But if I for example pirated SimCity 2000 at the year 1996 and the game came out in 1991, that means that I stole from the publisher, as the team who worked on the game moved long ago to another project. Some of the games I illegally downloaded or pirated several years after they came out, and that means that the publishers are the ones I am ought to compensate. It is all about being fair as I attempted.

I guess I understood that it cannot really be fixed with the developing team, but yet, maybe I had to compensate the publisher who still sell copies of these games.

If you're going to split hairs, then do whatever makes you feel good.

My point is simply that you "stole" from whoever were the current developers/publishers, at whatever price they were currently charging for the game, but that is completely irrelevant in the current market place. There is nothing you're going to be able to do now to "make it right." You made a poor decision which negatively impacted others and cannot be corrected. Accept it. Learn from it. Strive to do better in the future.

"Some"?

So do you have some statistics on how many people working on game companies (in the past and now) get paid by royalties, instead of (or in addition to) monthly salary? Does that include everyone who was ever related to the development, testing, marketing etc. of the game? Note that yearly extra bonuses to employees (e.g. if the game sells good or they reach certain deadlines) are not the same thing as royalties.

Naturally if we are talking about some 1981 or indie game developed by one person in his mom's basement, that might be the case, but somehow I don't think that is or has ever been a norm in the game development business (well, besides early 80s and so when "developing the game alone in the basement" was the norm, but even for those games the original developer has probably handed over the IP rights to some company, or the original developer might even be dead by now.

For instance the people in CDPR who have been working on The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 (both those who are still in CDPR and those who have left the company), do they get royalties based on how well those games sell over the coming years, and beyond?

And no, I haven't worked in the game development business, but I personally know some who have worked in some world famous games in the past. One I know got big bonuses (along with the rest of the employees) for the success of the two of their games, but no royalties. Later he left the company and moved to another game development company in another country, and no he is not getting any "royalties" for the continued or future sales of the games he worked with in the earlier company.

You make it sound like this is somehow abnormal, and most employees in the game development business have some kind of royalty system in place for any games they've worked in the past, for the rest of their life. I am pretty sure that is abnormal. For indie games in particular, the arrangement might be different, depending if the developer self-publishes the game or what kind of arrangement they make with an external publisher.

I keep buying old games here, because that helps GOG preserve them and get other old games which it also can preserve. So it's a noble cause in my eyes. Ignoring all the noise around what is actually DRM, as long as I can play offline my games without ever going online, I'm quite ok.

What is in the past rarely can be fixed so, no, there's no way to pay back those developers/publishers and reverting the past.
I'm guilty of the same crime myself: when I was a boy I pirated the sh*t out of whatever I came by, like many others here I guess, but at some point I came to my senses and since then I pay for my stuff.

My point is that we are humans, imperfect beings, who need to make errors in order to learn and grow.

Some of us are better/smarter/more sensible than others and are born with the idea of right and wrong/respectful/unrespectful, some don't and need to be taught those things, the environment which we live in has a major influence in building the mind of a human being.

The whole question if it is possbile to give back what has been wrongfully taken is not easy to address: maybe, maybe not.
Maybe pirating games led to developer teams to be dismantled but those same developers may have be employed in other teams, or maybe not, maybe they got bought by big publishers, that was a common practice back then, and still work in there.

One thing however you need to keep in mind: for a legit copy of a game that you buy, usually on day one, they charge much more than what has been invested to develop, (pack), market and sell that very same copy so, in the end, the profit is way, way higher then you may think and with your legit purchases you probably have paid back games you pirated during your youth.


TLDR: I don't want to dismiss your question, IMHO what's done is done, but we can use our experience to move forward and improve ourselves as human beings and maybe our actions might have made partially right what we did wrong.

First of all, copying things is not theft. If I steal your bike, you don't have a bike any more. If I copy your bike you still have your bike.
If you're a bike seller that's still bad, since I might have bought a bike from you. Might. There's potential profit that you didn't make selling a bike, but it's not a loss either since nothing was taken from you.
Copying games is more comparable to riding the bus or train without buying a ticket. No real harm done, but of course if everybody did it, "the system" couldn't work.

Secondly, I don't know how much money you had at your disposal as a kid. I didn't have that much, so yes, I also copied games. Hundreds even. The thing is - I couldn't have bought all those games anyway. Not even a fracture. I started buying games when I could afford it. Now I own thousands.

I don't think there is much to regret. If I hadn't done this back then, I probably wouldn't be spending hundreds or thousands on games nowadays. And do think that people who can easily afford to buy their games and still get them from the peg-legged parrot-on-shoulder side of the web should be ashamed of themselves, since they are essentially freeloaders and cheapskates.

So, my advice would be to not get so worked up over it. Everybody and their cat were copying games as kids.

In my honest opinion, if you're not sure what to do with your money - almost every dev would probably agree that helping someone in dire need is more important than buying their game. Although, realistically speaking, your $100 won't save the world either - but what and where to spend money is up to everybody's conscience on their own.

I'm always wary of analogies because they tend to be so leaky. Taking up seats is a harm of sorts, I'm sure people entering and leaving and crowding the vehicle does make stops longer. (It probably also shows up in the fuel consumption of a bus if there's enough people but I don't care about that too much). The system can still work even if there are lots of free riders though. See for example this train.. it all depends on how it's funded.

Point being: copying software does not take anything away from anyone. Taking up seats can take something away from someone.

And yeah I pirated a lot when I was a kid. No monies for games. I saved up all I could and used it to upgrade my PC so that I could play games at all. Even then, I was stuck playing mostly old games, and most of the well seeded pirate stuff was not going to run well or at all on my dated hardware.

