If you purchase a product and yet seemingly do not own it, then the concept of piracy doesn’t come close to theft.
Time and time again I’ve ranted about how the modernization of digital media has been the detrament of many industries, especially video games. Where games are simply now locked and tied to DRM platforms such as Sony’s PlayStation Store, Microsoft’s own storefront, Nintendo has their own eShop and for the supposed “master race” we seemingly buy all our goods from the most heinous platform of all: Valve’s Steam store.
I’ve gone on about how over the years we’ve lost countless titles on digital storefronts due to licensing concerns, resulting in the publishers of said media to effectively pull the plug on the product for continued sale.
Just days ago in fact it was revealed that Discovery had axed its services on Sony’s PlayStation consoles, resulting in a multitude of Discovery TV content not only being delisted from the PS Store but Sony were going above and beyond by simply revoking access to said content despite users having paid for it themselves, with no refunds of course.
If you buy anything on a digital DRM storefront you don’t own jack shit, you’re effectively paying for an indefinite loan that can and will be revoked at a moments notice, simply because the creator of such content wants it removed (Discovery) or rather you’ve said some very rude words during an online video game, such as by telling other players to “shut the fuck up“ in which case your account may be banned resulting in the permanent loss of ALL digital content bought on the offending account.
If you buy something, you own it. If for whatever reason you buy a product and don’t actually own it, I don’t consider it to be stealing by downloading said content myself by alternative means.
Especially with the popularity of invasive / cancerous DENUVO Anti-Tamper DRM solutions, if you’re a paying customer you are genuinely buying an inferior rendition of the product that actually performs worse compared to a pirated copy of the same game.
And to top it all off, a swarm of Sony PlayStation users are reporting that their accounts have mysteriously been dealt permanently suspensions, resulting in their account access being restricted and the loss of all digitally purchased games on their systems tied to the account.
Countless users are reporting permanent bans from the PlayStation Network for alleged violations of Sony’s Terms of Service, this seems to be a major error on Sony’s part considering how this is affecting users across the globe and not just isolated to Japanese accounts as Sony are notorious for hating their former home country.
Sony has not issued a statement regarding the issue, and the extent of the amount of people banned remains unclear. As of December 5th, certain users have reported the restoration of their accounts, while others continue to experience permanent suspensions, leaving them without access to their accounts and games.
It’s bullshit such as this that legitimizes the need for piracy even more, people willingly and continually fund barbaric digitized bullshit such as this, companies such as Sony are negligent on full specified reasonings for any bans, refusing to showcase hard evidence behind their decision. Rather there has just been a massive ban wave across Sony PlayStation Network affecting thousands of individuals who have lost access to all of their paid content.
I find it hard to pity these people, they’ve done this to themselves and have nobody to blame but themselves. Fueling the machine by buying into the con of DRM storefronts with digital media purchases, the only way to truly own your games is to simply pirate or own a physical copy which is increasingly becoming more rarer by the day.
Buying a physical copy just bounces back to the same problems anyway, if it’s on PC it’s merely a cardboard disc with a respective code for either Steam or the Epic Game Store, if it’s on console you can take it with you anywhere you’d like however you’re forced to signup to an account and more often than not you’ll likely be coerced into buying a monthly service subscription to take advantage of your game to the fullest on top of needing a constant internet connection as you’re forced into massive frequent updates.
So why not just pirate the game that you clearly don’t fucking own anymore? The only way to solve relentless tyranny from the likes of Sony and Microsoft who are desperately pushing this all digital ecosystem upon consumers, is to simply stop giving them your money.
Sony’s latest PlayStation 5 barely has any actual exclusives to its name, many of their first party releases have swiftly became accessible on PC for absolutely free, so why bother locking yourself to mundane console ecosystems that demand to be constantly fed by your credit card balance when you can instead download everything and anything for absolutely nothing.
Always online, live services, digital DRM, all of this is killing the industry. Hell, you could even argue that the industry as a whole is already dead, especially with popularized franchises going down the toilet such as the latest Grand Theft Auto being a sensitive woke fever dream, if game developers aren’t going to make video games that consumers genuinely want, why the fuck should we be subjected to paying for propaganda in the first place.
If Electronic Arts is going to ban your account for saying “STFU” in-game as that apparently breaches their guidelines and terms of services, why the hell should we be buying any products with the EA label stamped on them? They’re only going to be taken away from you, it’s merely down to a matter of when.
Because that’s the horror of this modern climate, people only begin to notice, begin to start asking questions only after their games have arbitrarily been taken away from them by force, hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of digital purchases seemingly gone up in smoke for absolutely zero reasoning behind it.
