying keys with stolen cards) hasn't changed in like a decade. Which proves how easy fraud and identity theft truly is. There really is no security, the system works on good faith. Which they openly abuse.
IIRC Microsoft offered him a copy of Visual Studio and some other goodies in exchange for him signing over the domain name, but he didn't go for it and MS had to go the lawyer route to defend their trademark 🤷♂️
@@DarkElfDiva Webster Long's dictionary says that "mementos" is pronounced "men's toes". Just looked this up. Microsoft and Mike Rowe (a Canadian high school student) came to a settlement after all the negative press that Microsoft got for their legal actions, which included an MSDN subscription among other things. A lawyer said that since his name is Mike Rowe that he had a strong case, but because they settled he didn't technically "win".
That reminds me, back when Justin Roiland started his game company (and was still well liked by the public, the whole domestic abuse scandal wasn’t public yet) he wanted to call it “Squanchtendo.” His legal team told him that name is just begging for a lawsuit so he settled on simply “Squanch Games.”
Way back in the Windows 95/98 days, devs would release “Freeware”, which were full games with a “please buy if you can” ad thrown in. This being early internet days, that often involved using mail to send money and receive a CD-rom…
Usually it was Shareware, which typically was what we today would call a demo. It would be a fully functional game with no play-time limit, but would only have, say, the first 25% of the levels. (Doom, Night Raid, Traffic Department 2192 did it this way) Then if you wanted the whole game you could just send them a check and they'd mail it to you. However, freeware did exist as you said, though it was much rarer.
Yeah my dad somehow once got a CD with dozens upon dozens of freeware/shareware games for PC like the first episode of Wolfenstein 3D (and also a few full games that were free). It was called Games FX and I've been searching for another copy of it for years because there's quite a few of those games which I remember loving but I can't find out what their names are, anywhere. And so finding a copy of this "Games FX" CD would mean I could easily then look at the menu and note down the names of each game I want to play the full version of. I'm British, so it was a British CD, if that makes it any easier to find. I remember the game I liked the most was Duke Nukem. The first one, the 2D platformer one, not the FPS game. But yeah I can find no evidence on the Internet that this disc ever even existed. There seems to be no TH-cam video of it, no photo of the CD or the jewel case it came in, no forum posts discussing it, nobody else looking for it, etc. But it did exist. I remember the name of it, Games FX, so strongly, because it was the first time I'd ever seen "FX" used as shorthand for "effects", and cos I was only like 7 years old it took me a while to get that that was a pun/play-on-words. It must have been 1996, 1997, or 1998. Around that sort of time. I wish so desperately that I could find a copy of it again, or even a video of someone playing through it. But I seem to be the only person alive who even remembers it.
Around 20 years ago I had a developer in email basically begged/wanted me to pirate their game. This one was BITS out of your neck of the woods there Larry. They had done Pinball Challenge Deluxe for the GBA and the publisher was Ubisoft. The game is a combo of the originally Amiga/DOS releases from DICE Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies in one cart. The originally agreed upon deal would be a complete and fully functional game and was coded to do ti all, including saving your high score progress. Ubisoft at the last moment, after the game went gold internally decided to save a buck and ordered the cheapest NON-saving boards from Nintendo for manufacturing and were pissed. I wrote them because the manual mentioned it would save, the game doesn't. They were pissed, were nice and candid with me, and strongly suggested that I get a flash kit or use an emulator because it says it will save but doesn't since Ubisoft cheaped out in their words if I wanted the game as intended. I won't forget that. It's the same era which Ubishat decided to also sell a broken copy of Super SF2 Turbo Revival X in the US and UK markets that permanently destroys the unlock/high score tables if you trigger Akuma who is hidden in there (JP game works right.)
god, I hope someone took them to court. Not that you could win, just take them to court, don't bother to get a lawyer, and let them blow tons of their money on defending their crimes.
@@mrroboshadow uh, pay legal fees to whom? are you going to tell me courts just charge admission? that's.. so many kinds of unconstitutional I can't even.
The major one i knew of was Zun with Touhou, his views are pretty much "I don't really care if my games are pirated outside of Japan" he's just a really good dev in general too, basically the only thing he's against is someone selling his games illegally and kickstarter campaigns for fan games. Touhou literally has its own themed pirate site.
Actually, he made A sort of... token effort to stop that recently. His lawyer sent out A cease and desist, and now the website has seeds for torrents for the games.
The thing with Ion Fury IIRC is that the people behind counter-backlash where the people who had already paid for the game going "since 3D Realms caved to the ResetEra-led backlash I don't want to give you my money". The original backlash was pretty much just a typical Twitter struggle session, while the counter-backlash came with both a review bomb AND a refund-bomb. Voidpoint telling people to pirate the game was them trying to have their intended audience still appreciate their effort since they were refunding it and refusing to play it to stick it to 3D Realms.
Yeah not surprising, screwing over paying customers because of people who aren't gonna buy crap from you, I really do have to question the studios and publishers when they put something out and twitter gets mad, they think they need to then craft their product for twitter, its utterly stupid.
@@Spartan322 As a bisexual, the "ogay joke" wasn't offensive, it was just stupid and silly. Low brow gay jokes are fine. It's what the devs posted on Discord that is the issue. No one is forcing anyone to be trans, especially children. That's transphobic fear mongering and it is highly worrying for the devs to be saying such things. And the word "r_e_t_a_r_d" is indeed a slur. However, it's not as bad as the n-word and multiple games have used the n-word before and gotten away with it, such as GTA. Doesn't make it right, it's still offensive, but if used in the right contexts it could lessen the negative implications. Plus, in the end it's just words. Language is a human construct and swears and slurs are all just made up by society. It isn't a big deal. Like, if the game was blatantly transphobic and had you mass murdering transphobic steriotypes as a "joke" like that one StoneToss video game, that would be an issue. But of what I've seen the devs aren't like that and the Twitter users blew it way out of proportion.
Yeah, unfortunately the second they started treating LGBT people as worthy of respect instead of spreading conspiracy theories, all the hardcore gamers threw a temper tantrum
Here in Australia 🇦🇺 Hotline Miami 2 was banned before it could be released. Unfortunately government censorship is our way of life in this country. The developers gave us their permission to pirate the game so we would still get to play it. (Eventually I imported a European copy when it came out on Switch, because Switch is not region locked).
the problem is that steam revokes game titles which are payed by creditcard fraud... even if you only got the keys... if that happens too many times on your account your account may be gone as well...
Which is why it's really easy to make a new account to attach that stolen CC on. Unfortunately, the downfall of being able to make free accounts are that cheaters and criminals like that can make an infinite amount of them...
It took me a couple minutes to realise that you picked 24 hour Cinderella for the SEGA segment because it's Majima's song, and he wears an eyepatch. And who else is famous for wearing eyepatches? Pirates. The sheer depth behind planning the background music was quite surprising
I actually had a bug that made that pirate thing happen for me, even though I bought the game. I tweeted greenheart about it and they laughed at me for being a pirate, until I proved I bought it (by talking to a dev via steam, where it was in my library for anyone to see), and they said they would patch it. No idea if they did, I haven't played it since.
@@DarkElfDiva I always wondered if those "Pirate only features" could activate on an officially bought version. I always assumed that the developers just uploaded a special version with the feature. But it seems like it's more complex than that.
@@DanVzare It definitely did with the Sims 3. I had downloaded a character off the official site that was uploaded by someone who pirated the game. It triggered the infinitely expanding mosaic censor that was in pirated games. Took me forever to get support to finally check that I indeed had a legit copy of the game. That event from them caused me to pirate all the DLC's out of frustration dealing with support.
@@DanVzare Sometimes it is a special version, sometimes there's just code in all versions that checks for DRM or whatnot, sometimes other methods are used.
I had SEGA smash pack 2 on PC and I still remember it as one of the greatest purchases of my life. Flicky, Shining Force, Comix Zone, and mother heckin Vectorman! It was such a great collection
I've really never understood at all why the Vectorman games are so popular. They're very weird to control, enemies are bullet sponges, it looks and sounds incredibly ugly, etc. I'd much rather play something like one of the mega men games for a run and gun, than Vectorman. I just don't get why they're always listed among the best games for mega drive. They're so unbelievably average. The only somewhat unique thing they've got going for them ie the pre-rendered "3D" graphics. But even then, they did a far far worse job of it than Rare did for the DKC games. I don't like the way the DKC games look either, these days they're just ugly, but they look a damn sight better than the vectormen games.
