Why buy games when Star Wars Galaxies Restoration exists and you can be a bounty hunter droid engineer or a heckin politician?
Torrent – a cure to that. You buy only thoroughly checked software.
Only torrent AAA games if you can afford to (if you can’t, go nuts).
If you pirate an indie game, that developer might not be able to afford to make another. Try to use a demo (or even the ol’ steam buy and refund) to check the game in that case.
AAA studios generally make their money from shitty business practices these days, so 100% feel justified in pirating those if you want to play them.
Demo or pirated they still don’t get money mate…
Pirating is usually used as a demo, lots of people still buy after trying a game through torrents. Lots of indie devs gush about pirating actually boosts their sales. You’re looking at this from the wrong perspective.
Downloading a demo helps engagement statistics which feed recommendation algorithms
Pirating helps pirates.
Not casting any kind of judgement, just pointing out who benefits
(Disclaimer I pirate shitloads, just not indie stuff)
Many games don’t have demos, and that’s only if you use store fronts that utilize that. Demos ar also limited and barely get you out of the tutorial, so hardly actually long enough to judge if the game is good. Same with with 2 hour return scumbag tactic… that’s even worse than pirating lmfao. A return is just abiout the worst metric you could give them… and demos that don’t lead to a sale is a good metric how…?
Pirating leads to viral marketing.
And you’re the the person giving people who torrent correctly a bad image. Fuck people like you.
Most modern demos (admittedly a feature of a platform more these days) are time or progression limited, if the point is to figure out if it works on your system and you enjoy the game mechanics, that’s all you need.
If your point is to rob a creator, and if it’s a company like EA, lemme send you a torrent. If your point is to rob a creator that relies on the game to put food on their table, fuck you.
Don’t really know what to tell you dude
Buy only software you need/want. Torrent helps. The amount of As is irrelevant.
Support independent people who are struggling through the collapse of capitalism the same as you are. The multinational conglomerates are doing ok, though.
Omg like the CLASSIC INDIE GAME CELESTE?!?!?!??
When I can get a game on my wishlist for under $20, the time cost of unpacking and patching a game is often more than the value against my bank account.
Like, sure, if they want $90 for something and I can get it for free, fuck it. Especially if its a re-release of a re-master of a 30 year old classic I already have on a console. But I’m not going to short Owlcat Games or Larian or some other high quality indie studio when its well within my budget and affords me 50-100 hours of original gameplay, easy.
Testing. I’m talking about the testing. If the game is in your wishlist it doesn’t mean that the game is good.
Game cracks have their own flaws, especially when you’re running them through an emulator.
If I’m going to spend the time to make a game properly payable, I’m not going to give up on it and download a fresh new copy after the first few hours of play, even if I do like it.
I got Wrath of the Righteous for $4. I’m not going to pirate it, demo it, decide i like it, re-download the game, and restart the campaign over a game selling for loose change. I’ll just take my chances.
Neither am I going to restart Cyberpunk after two hours of tinkering with settings and another fifteen hours of gameplay just to send a company with over $1B in revenue my fist full of quarters.
I agree with this 100℅ I have no issues sailing the high seas, but not when I would hurt a small indie developer or artist.
Of course, true enlightenment comes only when you accept that you will never be able to play every game you already own, let go of the worldly desire to clear your backlog, and buy more games anyway. At this stage of enlightenment, you transcend the need for willpower.
You’re saying I can dodge steam sales?
No Neo, I’m trying to tell you that when you’re ready…you won’t have to.
Transcending the need for willpower is a great way to put it, regardless where you end up. It’s always good to dig into the basics of what you really want, what you get from it, etc.
Like in this case, if it brings you some small joy to spend $14 and get a handful of games you’ve been reading/hearing about for years, I bet that is objectively a good use of your money and time given your priorities in life. No need for willpower, because you’re doing the small thing that helps you enjoy life.
In my case, I still play games on PC and console, but I started completely ignoring the sales and mostly not even using my wish lists. I still occasionally buy games, and most often on sale, but between my existing library and all the other stuff in life I am happy just ignoring the sales. No need for willpower because the desire went away.
I pick up about ten free games a week. The backlog is still growing uncontrollably, but at least it’s not costing anything anymore!
I feel like I do gaming right:
- Find a single blockbuster game from last year that looks good, download it
- Play it for 3-4 days straight over a long weekend without sleep, using a trainer to skip the grindey parts
- Finish it, get sick of gaming, sleep
- Don’t feel the need to touch another game for at least another 9 months
Time to find a new teacher.
