don’t try to tell me that Disney is going to go out of business because I pirated their latest movie

The problem is the antisocial behavior and externalities. Piracy has a negative externality on society, it lets you consume a product you didn’t contribute to production whatsoever. If it becomes commonplace then yes, Disney will go bankrupt, but will every producer, small or big or anything in between.

Rules shouldn’t be arbitrary. People work at Disney too, and you’ll have less artist, animator and stuff, all paid less, it the market shrinks because of piracy

People who will pay as long as they get their money’s worth, who may also be open to supporting the creator directly

The point is, isn’t the producer right to make the price? You can always not consume what they produce. This category is the most obnoxious; would you ever go to a restaurant and expect to decide the prices?

It’s the very same argument for producers that willingly release their contently freely and let you support them, eventually. It’s their choice.

Of the three you quoted preservation is the only one I find acceptable. If the producer no longer care to distribute their product, then they probably don’t care to what it happens to it either.

I think It is illegal and immoral to sell consumers a license to use a product, under the guise of them owning it

For me the main difference is that nobody is forcing you to accept the transaction. I could accept this kind of argument for drugs for example, where you either take it or die/have serious repercussions. But pirating a movie you would have very much lived without just because is easy to do so it’s particularly problematic.

they are going to get paid regardless of whether you as an individual decide to purchase or pass on a product

Except they aren’t. Or at least, of course they’re payed the same, at the moment. But in our economy prices are signals. If a market will appear smaller then it is because of piracy then after some timesfewer developers will be hired, and each of them will be payed less because you’re “falsifying” the signals. Or even worst, the producers will start to use alternative form of monetization. That’s one of the reason the modern web is based off ads or free-to-play games with microtransanctions are so damn common.

IMO the people in the first camp probably aren’t interested in money if they have chosen not to purchase their media to begin with

The people in the first category should also think about the allocation problem. Those products which they like to consume but not pay for, still had a cost of production. The problem is they want ti consume, without supporting production, and that’s not gonna work for a society.

Probably might be worth a pirate

But here comes a problem of fairness.

You not only want to play the game, you also want to decide how much is worthed for the producer. If the price is too high, don’t play it. Imagine going to a restaurant and saying “sure, cook for me, I’ll later pay you if and how much I think it will worthed”

Not only this but:

Or I might not, since Ubisoft are a bunch of utter cunts.

Because you acknowledge the damaging nature of piracy, not only that, you also decide that rules are applied arbitrarily, which is a terrible thing to base your system on.

Ok but then you create a production problem.

You download it, but that piece of media still had a cost of production. If you don’t pay for it then the producers must find other monetization methods.

It’s one of the reasons the modern web is based off ads, or why free-to-play with microtransanction is so common.

I’m sorry but I find this deeply comic and I can’t stop giggle

At the same time, clickbait has always existed. There’s a reason trash emerged from tv to become his own subgenre

There’s only so much entertainment you can get out of one before you’ve seen everything, get bored, and look for another one.

You’re absolutely right, but that’s true from “your perspective”. For you the fame might last 50 hours and that’s all, but the developers still need to work on big patches, content and fixes even years after release.

If a studio fails to budget for that and make sure those costs are included in the price of the game, it frankly deserves to go bust

And this introduces another topic I think. Would the average consumer willing to spend more for a game with everything in it? AAA already cost 70$ at launch, would the average consumer accept further price increases, or would selling plummet in comparison with reduced price+dlc or free to play with microtransanction?

At the end companies are not inherently “evil” they just look for what works and what doesn’t by trial and error

but authors and filmmakers still make TONS of money.

This is an affirmation many writers would find offensive lol

The editorial sector is in deep crisis, it’s really hard to live off as a writer unless you’re ridiculously famous.

Same thing for the filmmaking industry, look at protest of screenwriters and actors, and to companies terrible financial sheets, and to movie theaters basically bankrupting as maybe their time is over. Also we both agree there’s been a shift from movies to tv series and one of the reason is that you “buy the product piece by piece”?

Ps: funnily enough, period publication of chapters were a thing until not long ago, and still are in somewhere (for example manga in Japan)

The big difference with physical goods is that it’s much harder to steal a McDonald’s burger that it is to crack a single player, offline game. Furthermore, once you ate your burger, if you want more, you have to buy another because it’s a consumables.

On the other hand games are prone to piracy, expecially on pc, you pay once but can play anytime while patched and updates require prolonged work after you purchase.

It isn’t strange that developers look at dlc, microtransanction or game as a service with subscription, because they allow a stable flow of income that can support development, and it’s harder to avoid paying when the game is always online and stuff like that.

I use ChromeOS