@@duffman18 It’s hard to go back to. I know for a fact that I beat the game and watched the credits as a kid, but these days I struggle to get through the second level and wonder to myself how the little kid version of me was a better gamer
The reason why the music is awful on the Sega Smash Pack is that it was developed in a very short time, and the developer didn't have time for the FM engine. While the initial Chowning-formula is pretty simple and actually based on the principle of Phase Modulation rather than Frequency Modulation, the rest is quite hard to debug (envelopes, algorithms, etc). Also here's the Chowning-formula for anyone interested: y = l_0 * sin(x * m_0 + l_1 * sin(x * m_1)) Where x is the time constant, y is the output, l are the output levels of the oscillators, m are the integer multipliers of the time constant. You can substitute sin with almost any kind of wavetable, and Yamaha's main change on the whole thing is adding feedback to the modulator, and more operators and algorithms on most of their FM chips.
In fairness, it's still incredibly difficult to reproduce the FM chip output. I think the only option is to emulate the chip itself in software. The latest Sonic rereleased on current consoles also have wonky audio.
Continuum, originally Subspace was made by the devs to test networking stuff, but VIE made them package it up as a full game to sell with DRM which requires the CD to be in your computer.. The devs pissed, made and released the CD Crack for the game.. This was back in 95, and the game is still limping along after those golden years
There's... so many reasons that's illegal. You can't trademark 'iron maiden.' it's a common name for an object. A torture device made up by renaissance era atheists to slander religious people and the past in general.
@@KairuHakubi No expert, but it was probably a THREAT of a lawsuit. The name was being used nowhere near a music context or any Iron Maiden intellectual property, so I'm pretty sure it would have been thrown out had it gone to Court.
@@DarthPerkins yeah. And I mean, as long as you don't bother to hire a lawyer, you don't waste any money being taken to court frivolously, right? just wastes your time. "your honor, this self-representing idiot just keeps repeating "it's not illegal" " "well it isn't."
@@KairuHakubi It doesn't matter what the law says. The only two things that matter are what you can convince a judge of, and how much money you can spend. 3DRealms could have fought it, but they're a smaller company and Iron Maiden has a huge record label behind them. It would have cost them millions. Easier to just change the name.
The devs of Disco Elysium also encouraged people to pirate their game after how the studio treated them. The story behind that is pretty sad, so I don't blame them.
Yeah, tragic that one of the most interesting games of the last few years is now tainted so much. I shouldn't feel guilty for giving a company money for a brilliant product.
That whole situation still leaves me feeling bitter. Their whole world they spent decades working on and building up was pulled up and taken away from them forever. Now they have to start from scratch all over again. Nobody should support the sequel the publisher is working on
@@ADreamingTraveler the weird thing is that they might not have made a sequel in the first place and the damage goes beyond just one game or studio. ZAUM was an artist collective that just decided their art should be in the form of a videogame and now that whole group is dissolved.
@@domeen0gt895 Not a publisher (I think) but an investor they had fund the game. After it had became a big hit with the Final Cut Update (it was cult hit on launch but so much reading put people off) a while after had the two creative heads pushed out the company with no right to their own creation. But hey, since piracy is encouraged, there is literally nothing stopping you from enjoying one of the best RPGs of the modern era (perhaps of all time).
A little-known fact is Freedom planet had an easter egg where Lilac and Carol tell the people who are pirating, "if you pirated the game, saying that it's ok that you pirate the game, just donate if you want to see this project grow, and that your purchase matters." It would be an honorable mention to bring it up.
Friendly reminder that while copyright infringement and plagiarism are illegal and can get you sued for a pretty penny, they are *_not_* crimes (unless it's money or other government-related stuff anyway), piracy and theft are two separate crimes and copying is not theft, if you copy something, the original is left.
I don't know all the legal technicalities, but you are absolutely correct in stating that the two things are not the same, despite many falsely equating the two. The movie industry makes ridiculous claims like this all the time. They tried to get VCRs outlawed, Jack Valenti said, "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone." in testimony in front of the House of Representatives. Fred Rogers (from Mr. Rogers Neighborhood) testified in defense of the VCR and the American public's right to use them. And Nintendo tried to get the Game Genie outlawed, claiming that using it violated their copyrights. Initially, Americans who wanted a Game Genie had to import them from Canada. Also, major movie studios plagiarize stuff all the time. The Batman (the movie staring the guy from the sparkly vampire movies) was plagiarized from a comic book script a writer submitted, through their official submission process, that DC rejected. And Star Trek Discovery (a.k.a., STD) was clearly plagiarized from Anas Abdin's Tartigrades video game, but the court sided with CBS. This is why a Star Trek prequel had a ship that traveled through space using giant space tartigrades and mushrooms despite that not making any goddamned sense.
@@troywright359 *_It's not piracy. I already established that and I never said anything about it not being murder what the f*ck are you going on about?_* Also yes, it can hurt small and independent companies or non-company producers (supposing they can federally register copyrights because otherwise it's not infringing. The supposed automatic international registration for stuff on the internet is actually entirely useless without a federal registration so without one you might as well not have a copyright at all and then it's just unauthorized copying. Which mind in this situation isn't any less bad of course but it can not be legally enforced). It can _not_ however hurt big corporations. That's a myth they love to perpetrate. The truth is the executives hoard the money that could be used to compensate, which is partially to keep perpetrating the myth and partially because they hate taking responsibility for their own shortcomings but of course, it's mostly just because they love being rich. Anyone lower on the corporate ladder who takes the negative effects of copyright infringement really only have the responsibility-evading executives to blame.
@mattwo7 but there are still negative outcomes with big companies. Ita not like this is a victimless crime. Those people who catch heat for it still get in hot water ( which they probably don't deserve tbf).
Recently, the actual devs behind Disco Elysium have been urging players to pirate the game because of some awful shit that happened behind the scenes with the rightsholder
My favorite example of this is Frontier Aja with Koumajou Densetsu 1 and 2. Some time in the early 2010's the games went out of print, and for years the last message from the devs was them asking people to pirate their games instead of buying them from scalpers. I like that kind of spite. Recently Koumajou Densetsu 1 got A remaster on steam, with the Frontier Aja branding, so I assume the circle still exists to some degree. Even though they haven't made A game in over 10 years. The remaster's by far the best way to play the game too, they got the voice actors for the second game to dub it.
I think an honorable mention should go to Crytek for Crysis. When they heard people were pirating their game to use as a benchmark test for their PCs, instead of getting offended, they embraced the free publicity and steered right into the "Can it run Crysis?" zeitgeist.
I just love that you used the Dutch/Belgian Children’s character of Piet Piraat in the first few seconds of the video as me and so many other children grew up with that character and his show haha
While I don’t think the developers ever told anyone to pirate their game, the devs of Devil Engine got totally screwed over by their publisher Dangen Entertainment.
Especially when I was younger The only way I ever got a hold of some video games was by pirating them but developers should keep this as a lesson later in life I did pay for at least one copy of each game I pirated when I was younger as long as your game is good a good chunk of pirates will pay for a copy at some point
I pirated Grim Dawn because I was apprehensive about the game, and a lot of ARPG's are of questionable quality. Not only did I buy a copy of the game, but there's at least 10 people I can confirm bought the game on my recommendation. I can confirm this, because i told them to add me on steam if they ended up getting the game.
0:37 - Ooh, a rail shooter for the title drop. I mean, other than those races with Johnny in Sonic Rush Adventure (a game that's hardly retro or obscure), you'd be hard pressed to find something that fits with the pirate theme going on here.
My favourite "hey, you should pirate this" tidbit is Alan Wake. The protagonist (Alan) wears an eyepatch. The comic relief (Barry) wears *two.* That's it. That's the bonus.
(Also, don't pay for Alan Wake. It's not a good series. The writing is like if Stephen King was addicted to horse tranquillisers. If you want to support the devs, get Control instead. It's actually a good game, and it's part of the Alan Wake Universe to boot, if that's something you liked.)
Speaking of Denuvo and piracy, I had purchased the Steam version of Sonic Mania before launch. It ran like absolute dogshit, crashed often, and on several occasions, locked me out of the game for 24 hours. So I had no choice but to use the pirated version. The game itself ran far better, had zero crashes and no fucking lockout. Oh, and the ridiculous amount of Denuvo shills that come out of the woodwork the second so meone says something negative about the DRM is astounding. Surprised they haven't pounced on this video for the little joke at the beginning.
Ugh, I fucking HATE Denuvo shills. Anytime someone hates on Denuvo their only argument is "Well the only reason anyone would want it gone is so they can pirate!" And it doesn't matter what you say about framerates and crashes. You can't reason with unreasonable people.
