[witherk]

Piracy surely does do damage. But I feel as if it's probably a net positive for the gaming industry overall. Maybe I'm wrong but Indie games currently seem to be in a sort of golden age, despite piracy being as alive as ever. As someone who grew up on blizzard and gamecube games almost every game I purchase these days is an indie game, similar patterns amongst my friends.

[bscphil]

That's quite possibly true. Again, I do pirate things sometimes, and I'm not trying to rule one way or another on piracy.

What I'm trying to get at is that saying on the basis of a priori arguments about what "property rights" a person has that they don't stand to "lose anything" through piracy is incorrect reasoning, and maybe even hurtful to the people who do stand to lose something.

You might as well pursue a long theoretical argument with the conclusion that the Department of Homeland Security has no right to exist, then claim that a janitor who works there has "nothing to lose" from calls to abolish it. Even if you're right about the DHS, it's a complete non sequitur, and a rather callous one at that.

[witherk]

I see what you're saying and I agree. I think this particular argument, is pushing back on the notion that piracy is straightforwardly the same thing as physical theft.

[croes]

Surely? https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy...

[adanto6840]

There are also more games than ever right now -- it's extremely competitive, even relative to just 5 years ago. Source: Am founder of a small indie 'studio', recently released our second title.

[witherk]

Yeah I would imagine it's insanely difficult. The bar for genres dominated by indie games like puzzle platformers, metroidvanias, roguelikes seems infinitely high these days. Seems rough for devs, but as a gamer it's amazing.