After reading today EA’s takes on AI and strategies about boosting user monetization promoting and exploitation of user’s gambling addiction, I asked myself “How can someone defend those company agains boycotting and piracy?”.
So here I am: is there somewhere a curated list of VG companies to absolutely avoid giving money too? If not, do you thing we should do it? It would be nice to have a list with arguments and sources in order to make more publicly relevant the ethical and strateical reasons behind piracy.
p.s.I think it’s ok if you pirate things even without a moral stand behind, especially if you can’t afford games and other media at all, but the arguments still apply
Ubisoft.
https://www.ign.com/articles/ubisoft-exec-says-gamers-need-to-get-comfortable-not-owning-their-games-for-subscriptions-to-take-off
High on the list for sure, near Nintendo BTW
I’m already not much of a Ubisoft fan, but wasn’t this just a response to a question about what would need to happen for subscriptions to take off? What should have been said? In context, it’s more of a hypothetical than an imperative.
Context doesn’t make for good clickbait, though.
Are you saying that Ubisoft doesn’t actually believe that people shouldn’t own their games and that this was a hypothetical discussion that was taken out of context? Because my impression was that this was sort of a response to people complaining about subscription-based games and DRM content that makes the concept of owning games blurry.
Because if this position doesn’t really represent Ubisoft, then what should have been said is whatever does represent Ubisoft. Ideally they should agree that people have the right own the games they purchase.
In my opinion someone should generally own what they buy. That’s why I like GOG, which distributes DRM free games, and part of why I often pirate games especially from large companies. In my opinion the take that people should only have a license representing permission to use a product that is actually owned by a company is delusional if not dystopian, and Ubisoft should be made fun of for having that position, and their games should be pirated.
Here’s an explanation/rant/opinion I more or less agree with by Louis Rossmann if you’re/anyone’s interested
No
Yes
Context is that Ubisoft is pivoting their entire business model to subscriptions, so this isn’t merely “a response to a question”, but their actual expectations of their users for their business model to succeed.