@@DarkElfDiva My favorite argument I usually receive boils down to "nuh-uh!" This is in spite of quite a few user issues, to say nothing of several devs outright stating Denuvo caused performance issues. Clearly, we're all making it up 🙄
_"DeNuVo DoEsN't ImPaCt GaMe PeRfOrMaNcE"_ Yeah. Funny how my cracked MonHun World gets 160fps, but my legit copy can't hit 20fps despite version parity, a 3060Ti, and the SpecialK wrapper on steroids. Piracy isn't only for cheapskates.
I'm glad I finally got around to washing as I had been meaning to when the first came out. Honestly I thought that was really nice that one of the developers decided to grant people access easy access to a pirated version of their game in case they can't afford to buy it yet. But still let them know that they would appreciate the money if they do have enough to actually purchase the game. It's a big risk because there isn't really any incentive to spend any money if you're getting the game for free, but a nice thing to do
I talked with the voidpoint guy. Apparently the hubub over Ion Maiden was spurred by a troll... and some jerk at GAME INFORMER was threatening to slander voidpoint for their ogay joke.
They should have claimed Ogay is their grandma's name and they did it in her honor, and everyone is really making her upset by suggesting her name is offensive in some way.
Now I'm interested- did the troll write the comments in the discord then, but they weren't actually employed by the company, or made it look like they were from the conpany?
Back in the 90's I had to call Access Software for tech support on one of their games. I happened to mention I could no longer play the original game in the series because I had lost the code wheel. The legends mailed me a crack file on a 3.5" floppy. It also patched an issue where some parts of the game were keyed to the CPU clock.
Somehow a game developer that wants you to pirate actually makes you want to give them money, it’s a weird paradox effect honestly because you feel bad for pirating them like inviting you to guilt.
During my Amiga days, in the early 90s, my friends and I would meet up every other month or so and have an evening at one of our places. Each of us would bring a box of 50 blank floppies. We would all go home with new fresh warez
I don't know why games that already exist on GOG are being released independently as pirate copies. The GOG version can itself be distributed as a pirate copy. That's kinda the point of DRM-free.
It's because very few people are cracking games anymore. As such most so-called "crackers" literally just distribute DRM-free games. The cracking scene has died out for a variety of reasons that I won't list (especially since I can't back any of those reasons up with evidence). But there's still a couple of people doing it. But not many.
By releasing their own distribution, developers make sure that nobody releases their game into pirate site with some extra 'goodies' attached to them. Sure, I haven't stumbled into a virus for quite a while now (then again, I don't pirate very much), but there's always a risk.
4:00 there is another issue: the developer has to pay for charge backs, he pay to refund the customer, so when someone purchase on g2a, not only the developer dont make money as in piracy, but he LOSE money, and a customer who think he is legitimately giving money to developers get screwed and dont want to support anymore.
Huge hug for you for using the Phantasy Star Online shop music. I still play that game, and typical custom servers for it average 10 players a day, all the time. I wish it could get more interest, PSO is such a damn good game, it transcends all that have come after it! Again, thank you for representing such a niche game here!!!
I *REALLY* despise G2A and I'm not even a game developer. It always surprised me that the big publishers didn't really care about them, The indi devs and publishers on the other hand,... Well they're exactly why I never bought a key from G2A.
12:28 Certainly wasn't expecting Outpost X11 to be there. No matter how many videos you do, not one of them ever feels stale or repetitious. Excellent work!
Bit of a shame, really. There's no true complete soundtrack for RaC1. Technically the same goes for the other soundtracks in the original sextet aswell, but RaC1 is the most severe because the _most_ complete soundtrack we have (being rips of the in-game music from the retail release) are compressed to mono.
Iirc, Hotline Miami was also posted to piracy sites by the dev due to grey-market site (like G2A) issues. He even provided technical support to people who pirated the game.
4:26 - The virgin AAA publisher: "I need to use this intrusive and customer-unfiendly DRM to protect my precious green paper." The chad Please Fix The Road developer: "We also put our own game on a torrent because it was going to happen eventually, so go ahead and try it. If you liked it, please consider buying it."
I used G2A once back in high when a friend of mine recommended it because he was like "wHy pAy fUll pRiCe fOr SoMeThInG wHen YoU cAn GeT iT SO mUch cHeAper on G2A??". Back then I didn't know better, even when some people tried to explain it to me. Larry's explanation here, to me at least, was also a bit hard to follow, but now at least I get it.
The thing about Ion Fury is that they eventually re-implemented the 'Ogay' bottle since they were accused of self-censorship, and they were having none of that. So, that also kinda helped as well as they decided to just put their foot down on what is otherwise a silly, harmless joke. And, in my opinon, rightly so.
That whole thing wasn't worth the outrage from either party. It's not even a good joke. It wasn't worth putting in the game in the first place, it wasn't worth getting offended over when it was found in the game, it wasn't getting offended over when it was removed from the game, and it wasn't worth putting back into the game. It was just stupid.
@@mjc0961 Games are filled with stupid things. Caving into woke idiots and doing what they demand is just about the dumbest thing you can do as well. They're never happy no matter what you do.
Olaid wouldn't have offended anyone, Ogay it was in bad taste. Would have been wiser to put up a Lo Wang lubrication joke than to target minorities just for the retro gag. Why they insisted on ogay was more childish and immature than a funny and creative nod. They knew better and acted like Naw it will be fine.
As a sixth game that fits on this list: A Hat in Time. Though not directly stated, they inserted a small easter egg into the game in the form of a book titled, "Proof of Ethical Consumption Under Capitalism," which was filled with nothing but blank pages. Given this, one can safely infer that they would actually _prefer_ everyone to pirate their game.
HE he, the funny part is... we need capitalism until we as a society grow past the inherent selfishness of want for want sake, and our entire view changes on how we interact with others. Not saying it's 'clean', but the current alternatives are .... not viable at large scale, and will lead to a very suppressed society by the select few with, rather than the overall. Everyone's favorite Star Trek series is capitalistic, but the ships shown & bases shown .. are military centric. Meaning that soldiers aren't charged diddly for food, weapons, clothing, or supplies while on deployment, and all available tech is used to supply it as cheaply as possible.
@@DePhoegonIsle Capitalism isn't markets (markets have existed for forever), it's a form of ownership of people's labor and natural resources. Just another form of hierarchy where a few merchant kings rule, instead of the military (aka, feudalism). The socialists want to introduce democracy into the workforce and nationalize natural monopolies and matters of common welfare. For an example of the opposite, we collectively spent billions on the covid vaccine and then handed over the profit rights to some guys. It's far from the first time and far from the last time. We collectively accept things like homelessness and hungry children because these kinds of things are essential for the system to function. The metaphorical stick that hits us literal donkeys.
@@LAST_STAND_FAN A Hat in Time is a good game. Just because they made an anti-capitalist joke that I don't agree with doesn't make the game and anyone who plays it bad. Lmao what a snowflake getting mad over a joke in a video game.
@@krimsonkatt It's a mid 3D platformer, luhmao. Literally any Mario game is better. I just like making fun of the devs because they're the types of fellas that run Twitter.
At least Microsoft paid the Descenders developers. After 1 year on game Pass, it were still so popular that they extended the period. Besides that it also sold well on Steam among other official shops.
@@Larry On the other hand, if the game is by a detestable publisher (EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Tencent (I think that covers the main ones)), then knowing it costs the publisher money to buy from the likes of G2A makes it very tempting just on principle, even if you're not actually interested in the game itself.
How ironic it is that I'm playing One Piece Odyssey while watching this & the this video about video game piracy ends up showing gameplay footage of it!
See these devs get it. I can't tell you how many times in just the past few months I've seen indie devs like the Dead Cells devs increasing their pricing in other regions by over 300% in places like South America or Turkey. And it's like those people are not going to pay even more for your game when the original prices were already too much for most of them. Those people will pirate your game. They won't pay more. Devs will say how they can't lower their prices in certain regions because then people will create workarounds to buy them for cheaper prices in other countries. Alright so if you do that then those people are just going to pirate it anyway. The Heartbound devs called Pirate Software understand this and price their games accordingly in every region. For example their game is cheaper to buy in Argentina because he knows people there can barely afford to buy games and he knows if he raises the price they're just going to pirate it so he'd rather lower the price and get some of their money instead of none.
This is about to get even worse as AAA games are bumped up to $70. I saw the new Zelda's releasing at that price last night and my unemployed heart sank.
