There are only 3 developers I will preorder from whenever I find the game they are releasing interesting. Erin “Concerned Ape” (Stardew Valley); Bob the Bot (Survivalist); and Terry Cavanagh, the creator of VVVVVV.
They keep their games updated, they are pretty chill people, and they keep players informed during development.
For now, they are the only ones who have earned my trust.

For everything else, it’s full patientgamer mode for me. Wait until the whole game is released with a single price tag, 90% discount, no online requirements outside of multiplayer, and community fixes.

There’s so much competition in gaming right now, and good AAA games are so few and far between, that I don’t see a need for piracy. For every $90 piece of garbage there are ten $20 diamonds (don’t forget Devolver in your list of good small companies). I don’t ever buy dlc/deluxe/etc editions unless the company/game has earned it (almost never).

I will admit, Rockstar creates some high quality experiences, but their monetization practices are down there with the worst of them.

I can’t justify not pirating, I just think for me the motivation isn’t strong enough right now. Too many affordable good games to choose from.

I wouldn’t add pirated games to steam. I think I heard they can ban your account for that. But yeah agree, don’t support bs practices.

I just don’t buy games that have features I don’t like. I don’t pirate them, I just don’t play them.

Most of my money goes to indies because they don’t pull this BS. I’ll play the occasional AAA game if it’s worth it, but not many.

Okay, okay.

I am going to have to whip out this criticism for anybody that has made these kind of rants.

STOP. FOCUSING. ON. AAA. GAMES!

I’m not kidding, that’s your problem and that’s anyone else’s problem who get sick of gaming as a whole. You keep kicking that can down the street for AAA game development to pander to you, but end up disappointed over and over and over. But you still kept your hand out, you still bought their games at Day 1, you still bought their DLC, you still waited for all and any patchwork. You were still there!

Meanwhile I and several dozen others by now, have been in the pirating game for years before you and anyone else had the guts to finally join in after having your face slapped hundreds of times by this point.

And people have been also telling you for years as to what the better alternatives that was out there were, but nooope! Still stuck to AAA development.

Took you long enough.

I am not going to discuss the ethics of piracy because I genuinely don’t give a fuck (also the vast majority of people don’t know the difference between ethics and morality and insist whatever they do is Good so it is even less productive than slamming my hand in a cabinet).

But if your goal is to actually not support those companies? Don’t play the games. Because “Wow, Spider-Man is fucking awesome” is still going to encourage others to buy it. Even if you say “Wow, I am so glad I pirated it because Spider-Man is fucking awesome” is going to encourage people who don’t know how/don’t care to pirate things to buy it (and people are going to think you are an obnoxious edgelord).

And yeah, I’ll parrot others: If you think games are in a bad place (from a monetization and content perspective… not from a funding and censorship one) then that just tells me that you don’t actually care enough to follow indie devs.

Last game I ever bought was minecraft, back in 2012(?) for $15. Played it non-stop for a decade before the community imploded. Got my money’s worth. Haven’t bought a game since. No point unless they have a similarly active multiplayer community. It’s a pirate’s life for me.

If something isn’t respecting your values, I’m of the opinion that you make a stronger statement by not even pirating those games. If you’re spending time playing them, you’re also not spending time and money playing some game that was meticulously made to respect your values. You’re fine playing indie games, but you’d play more of them if you gave up playing these AAA games that you decided to pirate. You talk to your friends and on forums about the games you play, which will at some point convince someone else to buy and play them, too. If you want them to hurt, so that they change, don’t even give them the time of day.

I don’t try to criticize people for pirating games. They’re expensive and a lot are greedy.

What I do tell people though is support good games.

If you end up playing a pirated game you really enjoy, you should try to support it if you can, even if it’s from one of the bigger publishers. It’s basically our only way to truly tell a publisher that we like something and to keep making it.

Not counting un reasonably priced re-releases though. I totally get that (looking at you Nintendo for Galaxy 1+2)

Steam is fine, for the most part, but steam is also DRM. Personally I opt to buy games on GoG, because whatever releases there, you can download the installer and play offline, anywhere, anytime, and due to the platform requirements it strips a lot of the extra nonsense of requiring accounts and launchers and such.

The one downside is some publishers/developers don’t have the latest version on there or release on there later as definitive builds, but it’s better than having to deal with all that nonsense to begin with.

Since you mentioned publishers that haven’t been greedy, I’ll throw a few more out there that I think are worthy of support. They don’t need launchers, that don’t need accounts, they don’t have predatory subscriptions. They just make great games.

• Supergiant Games: Transistor, Hades, Hades II
• Larian Studios: Divinity Original Sin, DOS II, Baldur’s Gate 3
• Playstack: Balatro

Otherwise, I’m totally with you. The account-walling of the Internet as a whole has pissed me off royally and I see no reason to give those bastards what they want.

Man ea and Ubisoft games suck so bad I don’t even bother pirating them. I’m not even being facetious, the last ea game I played was the dead space remake which was passable but also totally skippable, and I borrowed a friends ea account to do that, getting bored half way through and stopping. Had he not offered I’d not have played it at all. I think the last ea game I paid and played through was mass effect 2.

Same thing with Ubisoft. I briefly had gamepass and played AC Odyssey for three hours before losing interest, same with their terrible Greek botw wannabe.

Neither company has released anything I’ve even been interested in since that, years and years ago.

That said I still buy rockstar games, the amount of money, effort, and attention to detail that went into Red Dead 2 is simply breath taking, but by the same token i bought it for twenty bucks after pirating it to make sure i liked it and it ran well.

Other than that I’m on the same page as you. Also I’m not criticizing you, just pointing out a slight difference in opinion. I pirate two dozen games a month

I am not going to be the one to try to stop you but you need to keep in mind that games/sw piracy comes with great risks.

You need to execute anti cheat / drm / copyrighted stuff and this is always a big door open to malware.

Be cautious out there, it is not a pleasant walk

Too many investors coming off cheap, obvious ripoff games for a mobile telephone.

The trump family of asshole con-men just bought EA. Everything from now until they’re sold off for scrap is not only completely worthless, is actively hostile to users.

It’s a sign that the cons and grifting has 100% fully come to Computer games. Many have exploited them before, but not like this.

I haven’t bought a full price AAA game in at least 20 years for this reason.

The last few years though things are getting really bad and I have begun investing heavily into retro game disks for my PC as well as on my OG Wii and PS1, 2 and 3 games for my PS3 phat.

I’m getting some great games for l from $1 - $12 that i can play anytime, no connection required.