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I always watch at least 10+ gameplay videos and critiques before buying games, especially AAA. For indies, I don’t do it as much, more like “surprise me” kind of experience.
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Submitted 5 months ago by CodenameDarlen@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
Comments
tengkuizdihar@programming.dev 5 months ago
FreddiesLantern@leminal.space 5 months ago
Unpopular take: I’m just gonna quit gaming for a while. If I really need to piss away some time I got a bunch of wad files or newgrounds. F it.
morphballganon@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Don’t write off small devs just because huge corpos are assholes
dil@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
I stopped buying games and swapped to graphic novels which is unnecessary af because I pirate comics and get everything for free instantly, weridly just getting more dopmaine/value out of these purchses than games lately, couldve bought bf6 with a friend so itd be half price but im just not feeling gaming, would rather spend 200$ to read old discounted comics, can get quite a bit of content
TheOakTree@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
Honestly a lot of my excitement for BF6 was killed by the PIF acquisition of EA.
Looking forward to EA games becoming even worse than they already are. /s
kwarg@mander.xyz 5 months ago
I don’t know if its the age or perhaps I unconciously became sick of the practices OP describes, but the games I genuinelly enjoy playing the most nowadays are mainly AA or Indie. And ofc, I don’t mind paying full price for them.
A non-exhaustive list of those I loved:
- Outer Wilds (became my favourite game of all times)
- Inside/Limbo
- Little Nightmares
- Sifu
- The standley parable
- Still awakes the deep
- Gris/Neva
- Firewatch
- Journey/Abzu/The Pathless/Sea of Sword
- Rainworld
- No man’s sky (a special case, I know)
- Cocoon
- Unravel
- Stray
- Below
- Far
- Pacific Drive
- The invincible
nuko147@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I am just ignoring them. Not playing their games even pirated.
Played the demo of Prince of Persia last year, totally liked it, price was good, saw the Ubisoft Logo (CEO tells that you don’t get to own your games, AAA games priced 70-130 €, anti consumer practices), never bought that game never played it.
Nintendo also took a red card this year from me, not another penny from my wallet.
Bonus i put in my Steam ignore list all the games that come out with price >60 €, so i wont make a mistake and buy them even on a huge sale.
I buy indie games and only AAA games full priced like BG3, Expedition 33, Elden Ring, etc… , games that they worth it and they don’t bloat you with stupid stuff. And also their companies respect the players.
TheOakTree@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
BG3, E33, ER, all amazing games that don’t add live service junk, don’t require online connections, and respect the art of video games. They are all worth their price and then some, to me.
Tigeroovy@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Eh, if it’s a new game I want and I can afford it I’ll buy it. I’m just buying less new games lately.
I am however just going hog wild on emulating all the old console games. Got my PS2 all set up with a hard drive and FreeHDBoot so I can just load it up with all the PS2 games I never got a chance to play or own! Hacked my Vita and download all that stuff I never played. Haven’t tried to hack any Nintendo stuff besides my Wii, which I need to do again apparently. But I’m not exactly desperate for things to play, I’ve got loads of things to choose from these days.
Konraddo@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Just curious. Is piracy your strategy to kill the big companies, since you really want to consume their products but don’t want to pay, because of your stated reasons?
For the sake of discussion, is it not possible for you to not buy products from big companies but also not consume their products?
Using myself as an example, I hate EA so much I don’t install any of their products on my machine. Or I hate Adobe so I don’t use it at home (the workplace is uncontrollable). I don’t pirate their products as there are alternatives, and I cannot imagine how I may enjoy them since I cannot forget who made them.
Rainbowblite@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
I am too paranoid about security to pirate a video game. I just don’t play the big AAA titles. There are so many indie games worth my attention and support that I don’t notice.
CodenameDarlen@lemmy.world 5 months ago
[deleted]PoliteDudeInTheMood@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
You’re right, this was more common in the warez days. Nowadays, I generally trust Pirates. If you’re stupid and download a game from some rando site, and not a trusted repacker then you deserve what happens.
If you’re paranoid, stick to clean steam files and use Goldberg.