There's also the devs of Scratch, an amazing point n click horror game, where they had a music license issue and had to remove the game from steam but couldnt afford to fix the music issue, so they encourage people to pirate it and provided a bunch of steam keys on their discord
What I'm getting from this is that I should buy most games through reputable channels such as Steam or GoG (definitely not EGS), and buy games from EA, Activision and Gearbox (and anyone who makes their game EGS exclusive) through G2A.
No. No matter how much I hate them, I wouldn't do that. If I didn't like a company, I just don't buy their game. It's quite simple. Unless I buy it used from another person or a game store that has it used. It's called being smart.
4:40 Sadly, there is. Ever wonder why Denuvo has infested so many AAA PC games? It works more than ever and there is only one apparently-extremely-mentally-unwell person left who is capable (technically there's also another one but they're only focused on cracking Footbal Manager games). So if you see that a game has Denuvo, abandon hope, unless it's the most popular AAA game currently.
Ion maiden was the true name of ion fury until iron maiden decided to bitch about it I refuse to call it by any other name it is seriously a fantastic shooter i highly recommend
I never understood the "if people pirate our game we won't make any money" stance when paired with "we can't release demos because people will just play that instead". I honestly use pirated copies to demo the game and then if I'm enjoying it I'll save for a legit copy of it, games are so expensive now that I can't afford to drop $60 on something I'm gonna hate. If they don't want people getting illegal copies of it, the first step is to bring back demos
A lot of devs prefer not to make demos because it's taking time and money to create a version of the game that's fully functional from start to finish, which may still end up make people reject your game if it turns out to contain a bug they could fix in the main release. Essentially it's extra work in an era where more and more games take more and more time to make due to being far more complex creations now, for gains that aren't really guaranteed. It'd be nice to live in a world where devs weren't already stressed out and could make them for the sake of pleasing the customers... but it feels like in today's AAA-world they're just gonna get rarer and rarer.
The pun about Unity games is a bit uncalled for. Cuphead, Inside, both Ori games, Among Us, Fall Guys... In fact half of the best indie games are made in Unity. 😜
Honorable mention goes to Hotline Miami 2, whose devs encouraged Australian players to pirate it after being banned from Australia, even after adding a toggle to censor the game.
I was about to say the same thing, also not game related, but Men At Work also did it for 'Down Under'.
As a fairly recent PC newbie, I haven’t heard of G2A.
I have now.
the same devs also sent the current version of their game to a pirate site, cause it only had an older version on it, didn't they?
A toggle isn't enough for our gov sadly, it's either censored or not sold
They think adults aren't adult enough for adult themes, treating games like a children's thing still
He even went into the Pirate Bay and told pirates to update his game so Australian Fans can enjoy the game without bugs and all
Actually the G2A thing is even more sinister. The dev lose even more money because of a cashback fee, so pirating it is actually more economical for them.
Yeah, I've heard some super scummy things about them in the past.
Unless it's from Activision, do whatever you want, Pirate or G2A because when they do a so called steam sale they only make games that's over 10 years old barley 10 dollars cheaper
Yea not only can they lose money, enough chargebacks could cause their payment processor to just drop them. MangaGamer used to offer steam keys with games along with their DRM free versions bought on their storefront but there was a scammer that abused that with the advent of steam trading cards that they actually had to find a new payment processor after their previous one dropped them. They went a couple days without being able to sell anything on their storefront. They stopped offering steam keys with purchase after got a new payment processor. If you want to read more about it, there's a Kotaku article named "G2A Scammer Explains How He Profited Off Stolen Indie Game Keys" from 2016. The article mentions that MG had to pay $30 per chargeback as well.
That's actually insane but it makes sense unfortunately, yikes
@@SgtTankDempsey i bought windows 10 pro from g2a when win 10 was new.
I'm surprised that Mother 3 isn't included here. Shigesato Itoi basically told people to play the fan translation because it's likely the only way anyone outside of Japan is gonna enjoy the game.
Yes, someone working on a *NINTENDO* game encouraged people to use third-party emulation. The irony is too perfect.
That's how i've been playing the first 7th Dragon game, it was never legitimately translated either, only Code VFD
whaaaaa?
A lot of the people working at or with Nintendo don't actually like backing the corporate policy. Most of HAL Laboratories get within an inch of being reprimanded by Nintendo management with the stuff they make since it breaks hardware or software guidelines.
@@suroguner what ya asking about?
@@brendanboomhour7606 the op and what Itoi said.
One honorable mention would also be the Postal series. Since the games are banned in Germany, Running With Scissors have told Germans to simply pirate the game if they wish to play it, with the option of tossing them a dollar or two via Paypal if they feel bad about it. They also generally don't care if you pirate their games, full stop. If you enjoy their games, they don't care.
They SPECIALLY don't care if you pirate Postal 3, which was developed by another studio using the Postal IP and is generally considered awful, being basically disowned by RWS who just tells you to pirate it (even though they still sell it).
@@Wattstone In addition to ensuring every future POSTAL game will shit on it in some capacity.
Paradise Lost, have you found the unlucky sod in the building who made the mistake of waiting and seeing if it was good? I have.
The German government still has trouble letting go of their dictatorial tendencies.
@@Wattstone No, that's not quite right. They specifically don't want you to pirate P3, because it's that bad.
Last I checked, Postal 3 isn't sold in any official manner.
I remember when G2A said they were so confident that there are no stolen keys on their service that they will refund publishers and give them a sizable bounty. Several publisher then came out with proof that thousands of keys were stolen. G2A responded with "okay, but those are a tiny fraction of our total stock, so those don't count."
"Well pay you money to prove our house is on fire"
"It's clearly on fire, there's flame and smoke coming out of the windows"
"Yeah, but that's only like the kitchen that's on fire so it's not really on fire".
@@NEEDbacon No, mother, it's just the northern lights!
@@MrLevRocks At this time of year?
At this time of day?
In this part of the country?
Localized entirely within your kitchen?
@@randoncourter4923 ... Yes.
@@magnusm4 .......may I see it?
Releasing the game to the pirates but asking them to buy it if they liked it reminds me a lot of the old Shareware model (where you would get the first episode of the game for free and if you liked it you could buy the rest of the episodes). I wish games still worked like that.
@Joseph Avenetti For years now, pirating is my means of both demoing, and testing if it runs
there are some games like that but tend to be adults only
@Joseph Avenetti Ya shouid check steam next fest, lot of demos there to try (no AAA in sight tho)
This exactly! If a dev wants me to try out their $60 game without piracy, they should have a playable demo I can access
I also appreciate some of these companies who realize that it's more important to have more people playing your game than it is to have more people paying for it than can afford it. It's art after all, and studio goodwill is important. That kinda honor system based charity is always nice.
My favorite example of this is Pinball Advance (on the Game Boy Advance, shockingly enough). The game is designed to use SRAM saving to save the player's high scores, however, the publisher shipped the cart without SRAM on it to save on cost, rendering this feature unusable. The actual developer said that anyone wanting to play the game as they intended should just pirate it and use a Flashcart, so they can actually have the saving functionality restored.
The actual game itself is sadly not very good, though.
oh yeah I heard of that one through Did You Know Gaming
Cave Story too, the developer Daisuke Amaya - who originally released the Cave Story game as a free game, after Nicalis took over the publishing of the game and started giving cease and desist letters and DMCA to people making fan projects that used the game's assets as well as the decompiled codebase, released himself the original Cave Story project for people to use in the making of more fangames.
Wait where?
You know that G2A was bad when, not one but two, developers straight up tell you to pirate the game over buying from G2A.
it's useful for buying keys to games that have been delisted like Warhammer 40k Kill Team.
Oh it's happened more than twice.
@@DarkElfDiva Yeah TotalBiscuit talked about a bunch of devs who got fucked over by G2A.
I'm sensing a pattern here
There's been much more than 2 over the years. The issue with G2A is their method (buying keys with stolen cards) hasn't changed in like a decade. Which proves how easy fraud and identity theft truly is. There really is no security, the system works on good faith. Which they openly abuse.
Something like "Mike Rose Soft" was already tried. It was "Mike Rowe Soft" -- and Microsoft sued him, naturally.
IIRC Microsoft offered him a copy of Visual Studio and some other goodies in exchange for him signing over the domain name, but he didn't go for it and MS had to go the lawyer route to defend their trademark 🤷♂️
@@eastwood4 If I recall, the guy won. Because you can't copyright a person's name (this is why anyone can make a "webster's" dictionary).
@@DarkElfDiva Webster Long's dictionary says that "mementos" is pronounced "men's toes".
Just looked this up. Microsoft and Mike Rowe (a Canadian high school student) came to a settlement after all the negative press that Microsoft got for their legal actions, which included an MSDN subscription among other things. A lawyer said that since his name is Mike Rowe that he had a strong case, but because they settled he didn't technically "win".
