When I was a teen and wanted pirated games I had to put a lot of time into it (downloading/getting the CD's) then hunt for working cracks and then later deal with the consequences of installing cracks. My time was free but as an adult now I could never justify spending evenings to make pirated games work.
Today's piracy is way more easier than piracy 15 or 25 years ago.
The key selling point of piracy is that it's free.
I've probably spent more total time in the rigamarole surrounding legitimately purchased games (DRM incompatibilities and performance issues, activation servers being down, make and account and log in and click through our EULA, etc) than I have with issues surrounding cracked games.
Cracking games from a user standpoint is usually a process of downloading a torrent, waiting a bit, then replacing a handful of files in the install directory the first time, and then you're usually not bothered again. Some include an installer that handles this for you.
> Today's piracy is way more easier than piracy 15 or 25 years ago.
Not exactly... you still need specialist equipment to do it ... even something like the analogue hole is too inconvenient for the typical user. Even for me it’s just not worth the hassle. Downloading is easy enough for video and music but you still have to find the dodgy sites (in my jurisdiction thus requires some ducking and diving).
In some way it’s easier in some ways it’s harder. It’s an arms race and has been ever thus.
When I wanted non-pirated games I had to put a lot of time into it (pysically transport the CD's) then hunt for bugfixes and workarounds to get it running on my operating system and then later deal with the consequences of embedded malware (DRM) and workarounds that interfered with other software.
Today's piracy is way more easier than any method of acquiring such games 15 or 25 years ago.
> When I wanted non-pirated games I had to put a lot of time into it (pysically transport the CD's)
Physically transporting the CD's from the game shop (which was an hour errand to me) doesn't compare to downloading for days or hunting that guy whose brother maybe had it on a random CD in his room.
That's fair; different people have different experiences. I have a long history of setting things up so that downloads happen in the background while I'm doing something else, and that rarely took longer than arranging a trip into town anyway. My other complaints still apply though.
> but as an adult now I could never justify spending evenings to make pirated games work.
Side note: I agree entirely but I do miss those evenings! Even legit games were such a chore to install that when they finally worked, you were swept by a wave of pure joy. Looking at you, Little Big Adventure 2!
That's one thing that was bugging me. I used to wonder why I missed playing video games and at the same time very few games were entertaining to me anymore. I think it's because what I am missing is the evening of care-free tinkering, of having good time with friends, of having a wide horizon ; I am missing that mood and ambiance, not the gaming part, I miss how I was looking at the world.
Couldn't have said it better – I feel as if I wrote the very comment I'm replying to. My solution has been to play old classics that transport me back to those times and those are so much more enjoyable than most new titles.
Even in the days of MS-DOS games, I could just buy a CD for $2 from a contact (he'd ride his bike to me and deliver them), it would be full of games that you could just extract and play, no installer involved.
It became slightly harder for a period of time when CD sized games became common, and Internet speeds have not yet caught up.
> I had to put a lot of time into it (downloading/getting the CD's) then hunt for working cracks and then later deal with the consequences of installing cracks.
Did you enjoy the process? A lot of people do it for fun.
When I was a teen and wanted pirated games I had to put a lot of time into it (downloading/getting the CD's) then hunt for working cracks and then later deal with the consequences of installing cracks. My time was free but as an adult now I could never justify spending evenings to make pirated games work.
Today's piracy is way more easier than piracy 15 or 25 years ago.
The key selling point of piracy is that it's free.