Do games i got for free count?
I have played at least 100 minutes of every game i bought. At least 50 hours if not including the last game i got
Lots of games can come in bundles, if you buy a bundle because it has 1 game you want in it, I don’t know if it really matters if you don’t play the other 8 in the bundle. Especially when the entire bundle is cheaper than the game you wanted.
0% off: I sleep
10% off: eye-crack
25% off: gentle stirring
33% off: lean up on elbow
50% off: tentatively reaching for wallet
70% off: Urgh to purchase… rising.
80% off: Real Shit
90% off: STFU, and Take My Money
It gets me every time.
Just saw We Love Katamari + DLC around ~80% off and immediately used a birthday gift card from a friend the moment I saw it. No hesitation, knowing full well I wouldn’t be able to play it until finals season ends like 3 weeks later. But I’m damn ready when it does end. Also knowing full well I have so many games to fucking beat this break 😭
I bought tears of the Kingdom when it came out because I could get it at $40. Still haven’t played it yet, but you know, it’ll still be $60-70 or whatever by the time I do.
Yeah looking at my backlog of games I haven’t played yet, I now ignore all sales and only buy the games I plan to play immediately and not someday. And I get the free game of the week from Epic but I don’t mind never playing any of those
I’ve adopted the policy of only buying a game if I plan to play it that day. Works well.
Also now that I’m unemployed I’m not buying anything. Reinstalled Morrowind (OpenMW) and realizing there’s quests I never even knew were here when I played this as a youth. It’s also super janky, but mods help.
The concept of “backlogs” as applied to entertainment needs to die in a fire.
My library of games is there to give me options for enjoyment. Reducing those options to zero would be a rather strange goal.
80% is very different from 0%.
Yeah, there is an eight out front!
Aren’t “the options” the entire Steam catalogue available for purchase?
I suppose if money is no object and an internet connection can be guaranteed wherever I might take my steam deck.
Surely money is less of an object if you don’t have to have bought all the games in advance?
Assuming prices are static.
I have over 1300 games across various libraries (digital and physical)
If I have cash to spend and it fits into all of the following categories I basically always buy:
-80% off or more, or under $5, or its part of a “complete your collection” bundle that compounds its discount with an existing one.
-Its 8.5/10 or better (or is part of a series of games that I want to play through that has a 8.5+/10 within it.)
-in a genre/series I really really personally like.
But this actually eliminates a lot of temptations.
The only other alternative situation is if I want to play the game immediately but that never happens because I’m always playing through a series of games already it seems like. Right now I’m playing through my Tom Clancy collection. Its the last bit of Ubisoft games I intend to play before uninstalling uplay/ubi-connect (probably forever).
I’ve started rooting through my steam library looking for unplayed games that have steam trading cards and achievements. I’ll install the game and give it a try to see if it’s entertaining. If it’s not, I’ll leave it on the main menu for a few hours to get the trading cards so it doesn’t come up again in my search.
If the steam achievements look easy, I’ll try to break open the game with cheat engine by myself as a sort of game of its own. No doubt I could find some cheat engine trainer that makes the game a single button click but where’s the fun in that.
If you’re even the slightest bit technically inclined and never heard of cheat engine, I highly recommend it. It lets you memory edit running applications like games. Once you figure out what you’re doing you can change in game variables on the fly. The game isn’t the game anymore, figuring out how to break the game is the game. When you install cheat engine you can actually run it on itself, and it is basically a self contained tutorial. Check up in the help menu to get started, the tutorial is AMAZING.
You can just use SAM to edit client side achievements, and also save power running the game through it for cards.
That sounds neat and enjoyable to tinker with. Is there a possibility that using a tool like that will get you flagged and/or banned from Steam? Or do they not care when it’s a single player game?
Yes definitely. If you search Google for ‘VAC enabled games’ you’ll get an easy link to the steam website filtered to just games with valve anti cheat. There’s a search bar on that page you can use to check if a game is on that list. If it’s not there, have at it.
Pretty typically just online games use it. Cheat engine wouldn’t be able to do much anyway, as most multi-player games will keep track of the fun variables serverside instead of on your computer. It’s a jerk move anyway to ruin other people’s fun by cheating in multiplayer.
Edit: Google isn’t showing that link anymore for me. I think this is it, it looks right:
https://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Released_DESC&category2=8&ndl=1
I remember editing memory with an Action Replay on a pokémon cartridge back in the day, possibly my first ever experience of computer programming!