That reminds me, back when Justin Roiland started his game company (and was still well liked by the public, the whole domestic abuse scandal wasn’t public yet) he wanted to call it “Squanchtendo.” His legal team told him that name is just begging for a lawsuit so he settled on simply “Squanch Games.”
that second one is TOO close to microsoft to go by, MikeRoseSoft could in theory work bud
Way back in the Windows 95/98 days, devs would release “Freeware”, which were full games with a “please buy if you can” ad thrown in. This being early internet days, that often involved using mail to send money and receive a CD-rom…
Usually it was Shareware, which typically was what we today would call a demo. It would be a fully functional game with no play-time limit, but would only have, say, the first 25% of the levels. (Doom, Night Raid, Traffic Department 2192 did it this way) Then if you wanted the whole game you could just send them a check and they'd mail it to you. However, freeware did exist as you said, though it was much rarer.
Yeah my dad somehow once got a CD with dozens upon dozens of freeware/shareware games for PC like the first episode of Wolfenstein 3D (and also a few full games that were free). It was called Games FX and I've been searching for another copy of it for years because there's quite a few of those games which I remember loving but I can't find out what their names are, anywhere. And so finding a copy of this "Games FX" CD would mean I could easily then look at the menu and note down the names of each game I want to play the full version of. I'm British, so it was a British CD, if that makes it any easier to find.
I remember the game I liked the most was Duke Nukem. The first one, the 2D platformer one, not the FPS game.
But yeah I can find no evidence on the Internet that this disc ever even existed. There seems to be no TH-cam video of it, no photo of the CD or the jewel case it came in, no forum posts discussing it, nobody else looking for it, etc. But it did exist. I remember the name of it, Games FX, so strongly, because it was the first time I'd ever seen "FX" used as shorthand for "effects", and cos I was only like 7 years old it took me a while to get that that was a pun/play-on-words.
It must have been 1996, 1997, or 1998. Around that sort of time.
I wish so desperately that I could find a copy of it again, or even a video of someone playing through it. But I seem to be the only person alive who even remembers it.
@@duffman18 Thought that might have been a magazine cover disc, but Retromags doesn't list anything with that name.
Around 20 years ago I had a developer in email basically begged/wanted me to pirate their game. This one was BITS out of your neck of the woods there Larry. They had done Pinball Challenge Deluxe for the GBA and the publisher was Ubisoft. The game is a combo of the originally Amiga/DOS releases from DICE Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies in one cart. The originally agreed upon deal would be a complete and fully functional game and was coded to do ti all, including saving your high score progress. Ubisoft at the last moment, after the game went gold internally decided to save a buck and ordered the cheapest NON-saving boards from Nintendo for manufacturing and were pissed. I wrote them because the manual mentioned it would save, the game doesn't. They were pissed, were nice and candid with me, and strongly suggested that I get a flash kit or use an emulator because it says it will save but doesn't since Ubisoft cheaped out in their words if I wanted the game as intended. I won't forget that.
It's the same era which Ubishat decided to also sell a broken copy of Super SF2 Turbo Revival X in the US and UK markets that permanently destroys the unlock/high score tables if you trigger Akuma who is hidden in there (JP game works right.)
god, I hope someone took them to court. Not that you could win, just take them to court, don't bother to get a lawyer, and let them blow tons of their money on defending their crimes.
Ah wow, do you still have the ROM?
@@KairuHakubi even if you dont get a lawyer you still have to pay legal fees ya know? thats very bad advice
@@mrroboshadow uh, pay legal fees to whom? are you going to tell me courts just charge admission? that's.. so many kinds of unconstitutional I can't even.
@@KairuHakubi the courts dont charge admission but theres filing fees for one
Those would usually be payed by your lawyer's law firm
The major one i knew of was Zun with Touhou, his views are pretty much "I don't really care if my games are pirated outside of Japan" he's just a really good dev in general too, basically the only thing he's against is someone selling his games illegally and kickstarter campaigns for fan games. Touhou literally has its own themed pirate site.
Actually, he made A sort of... token effort to stop that recently. His lawyer sent out A cease and desist, and now the website has seeds for torrents for the games.
The thing with Ion Fury IIRC is that the people behind counter-backlash where the people who had already paid for the game going "since 3D Realms caved to the ResetEra-led backlash I don't want to give you my money". The original backlash was pretty much just a typical Twitter struggle session, while the counter-backlash came with both a review bomb AND a refund-bomb. Voidpoint telling people to pirate the game was them trying to have their intended audience still appreciate their effort since they were refunding it and refusing to play it to stick it to 3D Realms.
Yep, but you can't have that conversation with ... certain kinds of people who will do what it takes to paint such backlashes as ... childish.
Yeah not surprising, screwing over paying customers because of people who aren't gonna buy crap from you, I really do have to question the studios and publishers when they put something out and twitter gets mad, they think they need to then craft their product for twitter, its utterly stupid.
Just another reason you never bend the knee.
@@Spartan322 As a bisexual, the "ogay joke" wasn't offensive, it was just stupid and silly. Low brow gay jokes are fine. It's what the devs posted on Discord that is the issue. No one is forcing anyone to be trans, especially children. That's transphobic fear mongering and it is highly worrying for the devs to be saying such things. And the word "r_e_t_a_r_d" is indeed a slur. However, it's not as bad as the n-word and multiple games have used the n-word before and gotten away with it, such as GTA. Doesn't make it right, it's still offensive, but if used in the right contexts it could lessen the negative implications. Plus, in the end it's just words. Language is a human construct and swears and slurs are all just made up by society. It isn't a big deal. Like, if the game was blatantly transphobic and had you mass murdering transphobic steriotypes as a "joke" like that one StoneToss video game, that would be an issue. But of what I've seen the devs aren't like that and the Twitter users blew it way out of proportion.
Yeah, unfortunately the second they started treating LGBT people as worthy of respect instead of spreading conspiracy theories, all the hardcore gamers threw a temper tantrum
Larry's video editing default template has that Peter Molineux clip on the timeline ready, it never fails to appear.
Here in Australia 🇦🇺 Hotline Miami 2 was banned before it could be released. Unfortunately government censorship is our way of life in this country. The developers gave us their permission to pirate the game so we would still get to play it.
(Eventually I imported a European copy when it came out on Switch, because Switch is not region locked).
the problem is that steam revokes game titles which are payed by creditcard fraud... even if you only got the keys... if that happens too many times on your account your account may be gone as well...
Which is why it's really easy to make a new account to attach that stolen CC on. Unfortunately, the downfall of being able to make free accounts are that cheaters and criminals like that can make an infinite amount of them...
It took me a couple minutes to realise that you picked 24 hour Cinderella for the SEGA segment because it's Majima's song, and he wears an eyepatch. And who else is famous for wearing eyepatches? Pirates.
The sheer depth behind planning the background music was quite surprising
Shout out to Green Heart Games with Game Dev Tycoon for putting up a hardcore version of the game up for pirates.
I actually had a bug that made that pirate thing happen for me, even though I bought the game. I tweeted greenheart about it and they laughed at me for being a pirate, until I proved I bought it (by talking to a dev via steam, where it was in my library for anyone to see), and they said they would patch it. No idea if they did, I haven't played it since.
@@DarkElfDiva I always wondered if those "Pirate only features" could activate on an officially bought version. I always assumed that the developers just uploaded a special version with the feature. But it seems like it's more complex than that.
@@DanVzare It definitely did with the Sims 3. I had downloaded a character off the official site that was uploaded by someone who pirated the game. It triggered the infinitely expanding mosaic censor that was in pirated games. Took me forever to get support to finally check that I indeed had a legit copy of the game. That event from them caused me to pirate all the DLC's out of frustration dealing with support.
@@DanVzare Sometimes it is a special version, sometimes there's just code in all versions that checks for DRM or whatnot, sometimes other methods are used.
I had SEGA smash pack 2 on PC and I still remember it as one of the greatest purchases of my life. Flicky, Shining Force, Comix Zone, and mother heckin Vectorman! It was such a great collection
Glad I'm not the only one that enjoyed that!
It has good games but the sprite and sound issues are unfortunate.
Yes, one of the first video game experiences I ever had! Fantastic games!!
I've really never understood at all why the Vectorman games are so popular. They're very weird to control, enemies are bullet sponges, it looks and sounds incredibly ugly, etc. I'd much rather play something like one of the mega men games for a run and gun, than Vectorman. I just don't get why they're always listed among the best games for mega drive. They're so unbelievably average. The only somewhat unique thing they've got going for them ie the pre-rendered "3D" graphics. But even then, they did a far far worse job of it than Rare did for the DKC games. I don't like the way the DKC games look either, these days they're just ugly, but they look a damn sight better than the vectormen games.