Brylant@discuss.online 5 months ago
Why bother with ethics or morality? I’ve been pirating what I can half of my life now, just because I’m a poor and stingy bastard. Let people with finished mortgages and nice cars pay those companies.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
I went back to sailing the high seas for games when The Sims 3 from Steam wouldn’t run on Linux no matter what I did, whilst a pirate version run just fine.
Pirating in Linux is actually much more complicated than running the game from Steam, or from other stores via something like Lutris, because for official versions of a game there are usually scripts doing all the necessary Wine/Proton configuration, but not for the pirate versions of a game, so if it fails to run directly you have to enable logging, dig through the logs yourself and figure out which libraries need to be configured with Winetricks, which is how gaming in Linux used to work 5 years ago (and why very few people did it).
Kinokoloko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
Can you tell me how you got it to work?
PoliteDudeInTheMood@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
This is my go-to for anything that doesn’t want to run:
github.com/…/wine-dependency-hell-solver
I’ve switched a few friends to Linux and whenever they have trouble running a game outside steam, I just send them this. Hasn’t failed yet. While I, like many other Linux users enjoy scrolling through logs: this is easier.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
If I remember it correctly, the Dodi repack just needs some audio library configured in the Wine instance via Winetricks as a built-in library.
If using Lutris, you need to enable logging for that game, then try and run it. After it fails to run, look at the log and near where it stops you’ll see it complain about failing to load a certain DLL (and after that lots of failing to load other DLLs as a consequence of failing to load that original DLL). Google the name of that DLL and you’ll find which library it is part of. From Lutris, run Wintricks for that game (it’s in a pull-down next to the “Start” button for the game) and under Winetricks “Libraries” add that library to that Wine instance as a built-in library (if that doesn’t work, download the DLL, put it in the game dir and try adding it as native).
If what you see in the logs is, instead of a “Couldn’t load DLL”, a “Couldn’t find function in DLL” what you have is not a missing library but instead a library version mismatch. Go to Winetricks an try to force the use of the native version of the library (sometimes the built-in version of a common DLL in Wine is the wrong version, and you need to force Wine to use the version of that DL that comes with the game, i.e. the “native” version).
If all that fails, Google that game’s name together with “Linux” to see if somebody else has figured it out.
1984@lemmy.today 5 months ago
Same story as Netflix, it used to be great value but look at it now…
thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
I stopped (console) gaming right around the PS4 era - partially because side I was heavily invested in WoW and PC gaming in general - but also because I was livid over how Sony handled the Anniversary edition launch, where scalpers scooped up ~98% of available stock.
I feel like I lucked out opting to become a retro gamer around that time - there are just so many great games from the PS3 generation and earlier that I could dedicate (my diminishingly little) spare time towards and never run out of absolutely incredible content.
Hell, my PS2 version of Vice City runs just as it did when it was new - complete with Billie Jean being the first track on the radio; something that can’t be said for any current/PC versions I believe.
PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I don’t think I’ve pirated a game since 2008! Used to be if I didn’t like their price, I waited and bought on sale or used. Now that I play on PC and used games aren’t a thing anymore, I just don’t play it.
There’s a sea of games out there and If I don’t like the practices of the publisher, I skip them. Why should I engage with their product if they don’t respect me as a customer or share my sensibilities? I’m not a hypocrite.
DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz 5 months ago
I pirated the RDR remaster and felt very entitled to because I bought it way back on xbox360 with the Undead Nightmare mode, but that whole DLC is broken even though they still sold it to me on the Xbox store. So I pirated to new remaster and when I went to play Undead Nightmare, it’s still broken lol
Psythik@lemmy.world 5 months ago
This was me 20 years ago.
Congrats, but what took you so long?
thermal_shock@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Sometimes day to day life sucks, we need to escape into games we like and look past all the privacy and annoying bullshit. But when nearly all games are this way, easy to step back and go “wait a minute…”
Fyrnyx@kbin.melroy.org 5 months ago
You can't blatantly assume all games are like what AAA is. Indie development is the beacon that says that games can still be made simple, without all of the corporate fluff and shit jammed into it.
MithranArkanere@lemmy.world 5 months ago
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.
d3lta19@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
I would also argue too have Hello games on that list too. Have been great at keeping No man’s sky up to date with new features all for free.
