The irony is, that I am much more inclined to pirate a AAA game. I'll eat a 10-15$ loss on 3 or 4 indy games that "weren't for me", but a 70$ AAA game in a beloved IP just isn't trustworthy anymore.

Big publisher every single year: "We had record breaking year, we are swimming in money!" Big publisher every single year: "We need to increase game price, we need wider audience, we need to include more optional purchases because developers expensive" Big publisher every single year: fires hundreds devs Vote with your brain people.

The original poster made that tweet as bait. They said further down that they bought the game. Still, what the dev said is absolutely based and I'm absolutely thrilled that theres still great devs out there.

As Gabe Newell said, "Piracy is a service problem". Either your game is too expensive, not available anymore/in a given market or requires you to jump through too many hoops to access. Also thanks for pointing out the demand issue that exists with physical copies. Too many people talk how things were so much better before digital distribution forgetting that during those times you could sometimes not be able to buy a game that released barely a year or a few years ago simply because it was not longer in stock anywhere.

*FUN FACT: Minecraft got so popular thanks to being easy to acquire for free*

While Hakita did initially start Ultrakill as a solo dev, his team now includes more people than just himself. There is a credits level (not screen - a LEVEL) that you can check out that houses portraits of all the developers and people who have helped make the game

As someone from Brazil, just another point: The minimum montly wage in Brazil is R$1.412,00. Which means that while the average montly salary is R$3.222,00 most of the young adults are not able to afford to pay R$300 to R$400 on a game.

He politely called him a broke boy

"The video game market is shrinking" Translation: The COVID boom is over, and we're not making as much money but still want more

Helldiver's being banned in over 90 countries is why my review is still negative. Not sure why Sony hates money so much.

Money is tight...ly held in the hands a few assholes

I prefer term "Corsair". Even got the letter from government to pirate unavailable products.

If buying isn't owning, then pirating isn't stealing. It really disgusts me how the games industry isn't just indifferent towards preservation - they're actively against it and go out of their way to shut down preservation efforts by the community. We're already in a situation where loads of games from the early 2000s can't be played on modern hardware because they were never updated to run properly on modern PCs, or they came bundled with some dog water DRM that renders the game unplayable without a crack (a crack that may not even exist if it's an obscure game).

I believe Nintendo was also caught using the pirated version of some of the game roms that were found on various websites at the time, when they released the classic versions of their consoles. Pretty big slap in the face, "Don't steal our stuff, but also, thanks for stealing our stuff."

both the creator of Ultrakill and Robtop, creator of Geometry Dash, had pretty much the same response to this sort of thing. and that’s the type of behavior that makes me WANT to support them

It's nice to hear a little more nuance on the topic for once.

Hakita is Based

I pirate for 6 reasons: Try before I buy. I grew up in the days of 'shareware'. We got to try before we bought. It was a great model. I've bought tons of games that I pirated/demo'ed. There's also many games that I have been saved from wasting my hard-earned money on because I couldn't try before I buy. Harmful software. Getting rid of intrusive and harmful software like Denuvo, and removing game launchers is another reason. Even removing a developers ability to spy on their customers. They can be a huge hit on performance, and can be used to spy Income. The fact that I don't have much expendable income. Games are becoming way too expensive. So they're losing a sale just by pricing people out of the market. Censorship. Government censorship is a huge issue in Australia. Whether it's medication, or drug use, crimes, etc. The government here has blocked many games from being bought here. Publishers have censored their games after they have been released and patched to remove content. Archive. Piracy preserves games in their current state, free from government, activist, publisher, and developer modification. Games have been broken by updates that ruined the game, sometimes intentionally (e.g. Spintires). I want future generations to enjoy great games decades from now. Internet availability. Some people have spotty internet availability. Some have none at all. The ability to enjoy the game you paid for, even if you have no access to the internet, is essential. It should be in consumer rights law that they should be usable offline. The developer can also shut down servers, which bricks games. There are so many reasons to justify it, but I think we should all strive to support the good parts of the industry, otherwise it will cease to exist. None of us want that

Brazil mentioned. Yeah we're fucked out here. Buying a game is more expensive than fixing my house.

To regurgitate what lord GabeN once said: “piracy isn’t about price, it’s almost always a service problem”

I pirated Ultrakill because 1. I don't usually play fps games so i wanted to try it out first 2. Wanted to check if my doodoo computer could run it I absolutely loved the game so I bought it, and subsequently recommended it to all my friends, 2 of which I've confirmed have bought the game themselves. Word of mouth works!

That dev is based af.

Most of the time I pirate, I'm doing it to find out if I'm being sold a scam before I buy the game. It's happened far, far too many times. And not just in the indie space.

pirating from big corpo: YOU'RE DEGRADING THE VERY FOUNDATION OF OUR SOCIETY pirating from broke developer: hey, its totally okay if you can't justify it, all i ask is to tell your friends if you like it ♥

when an online only game becomes unplayable due to server shutdown or other self inflicted company decisions, that game should be eligible for refund. that would teach them.