I have no regrets whatsoever.

If we go very deep into this, copying can cause losses.

For instance, if company X makes a game, and that game get heavily pirated, that company stock value can drop because investors can calculate those illegal copies being lost sales. Whether or not that is really the case is irrelevant, as stock values are based on predictions and estimates anyway.

By going further into this (which probably isn't worth anyone's time here) we can come up with other examples too. But saying that there's no effect anywhere is an oversimplified way to look at it.

Not realistic - a game that sells well is heavily pirated, and games that don't sell well are also not pirated much. If the game sells well, the stock value rises, illegal copies or not.

Witcher 3 was released DRM-free, without doubt pirated to hell and back, was a huge commercial success anyway and see what it did to CDP's stock value... same with Cyberpunk 2077.

I would not attribute that kind of loss to piracy. Why? Because it is disconnected from actual piracy and connected only to investors' choices. For example, if I manage to run a very underground pirate operation and investors never hear about it, then it does not affect them at all. Alternatively, I could make a fake pirate sites and fake torrents and convince that hundreds of thousands of people are downloading and seeding the game even though nobody in fact is. In both cases the effect (or lack of effect) has nothing at all to do with actually copying games but with investors acting on whatever limited (and potentially misleading) information they have. Finally, investors can either choose to ignore any (real or not) information about piracy or react either positively or negatively to it. So although there is some sort of link, I refuse to attribute these losses to piracy. (Likewise, I don't think it's fair to attribute child pornography to people having internet connections, even if there's a link in that people probably use the internet to distribute that material. I don't attribute real world violence to video game violence even if some violent people decide to act on their urges and play out their fantasy int real life.)

Pro-piracy arguments have no solid ground to stand upon... but I do believe people who engage in pro-piracy arguments should have all their games taken away (after all, digital information isn't property so it's perfectly okay to deny you the downloads since it's not property)

You realize this is GOG forum right?
Regurgitating bot/paid arguments usually doesn't help much.

As discussed already, you can't really compensate for any damage done to the market of long ago. If you feel that you have something to atone for, perhaps you could estimate the value in terms of money, add some to account for inflation and interest over the years, then pick a good charitable cause and make a donation.

It likely won't benefit the same people, but perhaps it will make a difference to someone who needs it more today, and your conscience should be satisfied in that at least some good has come out of it.

green lenses on

אני חסיד של ישוע, הוא היה יהודי, הוא פעל על פי חוק האהבה, אתה יכול לעשות כמיטב יכולתך כדי להראות את אהבתך ומחויבותך, והוא יטביל אותך באש האהבה אש שישמיד את החטא , כפי שאני מבין שאתה מחפש ישועה

מה אם הייתי יכול לקחת אותך לטיול ילדות כדי להראות לך את עצמך, היינו כמו לא! אתה חייב להפסיק את זה! שלוט בעצמך! או יותר כמו מראה! הילד הזה הוא חכם, הוא לא יכול להרשות לעצמו אומנות ולכן הוא גונב באופן לא חוקי כדי להשיג עותק לא חוקי של משחק שעשוי להיות לא חוקי כי הוא עני והוא צריך לגנוב ידע (אוי, גם משחקים הם ידע), תחזיקו מעמד! תחזיק מעמד! אתה לא יכול לקרוא לגנב ילד רעב! למה לא? אתה קורא לילד המסכן גנב! איך לעזור לילד זה? איך לעזור לו? תנו לו לשחק! הוא יספק לנו זמנים טובים יותר, כאשר לכל הילדים תהיה גישה שווה לידע ולבידור ... בסביבות 2021 ... אבל הוא עלול לחוש כאב על מה שעשה ... הוא בהחלט אדם טוב. ..

אם אתה מעדיף את הצד השמאלי של סיעור מוחות, מאשר הייתי מציע לרשום משחקים שאתה חושב שלא אהבת מספיק, ולאהוב אותם על ידי השארת הערות כנות, מתנה, ... ואולי לא במבצע של 91% אלא קנה אותם במלואם מחיר לתמוך יותר באמן בדרך זו (זהו הצד הימני של המוח חחח), או למצוא את האמנים ולתמוך באפשרות אפשרית.

שמי סב
והורדתי משחקים באופן לא חוקי כשהייתי ילד
אם הסיפור הזה יקרה גם לך אתה עלול להרגיש צניחה טראומטית בהוריקנים כלכליים ופוליטיים,
אז אנא תן לי להפוך את השולחן (תחזיק את המשקאות שלך!)

אני אסיר תודה לאמנים שהחליטו לתמוך בי, ילד מסכן, במשחקים בחינם ובתוכנות חינוכיות, אלוהים תמיד יעזור לך ... לפתח עוד משחקים נהדרים, מלאי אש אהבה.

עכשיו אנחנו יכולים לבכות, לקרר לבבות בוערים, להיות שוב טהורים ^

Not much you can do about the past really, so what matters now is how you go forward.

Perhaps like me, many of those games you got for free, inspired you to later buy them or another game etc. If so, then any cost (just profit really) for your free games could be seen as a form of advertisement fee.

As has been said, many who got games for free were never going to buy them anyway, and so no-one has gone without anything when it is just copies of files.

At the end of the day, it is down to your conscience and how you rationalize.

If you know you should have bought a game and could afford to but didn't, then maybe you are guilty ... subject to a fair price of course. Other than that, we were just trying to gain a reasonable advantage in life. Rules after all, were made up by whoever, and most of us never got the option to opt in or out or have our say. We were born into our societies and have minimal impact on how they are run or governed, rules, etc ... and it is incredibly hard to opt out.