@@duffman18 It’s hard to go back to. I know for a fact that I beat the game and watched the credits as a kid, but these days I struggle to get through the second level and wonder to myself how the little kid version of me was a better gamer
It's always fun when the devs urge you to pirate. Salute to them arggh
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, drunk to their health.
The reason why the music is awful on the Sega Smash Pack is that it was developed in a very short time, and the developer didn't have time for the FM engine. While the initial Chowning-formula is pretty simple and actually based on the principle of Phase Modulation rather than Frequency Modulation, the rest is quite hard to debug (envelopes, algorithms, etc). Also here's the Chowning-formula for anyone interested:
y = l_0 * sin(x * m_0 + l_1 * sin(x * m_1))
Where x is the time constant, y is the output, l are the output levels of the oscillators, m are the integer multipliers of the time constant. You can substitute sin with almost any kind of wavetable, and Yamaha's main change on the whole thing is adding feedback to the modulator, and more operators and algorithms on most of their FM chips.
Sounds legit.
there's that much math involved? so it's like, "Raw code" music?
Sega every time
@@KairuHakubi + calculating the time constant for the given note + feedback + envelop generators + algorithms
In fairness, it's still incredibly difficult to reproduce the FM chip output. I think the only option is to emulate the chip itself in software. The latest Sonic rereleased on current consoles also have wonky audio.
Continuum, originally Subspace was made by the devs to test networking stuff, but VIE made them package it up as a full game to sell with DRM which requires the CD to be in your computer.. The devs pissed, made and released the CD Crack for the game.. This was back in 95, and the game is still limping along after those golden years
Surely I'm not the only person who recognized the Phantasy Star Online 1 shop theme? I sank _so_ much time into that game back in the day.
fun fact about Ion Fury is it was originally called Ion Maiden. They changed it due to a lawsuit from Iron Maiden copyright holder.
I still call it Ion Maiden just to fuck with that guy. I should make a mod that changes the title screen back.
There's... so many reasons that's illegal. You can't trademark 'iron maiden.' it's a common name for an object. A torture device made up by renaissance era atheists to slander religious people and the past in general.
@@KairuHakubi No expert, but it was probably a THREAT of a lawsuit.
The name was being used nowhere near a music context or any Iron Maiden intellectual property, so I'm pretty sure it would have been thrown out had it gone to Court.
@@DarthPerkins yeah. And I mean, as long as you don't bother to hire a lawyer, you don't waste any money being taken to court frivolously, right? just wastes your time.
"your honor, this self-representing idiot just keeps repeating "it's not illegal" "
"well it isn't."
@@KairuHakubi It doesn't matter what the law says. The only two things that matter are what you can convince a judge of, and how much money you can spend. 3DRealms could have fought it, but they're a smaller company and Iron Maiden has a huge record label behind them. It would have cost them millions. Easier to just change the name.
The devs of Disco Elysium also encouraged people to pirate their game after how the studio treated them. The story behind that is pretty sad, so I don't blame them.
Yeah, tragic that one of the most interesting games of the last few years is now tainted so much. I shouldn't feel guilty for giving a company money for a brilliant product.
That whole situation still leaves me feeling bitter. Their whole world they spent decades working on and building up was pulled up and taken away from them forever. Now they have to start from scratch all over again. Nobody should support the sequel the publisher is working on
@@ADreamingTraveler the weird thing is that they might not have made a sequel in the first place and the damage goes beyond just one game or studio. ZAUM was an artist collective that just decided their art should be in the form of a videogame and now that whole group is dissolved.
can someone explain the situation? im not aware of what is happening, did their publisher screw them over?
@@domeen0gt895 Not a publisher (I think) but an investor they had fund the game. After it had became a big hit with the Final Cut Update (it was cult hit on launch but so much reading put people off) a while after had the two creative heads pushed out the company with no right to their own creation.
But hey, since piracy is encouraged, there is literally nothing stopping you from enjoying one of the best RPGs of the modern era (perhaps of all time).
Go get your money. All you have to do is to tell the truth. Easy.
... right?
A little-known fact is Freedom planet had an easter egg where Lilac and Carol tell the people who are pirating, "if you pirated the game, saying that it's ok that you pirate the game, just donate if you want to see this project grow, and that your purchase matters." It would be an honorable mention to bring it up.
It was never implemented. It just exists in the files, so it doesn't really count.
Friendly reminder that while copyright infringement and plagiarism are illegal and can get you sued for a pretty penny, they are *_not_* crimes (unless it's money or other government-related stuff anyway), piracy and theft are two separate crimes and copying is not theft, if you copy something, the original is left.
Yep, it's the difference between civil court and... I honestly can't remember what the other one is called. Criminal court?
Either way, you're right.
I don't know all the legal technicalities, but you are absolutely correct in stating that the two things are not the same, despite many falsely equating the two. The movie industry makes ridiculous claims like this all the time. They tried to get VCRs outlawed, Jack Valenti said, "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone." in testimony in front of the House of Representatives. Fred Rogers (from Mr. Rogers Neighborhood) testified in defense of the VCR and the American public's right to use them.
And Nintendo tried to get the Game Genie outlawed, claiming that using it violated their copyrights. Initially, Americans who wanted a Game Genie had to import them from Canada.
Also, major movie studios plagiarize stuff all the time. The Batman (the movie staring the guy from the sparkly vampire movies) was plagiarized from a comic book script a writer submitted, through their official submission process, that DC rejected. And Star Trek Discovery (a.k.a., STD) was clearly plagiarized from Anas Abdin's Tartigrades video game, but the court sided with CBS. This is why a Star Trek prequel had a ship that traveled through space using giant space tartigrades and mushrooms despite that not making any goddamned sense.
Piracy is not murder.
.....but can pirates also admit that piracy can harm?
No?
Ok
@@troywright359 *_It's not piracy. I already established that and I never said anything about it not being murder what the f*ck are you going on about?_* Also yes, it can hurt small and independent companies or non-company producers (supposing they can federally register copyrights because otherwise it's not infringing. The supposed automatic international registration for stuff on the internet is actually entirely useless without a federal registration so without one you might as well not have a copyright at all and then it's just unauthorized copying. Which mind in this situation isn't any less bad of course but it can not be legally enforced).
It can _not_ however hurt big corporations. That's a myth they love to perpetrate. The truth is the executives hoard the money that could be used to compensate, which is partially to keep perpetrating the myth and partially because they hate taking responsibility for their own shortcomings but of course, it's mostly just because they love being rich.
Anyone lower on the corporate ladder who takes the negative effects of copyright infringement really only have the responsibility-evading executives to blame.
@mattwo7 but there are still negative outcomes with big companies. Ita not like this is a victimless crime. Those people who catch heat for it still get in hot water ( which they probably don't deserve tbf).
Recently, the actual devs behind Disco Elysium have been urging players to pirate the game because of some awful shit that happened behind the scenes with the rightsholder
Do you know if there is a way to still support the original devs? I'll like to donate at least.
after all those years you never changed your videos keep it this way its nice and nothing should be changed. nice fun facts didnt know about this.
My favorite example of this is Frontier Aja with Koumajou Densetsu 1 and 2. Some time in the early 2010's the games went out of print, and for years the last message from the devs was them asking people to pirate their games instead of buying them from scalpers. I like that kind of spite.
Recently Koumajou Densetsu 1 got A remaster on steam, with the Frontier Aja branding, so I assume the circle still exists to some degree. Even though they haven't made A game in over 10 years. The remaster's by far the best way to play the game too, they got the voice actors for the second game to dub it.
I think an honorable mention should go to Crytek for Crysis. When they heard people were pirating their game to use as a benchmark test for their PCs, instead of getting offended, they embraced the free publicity and steered right into the "Can it run Crysis?" zeitgeist.
I just love that you used the Dutch/Belgian Children’s character of Piet Piraat in the first few seconds of the video as me and so many other children grew up with that character and his show haha
Based on the name… inspired by Piet Heyn?
Schip ahoy, piraatjes! ❤❤❤
While I don’t think the developers ever told anyone to pirate their game, the devs of Devil Engine got totally screwed over by their publisher Dangen Entertainment.