CaptainBasculin@lemmy.bascul.in 5 months ago
Nah, they’re the perfect example to what not to pre order, but keep their games on watch for future.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
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.
harambe69@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
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.
dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
So you think the correct price to hours of enjoyment ratio is $15 per decade of playtime?
burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
That does seem a little out of bounds. I think my personal is about 30 cents per hour. My favorite games are probably in the realm of 1-5 cents per hour.
The ones I look back on and cringe are MMOs. Those were surely pushing 50 cents or more per hour. Maybe if I had been a hardcore dungeon/raider and sank 12 hours a weekend into them they would be alright, but my filthy casual ass didn’t put more than a few hours a week into them. It’s honestly why I still avoid any subscription to this day. It’s always the other side gambling you won’t use their product, and that always strikes me as setting up bad deals.
harambe69@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
Somewhere in that neighbourhood, yes. That’s how much I’m willing to pay. My old carrom board lasted me two decades, and it was $30 (with discs). That’s the yardstick I measure games by.
teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
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.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 5 months ago
At this point, I will just make my own. It’s a lifegoal after all…
mushroommunk@lemmy.today 5 months ago
Do it! Godot is there waiting for you with open arms.
DreamAccountant@lemmy.world 5 months ago
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.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
I am not going to discuss the ethics of piracy because I genuinely don’t give a fuck.
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 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.
dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
100% agree, if you don’t want to support something, then do not engage with it at all. Simple as that.
FalseTautology@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
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
Fyrnyx@kbin.melroy.org 5 months ago
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.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
It’s funny you say that.
I started pirating games again when the official version of The Sims 3 from Steam wouldn’t run on Linux no matter what I did, but a pirated version (which I got just to check if I could get it to work) ran just fine.
Once I figured out how to run that version of the game in Linux (as well as how to sandbox it with Firejail), that knowledge meant I could just as easilly run other pirated versions of games.
Now, generally I’m the ultimated patient gamer (notice how all of that was for The Sims 3, which is from 2009, with its latest DLC being from 2013), but in my Redbeard persona I can just as easilly get recent AAA games as I can any other (probably more easilly, even, as those are the game torrents with the most users).
So I’ve downloaded a number of those, and installed a couple.
And you know what: even the supposedly best ones are BORING. Even highly regarded large open world ones, with their beautifully crafted supposedly alive worlds feel shallow and formulaic in terms of game play and don’t really hold my attention for all that long. I literally have 4 or 5 downloaded recent AAA games waiting to be tried, which I simply can’t be arsed to install because everytime I do try one it just turns out to be dissapointing and I find myself going back to Indie games I’ve played again and again like Project Zomboid or The Lone Dark, or even really old AAA games like The Sims 3 or The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (all bought and paid for, BTW).
Even when the only costs are my time and storage space, modern AAA games aren’t worth it over Indie games of older AAA games with far less dazzling graphics.
As I refuse to pirate Indie games, by now I’ve pretty much given up on piracy simply because all the games I’m willing to pirate are kinda shit.
Katana314@lemmy.world 5 months ago
There’s a scene like this in one of the Telltale Sam and Max games that really deserves a better reenactment. Went something like this:
Sam: “So, Bosco, how much do you want for this…’Deadly virus’ that’s really just a tissue you sneezed into?”
Bosco: “A hundred trillion dollars.”
Max: “WHAT? That’s insane!!”
Sam: “How crazy can you get to think we’re going to pay something like that?”
Bosco: “All I know is, I keep finding the dumbest junk around my store, and think up the most ridiculous price I can imagine for them! And you two keep paying it! So who’s crazy now, fool?”whotookkarl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
I think you can generalize it even further to don’t reward bad behavior. That should include purchasing goods and services from organizations that try to exploit people or commoditize art.
Whitebrow@lemmy.world 5 months ago
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.
Cybersteel@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Also, I’m more confident that old games will work out of the box from gog than Steam. Unfortunately, as a Linux user, out of the box proton supports on Steam is just too convenient. I can’t think of many gog games that natively run on Linux.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
I’ve been gaming on Linux for over a year now, and most of my games library was on GoG, though I also have a number of games on Steam.
