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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 runs 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).

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

Think the physical books help remind me that the digital comics exist, I forget my hobbies without daily reminders and if I dont persue them for a week I forger why I even enjoyed them. Need to start using blender again but I cant remember why it was fun til I use it lol

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.

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 and move to the next. 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.

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

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.

This was me 20 years ago.

Congrats on finally seeing the light, but what took you so long?

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.

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 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.

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 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)

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.

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.