Especially when I was younger The only way I ever got a hold of some video games was by pirating them but developers should keep this as a lesson later in life I did pay for at least one copy of each game I pirated when I was younger as long as your game is good a good chunk of pirates will pay for a copy at some point
I pirated Grim Dawn because I was apprehensive about the game, and a lot of ARPG's are of questionable quality. Not only did I buy a copy of the game, but there's at least 10 people I can confirm bought the game on my recommendation. I can confirm this, because i told them to add me on steam if they ended up getting the game.
Sega then: gives a guide on how to crack their game.
Sega now: puts Denuvo in every single release.
That pirate music intro had me rolling. Almost makes you want to pirate it just for the music.
0:37 - Ooh, a rail shooter for the title drop. I mean, other than those races with Johnny in Sonic Rush Adventure (a game that's hardly retro or obscure), you'd be hard pressed to find something that fits with the pirate theme going on here.
Also, special message for that spambot impersonator that tried to scam me last time: Eff You.
I bet the next one will be about pirating "free" games....yes it does happen. Excellent video Guru Larry.
How the hell do you "steal" something if it never cost anything to begin with?
Im assumimg it less free games and more fremium games riddled with ads and microtranactions
@@brendanboomhour7606 I think some people pirate em if they have DRM or something dumb like having to be online for singleplayer
Well it is suppose to be a content distribution platform. Whether or not the content was legal was never in question.
It's kinda funny how two of the games on this list involved spiting G2A
My favourite "hey, you should pirate this" tidbit is Alan Wake.
The protagonist (Alan) wears an eyepatch. The comic relief (Barry) wears *two.*
That's it. That's the bonus.
(Also, don't pay for Alan Wake. It's not a good series. The writing is like if Stephen King was addicted to horse tranquillisers.
If you want to support the devs, get Control instead. It's actually a good game, and it's part of the Alan Wake Universe to boot, if that's something you liked.)
Speaking of Denuvo and piracy, I had purchased the Steam version of Sonic Mania before launch. It ran like absolute dogshit, crashed often, and on several occasions, locked me out of the game for 24 hours. So I had no choice but to use the pirated version. The game itself ran far better, had zero crashes and no fucking lockout.
Oh, and the ridiculous amount of Denuvo shills that come out of the woodwork the second so meone says something negative about the DRM is astounding. Surprised they haven't pounced on this video for the little joke at the beginning.
Ugh, I fucking HATE Denuvo shills. Anytime someone hates on Denuvo their only argument is "Well the only reason anyone would want it gone is so they can pirate!" And it doesn't matter what you say about framerates and crashes. You can't reason with unreasonable people.
@@DarkElfDiva My favorite argument I usually receive boils down to "nuh-uh!" This is in spite of quite a few user issues, to say nothing of several devs outright stating Denuvo caused performance issues. Clearly, we're all making it up 🙄
_"DeNuVo DoEsN't ImPaCt GaMe PeRfOrMaNcE"_
Yeah. Funny how my cracked MonHun World gets 160fps, but my legit copy can't hit 20fps despite version parity, a 3060Ti, and the SpecialK wrapper on steroids.
Piracy isn't only for cheapskates.
@@Noxedwin maybe stop buying cookie cutter bad games and you wont experience goynuvo
@@Sonicfoxtrot don't be a racism. The developers of sonic mania weren't Jewish.
I'm glad I finally got around to washing as I had been meaning to when the first came out. Honestly I thought that was really nice that one of the developers decided to grant people access easy access to a pirated version of their game in case they can't afford to buy it yet. But still let them know that they would appreciate the money if they do have enough to actually purchase the game. It's a big risk because there isn't really any incentive to spend any money if you're getting the game for free, but a nice thing to do
I talked with the voidpoint guy. Apparently the hubub over Ion Maiden was spurred by a troll... and some jerk at GAME INFORMER was threatening to slander voidpoint for their ogay joke.
They should have claimed Ogay is their grandma's name and they did it in her honor, and everyone is really making her upset by suggesting her name is offensive in some way.
@@KairuHakubi they shouldn't have even done that. They should have kept it in.
@@VolkColopatrion well yes of course. but my inner troll is like "make the bleeding hearts feel guilty"
Now I'm interested- did the troll write the comments in the discord then, but they weren't actually employed by the company, or made it look like they were from the conpany?
@@KairuHakubi even if it were a serious plea to take out the offensive joke it's still should not have been heard
Back in the 90's I had to call Access Software for tech support on one of their games. I happened to mention I could no longer play the original game in the series because I had lost the code wheel. The legends mailed me a crack file on a 3.5" floppy. It also patched an issue where some parts of the game were keyed to the CPU clock.
Somehow a game developer that wants you to pirate actually makes you want to give them money, it’s a weird paradox effect honestly because you feel bad for pirating them like inviting you to guilt.
Its more or less like, I would rather you pirate instead of doing "x" because it still helps us in the long run
Nice use of the Phantasy Star Online shop music on the please Fix the Road segment. I still love PSO and will always come back to it.
I will never tire of Larry always managing to slip in a lil roasting ol' Petey in the majority of videos. God's work, Larry. God's work you're doing.
During my Amiga days, in the early 90s, my friends and I would meet up every other month or so and have an evening at one of our places. Each of us would bring a box of 50 blank floppies. We would all go home with new fresh warez
I don't know why games that already exist on GOG are being released independently as pirate copies. The GOG version can itself be distributed as a pirate copy. That's kinda the point of DRM-free.
It's because very few people are cracking games anymore. As such most so-called "crackers" literally just distribute DRM-free games.
The cracking scene has died out for a variety of reasons that I won't list (especially since I can't back any of those reasons up with evidence). But there's still a couple of people doing it. But not many.
By releasing their own distribution, developers make sure that nobody releases their game into pirate site with some extra 'goodies' attached to them. Sure, I haven't stumbled into a virus for quite a while now (then again, I don't pirate very much), but there's always a risk.
Music 2:00 : (OST) _Power Drift: Like the Wind._ Excellent choice, Larry!
I was looking for this information! Thx! :D
disco elysiums devs want you to pirate their game as well
4:00 there is another issue: the developer has to pay for charge backs, he pay to refund the customer, so when someone purchase on g2a, not only the developer dont make money as in piracy, but he LOSE money, and a customer who think he is legitimately giving money to developers get screwed and dont want to support anymore.
0:35 you missed the perfect opportunity to say "scurvy software"
Ironically the footage of Descenders, in a video about piracy, makes me want to buy it. Something about it looks really cool
Well Please Fix The Road just did its job as this is the first I've seen of the game and now it's on my wishlist!
I guess in its own way, the pirated version is a kind of special edition too, having both would be neat, especially with the instrumental sea shanty
4:16
He would've gotten sued by Microsoft. They sued a guy named Mike Rowe for opening a software company named Mike Rowe Soft.
To be honest , nowadays every bad tripple A-company wanted their undercooked, mediocre games to be pirated .
Its still relevant.
No, they don't. Not when the games are filled to the brim with MTX. They want more money, not more consumers to enjoy the game.
Ever since the Fix the Road segment I've been hearing "What do you do to a drunken sailor?" in a loop in my brain.
It's been hours since.
Huge hug for you for using the Phantasy Star Online shop music. I still play that game, and typical custom servers for it average 10 players a day, all the time. I wish it could get more interest, PSO is such a damn good game, it transcends all that have come after it! Again, thank you for representing such a niche game here!!!
I played it a ton in the dreamcast days, when you had to use a dial up connection.
but what system do you play it on now?
I *REALLY* despise G2A and I'm not even a game developer.
It always surprised me that the big publishers didn't really care about them, The indi devs and publishers on the other hand,... Well they're exactly why I never bought a key from G2A.
Can't tell you how many hours I've listened to that PSO lobby theme that plays in the background of the second entry.
Every time a new Larry Bundy Jr video drops, my day gets just that much better. Love your work Larry, keep it up.
Every time another deep fried mars bar drops, my pants get just a little bit tighter.
@@phattjohnson Lmao
If I ever develop a game, I might take a cue from "Please Fix the Road's" development team. 😆😉
12:28 Certainly wasn't expecting Outpost X11 to be there.
No matter how many videos you do, not one of them ever feels stale or repetitious.
Excellent work!
Bit of a shame, really.
There's no true complete soundtrack for RaC1.
Technically the same goes for the other soundtracks in the original sextet aswell, but RaC1 is the most severe because the _most_ complete soundtrack we have (being rips of the in-game music from the retail release) are compressed to mono.
6:07 I love the Drunken Sailor song
What will we do with the drunken sailor?
Iirc, Hotline Miami was also posted to piracy sites by the dev due to grey-market site (like G2A) issues. He even provided technical support to people who pirated the game.
Really have to give credit where it's due to the PFTR devs, that pirate intro spanks!