Using Lutris for GoG games, in my experience the rate of “just runs out of the box” games (via Wine) is pretty much the same as for Steam (via Proton), both being somewhere around the 9 in 10.
The Steam App basically wrapps the whole Proton thing with automated configuration, including game-specific configuration scripts, and that’s the same as launchers like Lutris and Heroic doing with Wine, but if you’re trying to use Wine directly without such a launcher its like trying to run Steam games without Steam and just doing all the Proton configuration (both general and game-specific) yourself - the old way of running games in Linux from a decade ago with was a complete total PITA.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Through Heroic, while there are some exceptions, you get nearly the same out of the box compatibility. And if you don’t get that compatibility and don’t have the patience to troubleshoot, the refund system for GOG is very generous. I just tried The Alters today, which I knew had issues with Proton outside of Steam Deck, and I got it working just before running out of patience and refunding the game.
BurgerBaron@piefed.social 5 months ago
Steam is also American, so I’m using GoG more now.
ISolox@lemmy.world 5 months ago
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)
Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 5 months ago
That is what I have done mostly. Pirates the witcher 3, euro truck sim and others and ended up buying most on sale because they are just great games.
FenrirIII@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I tried CP2077 (post fixes) and No Man’s Sky pirated. Within 3 days I bought the retail versions because I loved them. Played a LOT of shitty pirated games since, usually no more than 2-3 hours. Steam wouldn’t refund me for that amount of time, so I figured this was fair.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
I’m planning on yo-ho’ing CP2077, but no way an I paying even if I enjoy it. CDPR has fucked me over enough with The Witcher trilogy that they owe me a free game to make up for the time and money wasted.
After that, I might be willing to give them money again for something else, but I’m not paying for Cyberpunk
oplkill@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Haaaaaaaaaaaaank
ModernRisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
Bit busy so can’t make a long comment. Just wanted to say, welcome to the ‘dark’ side. I highly recommend to check the instance in on for everything you need (Megathread). It tells you where to look, which safety measures to take etc.
I wanted to purchase Metaphor Refantzio because the game seems good and then figured out they blatantly said “you don’t own Metaphor even if you purchase it”. Thus decided to pirate it (it isn’t cracked but it is playable).
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 5 months ago
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.
CodenameDarlen@lemmy.world 5 months ago
[deleted]ampersandrew@lemmy.world 5 months ago
You follow your own moral compass. My feelings are, if I was short on money, I’ve got a backlog and a stream of games being thrown at me for free (legally) such that I’d never have to pirate and never be bored. I’m willing to pay more for a good product, and I so thoroughly enjoyed Borderlands 1-3 that I bought the deluxe edition of 4 that was a no-go for you; they’re one of the few AAA devs keeping LAN alive, and that is worth me throwing me money at them to tell them they’re doing it right, on top of just making a very fun game. The companies whose games you’re pirating are the ones that need the attention the least, but every game you could be instead funneling time and money into benefits so much more from each individual sale. Plus, the reason we’ve got so much anti-consumer bullshit in games now is because piracy was a boogeyman for the industry for a long time, so I’d rather not give them any additional data points to make things even worse when we’ve already got an entire era of video game history that disappears when their servers go offline. That’s how I see it anyway.
The times I don’t feel gross about pirating, personally, are when the pirated version is supposedly the better version of the game (like emulating an old console game instead of playing a compromised PC port) or when the game is delisted and no longer available through ordinary channels, like Battlefield 2. You do what feels right to you. Pirating Nintendo games is an option to me, but they bother me as a consumer in all sorts of ways, and I instead spend that time and money on games like The Thaumaturge rather than playing through Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo will be just fine without my sale. The team behind The Thaumaturge may or may not have made enough money to make a second game. If Nintendo was a less shitty company, I’d be buying and playing Metroid Prime 4. Maybe I’ll end up discovering and enjoying something else during that time that needs my dollar more instead.
B0NK3RS@lemmy.world 5 months ago
This is the best way. Give your time and money to something you believe in instead of wasting a moment on something you don’t.
REDACTED@infosec.pub 5 months ago
Rockstar: Abandoning and cancelling GTA V (single player) expansions and purely focused on milking online for pay2win. I’m not hyped for 6.