It's time we admit that justifying piracy in 2016 is pure nonsense

Today I spent quite a lot time trying to make some space on my antiquated hard drive. Browsing through all the data I've collected since 2009 turned out to be quite a sentimental journey. What was rather shocking was my realization that I still had lots of pirated software on my PC.  Yes, there was a time when I could've easily been considered an archetype of modern piracy. Like many others, I pirated because I could.  Over the last 6 years I have taken steps to get over my pirating habits and I'm proud to say that it's been almost a year since I last ran a Bittorrent game on my PC. However, even at the apex of my piracy days I was fully aware that what I was doing was a form of petty theft, akin to shoplifting a Mars bar. Trying to claim that what I was doing was morally justifiable had never even crossed my mind. Yet, to this day the internet is filled with people making ridiculous arguments both for and against piracy.

This is exactly what bugs me about the modern piracy debate. The defenders of piracy tend to claim that what they do is a form of politically justified protest in the name of the Open Source ideology. At the same time, companies keep insisting that pirates are scary criminals whose only ambition is to destroy the gaming industry. In no other debate around gaming have both sides ever been so shamefully dishonest and manipulative. I'm writing this because, above all else, we as a community need an injection of honesty into the subject matter.  People pirate because it is a very logical behavior. Piracy enables the consumer to access their favorite games for free while the odds of suffering negative consequences are very low. There's no deeper meaning to it, most modern pirates enjoy not paying for their games much more than the alternative.

Let's start with the poverty fallacy i.e. people not being able to afford games. I have to make a clear distinction here; the   have to remember that there are countries where poverty is the driving force behind piracy. Personally, being poor played a significant role in why I started using pirated software. At the turn of the century Poland wasn't exactly the best place to live in. At that time, my parents juggled a multitude of financial responsibilities related to my disability as well as general costs of living. Getting me a chipped PS2 was literally all we could afford. Because the legal market for video games was minuscule, getting a good deal on a legit game was an impossibility. I'm telling you this to give you a better picture of the game market in developing countries such as Brazil, Russia and China. If the industry does little to adjust to developing markets, I'm fine with piracy filling in the void.

What makes my blood boil is the cynical use of the poverty fallacy in the West. Bittorrent piracy is a predominantly western phenomenon. The reason why it is rather difficult for me to believe in torrent piracy being driven by poverty is the fact that it requires robust internet connection. Last month, when Jonathan Blow spoke out against people downloading the Witness illegally, many pseudo-activists condemned him and stated that this was punishment for the 40 USD price tag. Parts of the gaming community cling on to this misconception that piracy is not generating lost sales, because people wouldn't buy overpriced games in the first place. This might have been true 10 years ago, but certainly not today. The competition in the digital distribution space provides the consumers with abundance of deals and alternative pricing solutions that essentially let you decide what you are willing to pay for a particular game. The only requirement is a bit of patience. So how come did the Witness, a game marketed to English-speaking audiences, rise to the top of Bittorrent charts?

The Witness is a great example of what actually motivates people to pirate a game. One mechanism that is not widely discussed when we talk about piracy is game prioritization. Most serious pirates struggle to justify incessant piracy to themselves on the daily basis. Because of dealing with the moral ambiguities pirates are likely to periodically grant the "privilege"  of getting their money to "worthy" games. At the same time priority B titles are deemed "unworthy" and thus "deserve" to be pirated. This line of thinking has granted me absolution whenever I had my doubts about torrenting games. However, this is also why it is the medium-sized titles that can often be considered the true victims of piracy. After all, the bigger titles supported by the hype machine are best equipped to convince pirates to pay while the smallest games are simply overlooked. Being stuck in the middle of this equation is a real problem for games like the Witness.

That bring us to the biggest fallacy of them all, the corporate boycott narrative. Many pirates are filled with pride whenever they mention their supposed civil disobedience against the likes of Ubisoft or EA. The notion that installing a Bittorrent client and downloading a game is a brave political stance is sadder than the laziest form of Twitter activism. What these pseudo-activists fail to grasp is that whenever EA records a loss, regular employees are usually the people suffering the consequences. Your righteous boycott of a Ubisoft game will change nothing in the lives of the board members i.e. the corporate monsters that you actually hate. And the funniest thing is that most pirates know that. It's just that a righteous excuse is a very sexy way of disguising the fact that not paying for games is just very convenient.

So, how do we convince people to stop pirating? Instead of promoting legitimate purchases as the moral high ground, I have my own reasonable anti-piracy pitch. Approximately half of the pirated games I deleted in the last 12 months were never actually installed, I just liked the idea of having them. This is because piracy has a tendency to devolve into hoarding. When you start using torrent sites, you quickly come to a realization that you can download any game in the world for free. This is a very cool feeling that becomes a power trip for many people. However, having all this power at your fingertips often leads to downloading games for the sake of downloading. And whether this is something you can relate to or not, you will probably agree with me that all piracy diminishes our appreciation for games. Personally, this was the decisive factor in my move towards legitimacy. Games have developed to be a wonderful art form that deserves to be cherished. Having to be selective about which games to buy will make you a smarter consumer. But most of all, buying games on Steam or GoG sales will incentivise publishers to provide us with even more discounts.

Piracy is still a problem because it remains a very convenient option for many people. And that is the crucial element in understanding and counteracting the phenomenon. I strongly believe that the Gabe Newell "better service" mantra is the way to go when it comes to ending piracy. Every time Valve introduces a new feature to Steam, a group of pirates lose an excuse. Every time GoG opens up their platform even more, the pseudo-activists lose yet another pseudo-righteous argument. Every time a developer continues to improve their games post-launch, piracy loses some of its inherent convenience. Despite our best efforts to conceal it, human beings remain genetically programmed to be selfish. Pirates will continue making excuses for their behavior as long as it makes sense for them to pirate games. To win this battle, we  simply have to make piracy the irrational choice. As long as we continue walking the path towards better service, while staying away from the likes of UWP, a piracy-free future seems to be a very attainable goal