Appreciate the depiction of a angry credit card theft victim as Ken Shamrock. That result helped me to understand the character!
4:26 - The virgin AAA publisher: "I need to use this intrusive and customer-unfiendly DRM to protect my precious green paper."
The chad Please Fix The Road developer: "We also put our own game on a torrent because it was going to happen eventually, so go ahead and try it. If you liked it, please consider buying it."
it's been proven over and over again piracy don't impact sales, as pirates wouldn't have bought the game to begin with.
To be fair, you REALLY have to be a horrible parent if you decide your child is trans on birth.
Or anytime after.
I used G2A once back in high when a friend of mine recommended it because he was like "wHy pAy fUll pRiCe fOr SoMeThInG wHen YoU cAn GeT iT SO mUch cHeAper on G2A??". Back then I didn't know better, even when some people tried to explain it to me. Larry's explanation here, to me at least, was also a bit hard to follow, but now at least I get it.
Awesome episode, Larry! Thanks as always!
Thank you, slowly getting back on track :)
@@Larry Well I love your content, man, keep it up when you're able!
Honestly, I wouldn't mind a sea shanty every time I boot up my PSX.
The thing about Ion Fury is that they eventually re-implemented the 'Ogay' bottle since they were accused of self-censorship, and they were having none of that. So, that also kinda helped as well as they decided to just put their foot down on what is otherwise a silly, harmless joke. And, in my opinon, rightly so.
That whole thing wasn't worth the outrage from either party. It's not even a good joke. It wasn't worth putting in the game in the first place, it wasn't worth getting offended over when it was found in the game, it wasn't getting offended over when it was removed from the game, and it wasn't worth putting back into the game. It was just stupid.
@@mjc0961 Wokists tend to ruin whatever they can get their grubby little hands on.
@@mjc0961 Games are filled with stupid things. Caving into woke idiots and doing what they demand is just about the dumbest thing you can do as well. They're never happy no matter what you do.
@@mjc0961 Never self-censor. Jokes don't "hurt" anyone, no matter how insulting.
Olaid wouldn't have offended anyone, Ogay it was in bad taste.
Would have been wiser to put up a Lo Wang lubrication joke than to target minorities just for the retro gag.
Why they insisted on ogay was more childish and immature than a funny and creative nod.
They knew better and acted like Naw it will be fine.
As a sixth game that fits on this list: A Hat in Time. Though not directly stated, they inserted a small easter egg into the game in the form of a book titled, "Proof of Ethical Consumption Under Capitalism," which was filled with nothing but blank pages. Given this, one can safely infer that they would actually _prefer_ everyone to pirate their game.
HE he, the funny part is... we need capitalism until we as a society grow past the inherent selfishness of want for want sake, and our entire view changes on how we interact with others. Not saying it's 'clean', but the current alternatives are .... not viable at large scale, and will lead to a very suppressed society by the select few with, rather than the overall.
Everyone's favorite Star Trek series is capitalistic, but the ships shown & bases shown .. are military centric. Meaning that soldiers aren't charged diddly for food, weapons, clothing, or supplies while on deployment, and all available tech is used to supply it as cheaply as possible.
@@DePhoegonIsle Capitalism isn't markets (markets have existed for forever), it's a form of ownership of people's labor and natural resources. Just another form of hierarchy where a few merchant kings rule, instead of the military (aka, feudalism).
The socialists want to introduce democracy into the workforce and nationalize natural monopolies and matters of common welfare. For an example of the opposite, we collectively spent billions on the covid vaccine and then handed over the profit rights to some guys. It's far from the first time and far from the last time.
We collectively accept things like homelessness and hungry children because these kinds of things are essential for the system to function. The metaphorical stick that hits us literal donkeys.
You know... the developers and players of that game strike me as the type of fellas to do that. Soy-infused mediocrity that weirdos worship.
@@LAST_STAND_FAN A Hat in Time is a good game. Just because they made an anti-capitalist joke that I don't agree with doesn't make the game and anyone who plays it bad. Lmao what a snowflake getting mad over a joke in a video game.
@@krimsonkatt It's a mid 3D platformer, luhmao. Literally any Mario game is better. I just like making fun of the devs because they're the types of fellas that run Twitter.
At least Microsoft paid the Descenders developers. After 1 year on game Pass, it were still so popular that they extended the period.
Besides that it also sold well on Steam among other official shops.
Oh, I bought from G2A a few times... now I feel awful.
It is so tempting, especially when some of their prices are less than half of what they are on steam.
@@Larry On the other hand, if the game is by a detestable publisher (EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Tencent (I think that covers the main ones)), then knowing it costs the publisher money to buy from the likes of G2A makes it very tempting just on principle, even if you're not actually interested in the game itself.
How ironic it is that I'm playing One Piece Odyssey while watching this & the this video about video game piracy ends up showing gameplay footage of it!
See these devs get it. I can't tell you how many times in just the past few months I've seen indie devs like the Dead Cells devs increasing their pricing in other regions by over 300% in places like South America or Turkey. And it's like those people are not going to pay even more for your game when the original prices were already too much for most of them. Those people will pirate your game. They won't pay more. Devs will say how they can't lower their prices in certain regions because then people will create workarounds to buy them for cheaper prices in other countries. Alright so if you do that then those people are just going to pirate it anyway. The Heartbound devs called Pirate Software understand this and price their games accordingly in every region. For example their game is cheaper to buy in Argentina because he knows people there can barely afford to buy games and he knows if he raises the price they're just going to pirate it so he'd rather lower the price and get some of their money instead of none.
This is about to get even worse as AAA games are bumped up to $70. I saw the new Zelda's releasing at that price last night and my unemployed heart sank.
That Streets of Rage "soundtrack" made ME cry
That iron fury story has me questioning humanity
I've been questioning humanity every day for a long time now. The answer is always "they mostly suck".
There's also the devs of Scratch, an amazing point n click horror game, where they had a music license issue and had to remove the game from steam but couldnt afford to fix the music issue, so they encourage people to pirate it and provided a bunch of steam keys on their discord
Anybody without copy protection was begging for it :)
4:30 ok I instantly started dancing when that Chaotic Bar track from PSO Came on...
Man that background music takes me back..
Love love LOVE pso
Thank you, as always, for adding subtitles to your videos.
What I'm getting from this is that I should buy most games through reputable channels such as Steam or GoG (definitely not EGS), and buy games from EA, Activision and Gearbox (and anyone who makes their game EGS exclusive) through G2A.
correct
No. No matter how much I hate them, I wouldn't do that. If I didn't like a company, I just don't buy their game. It's quite simple. Unless I buy it used from another person or a game store that has it used. It's called being smart.
@@MLPIceberg the point is if you buy it from g2a you could cost the company even more money
Props for using the Phantasy Star Online shop music.
Mikerowesoft got sued by Microsoft long ago. Best not to try that again
4:40 Sadly, there is. Ever wonder why Denuvo has infested so many AAA PC games? It works more than ever and there is only one apparently-extremely-mentally-unwell person left who is capable (technically there's also another one but they're only focused on cracking Footbal Manager games). So if you see that a game has Denuvo, abandon hope, unless it's the most popular AAA game currently.
There's a real sincerity to your work, Larry. Cracking as always.
I appreciate the use of the PSO soundtrack, that lobby music takes me back.
Ion maiden was the true name of ion fury until iron maiden decided to bitch about it
I refuse to call it by any other name
it is seriously a fantastic shooter i highly recommend
It ain't a Larry Bundy Jr video without Peter Molyneux slander.
I never understood the "if people pirate our game we won't make any money" stance when paired with "we can't release demos because people will just play that instead". I honestly use pirated copies to demo the game and then if I'm enjoying it I'll save for a legit copy of it, games are so expensive now that I can't afford to drop $60 on something I'm gonna hate. If they don't want people getting illegal copies of it, the first step is to bring back demos
A lot of devs prefer not to make demos because it's taking time and money to create a version of the game that's fully functional from start to finish, which may still end up make people reject your game if it turns out to contain a bug they could fix in the main release. Essentially it's extra work in an era where more and more games take more and more time to make due to being far more complex creations now, for gains that aren't really guaranteed. It'd be nice to live in a world where devs weren't already stressed out and could make them for the sake of pleasing the customers... but it feels like in today's AAA-world they're just gonna get rarer and rarer.
The pun about Unity games is a bit uncalled for. Cuphead, Inside, both Ori games, Among Us, Fall Guys... In fact half of the best indie games are made in Unity. 😜
Wait a minute this isn't pirates of the Caribbean
It's guru Larry's newest video Aaarg