The Poor Quality of Some Video Game Pro-Piracy Arguments

I'm really not a fan of arguments attempting to justify digital piracy, even though some of those arguments may have more merit than others.  I can somewhat sympathize with the argument for preservation, but the short list of piracy-defending arguments below I consider quite poor and I'm more than happy to explain why.

1) Video Game Piracy Is Just Another Form of Robin Hood

With a lot of these pirates, it's not like Robin Hood robbing from the rich and giving to the poor.  These pirates are robbing from the rich and SELLING to whoever is willing to PAY.  Sounds less altruistic that way, doesn't it?

2) Gaming Companies Charge Too Much, So Piracy Is Okay

If you have a lot of time to play games and not enough money to buy them, you should probably spend some of that time working to earn the money to buy them.  Because I know a 40 hour a week job and a short commute doesn't leave me a whole heck of a lot of time for playing games very much.  And I can't picture having a much lighter work schedule than that.

Even if you have a job with crummy pay, we live in an era with a TON of low-cost or free entertainment everywhere you look.  Websites like Pluto and Tubi have more entertainment available than somebody could ever watch.  Why not just amuse yourself with that?

3) Gaming Companies Are Evil, So Piracy is Okay

Imagine some vegetarian animal rights activist stealing and eating as much pork and beef as possible simply because they hate the meat companies for killing animals for food.  Wouldn't that consumption be ridiculous and defeat the purpose?

And that's my big question to those that pirate games.  Why are you still using a product of a company you hate so much?  I would think that if they're as evil as you claim, you'd hate them enough that you wouldn't even want to PLAY their product, much less buy it.

When I got mad at WCW for pushing Goldberg so much in the late 90's, my solution wasn't to pirate their pay per views and watch them.  Nope.  I stopped watching their show altogether.  I wanted nothing to do with WCW anymore because it was no longer something I enjoyed.

Someone who uses a product without paying for it doesn't come across as some kind of social justice warrior fighting against the rich to me.  It just comes off as someone too cheap to pay for the things they want.  Someone who truly hates a video game company for all its evil deeds is not going to play their games at all.  Aren't there a whole lot of other video game companies whose games you can play anyway?  

What I Learned From Video Games

It's interesting that sometimes the paths that APPEAR at first glance to be the quickest and easiest actually turn out to be nothing of the sort. For instance, the Bible discusses the allure of the world of sin and how it appears to be so wonderful on the surface, but it's actually the WORST path you can take.

Also, I found out in my study of physics that Snell's law determines how light bends in order to find the quickest path, because the actual straight-line path available may NOT be the path of shortest time.

But before I learned this from spiritual literature or science, it probably first became apparent to me from the world of video games.  The Mario games in particular.

I quickly learned the warp zones in these video games, back when I was in elementary school.  And I wanted to beat the games so badly that I always took the warp zones to reach the end as quickly as I could, skipping all the unnecessary parts that could kill me before I got there.  And I never could understand why I couldn't beat the games.  

Over time I finally realized that if you DON'T take the warp zones, there are lots of opportunities to power up along the way, so that when you do reach the end, you have a lot more tools at your disposal.  Multiple P-Wings for the tough World 8 levels in Mario 3 and things like that.  And the Gremlins 2 video game was similar.  If I didn't put in the password to the last level right away, I could have a power pack and extra lives available for use.

Also, I realized the hard way while playing Streetfighter 2 that you can win WITHOUT using only the two strongest, but slowest to recover from button attacks (fierce and roundhouse).  When my friend beat me using the weaker button attacks like jabs, I actually ACCUSED him of cheating because even though the game came with those buttons they shouldn't have ever been used!  Talk about embarrassing!

So sometimes the path that immediately appears to be the quickest and easiest is actually neither of those.  Video games taught me that.