Growing up in Romania in the 2000s, my access to videogames was via piracy, for the simple fact a full priced new game was pretty much 1/3 of minimum wage. Not to mention, if you owned a decent gaming PC, let alone a game console like the Playstation, you were considered wealthy by default. Years later, with no expectations, I started my own KZfaq channel, to share my passion for the games I enjoyed playing while growing up and later down the line, when I finally had a job and steady income, I bought all the games I pirated that I enjoyed to support the developers for making my childhood better, not to mention promoting those same games to my own audience. Seeing Hakita's tweet about "culture shouldn't exist for those who afford it" makes me respect him that much more.

To be honest, the anti-piracy measures only embolden and justify the piracy measures because all of the DRM that they put into play only exonerates the people who crack the games for both paid and nonpaid users alike, because who wants bloatware if they buy a game?

These CEOs don't even understand what a modern audience is. They're really out of touch.

I'd love to play Battle for Middle-Earth 1 & 2, but the only way to play them is by pirating them. Same goes for the original Warcraft 3. With the release of WC3 Refunded...I mean Reforged, Blizzard removed the OG game and now you have to download the Refunded version whether you like it or not. You can just use the 'classic' textures on it if you want, but every WC3 veteran knows that it's not the same thing anymore.

I bought every game I played as soon as I received my first paycheck. But frankly, I wouldn't be a gamer if it wasn't because of the easy-access version in my early life.

I can't buy most games in Russia anymore. But I like games.

Funny thing about Helldivers 2 is that the countries that have it blocked you can just buy a key from a 3rd party store, although you can't review it you can still play it with no issues.

I would as a person in a developed country be okay with $70 AAA tiltles if the following things were true, No macrotrasactions/microtransactions, Offline mode without no extra authorization, better treatment of the ones that actually make the games and assets, Distribution on the main platforms on PC (if you go any type of exclusive to a platform it got to be your own IP not a timed one), Like Fortnite is Exclusive on Epic and TF2 is exclusive on Steam. No refresh version of the game every so often with the same price, for the example Fifa (current year) But i highly doubt that companies are willing to do that once they are a publicly traded companies, the people who are swimming in money will keep swimming in money while the rest are gonna do what is effectively slave work.

Cool thing about actually buying ultrakill is when it is released it is planned to have steam workshop support for so you can easily play custom levels.

Demo ultrakill background footage is crazy

The worst risk of pirating games is a great indie dev's game not selling and they can't make anymore games. Obvious, but it's worth mentioning.

0:12 - But Hakita isn't the solo developer of ULTRAKILL...

3:02 Nah bro There are people in Brazil that have that price as basically half their salary Since the minimun is mostly between 1500 R$ and 1700 R$ So yeah "You could buy your groceries, pay your bills, store the rest of that money for situations where you'll end up needing a back up... OR, here, buy this game that is half of your monthly income What do you mean buggy or full of micro transactions? Y'all are saying some weird stuff, ngl... NOW BUY OUR SLOP, OUR PROFITS NEEEEEED IT!

Sad fact that some measures against piracy are the ones that push ppl into piracy , like drm denouvo or the always online single player stuff .

The only games I pirate anymore are Indie titles that do not have a demo available, to see if I want to buy it. I don't bother with the AAA games anymore, because they aren't making anything that's even worth pirating, even just as a demo.

Yup ,the 130 dollars edition is around 10k rupees Indian... That's a month of groceries for a family of three , and the cost a middle range 5g android smart phone from Motorola. Tbh i have almost always bought ubisoft games on heavy discounts but even after that , their games are gonna be costly af

Dope dev but not a solo dev, their is a whole museum ingame for credits

I bought doom eternal back in day. Haven't played it. Power outages and then intrnet outages began in Ukraine. Instaled Doom, internet out, time to finaly play the game I bought, what I see? I gigantic - "FUCK YOU", internet connection required. Hi-fi rush - same Mad max - same Star Craft remaster - SAME Fuck sake, why should I even bother buying games now if all I see is this Fuck you? Now I have to sail the high seas. Reality is no, back to early 2000 for me, when there were NO licensed copies.

ive never pirated a game however i do agree at this point they are close to making games cost 100, everyone might as well pirate when that happens as paying 100 for just a game let alone 60 or 70 is insane. i hope companies such as Ubisoft grow a brain and realize how much they loss by not doing the smart thing. its kinda sad to see big companies be dumber than every other person as you would think it takes smart people to be successful in the first place. of course they were but now they are just greed in a nutshell.

Speaking of your point on high speed internet. I was remoting into some computers to set up in the Philippines today, their power actually went out and I have to wait until Monday to finish my job now. Not everyone has it as good as we do.

"We want to expand gaming to a broad audience" *Increases the prices* "You should get use to no owning your games" *Lashes out at piracy* "We are making this for your own safety" *Add an antipiracy measure to a single player game that doesn't have multiplayer elements*

"nobody is looking at ads anymore" KZfaq: REEEEEE!

Exactly the reason why I pirated Metal Gear Rising. Konami refuse to make it available in South East Asia and other regions for some reason. They are losing free money right there.

Key phrase being "if you can". Some bad actors in the piracy community pirate because they can, pirating on their $1000 PCs. A financially well off person has no right to be pirating, especially indie games made by people who are more broke than you. Maybe games should have demos to make sure you don't buy a crappy product, but if you really had a problem with a game Steam has a refund window. I know a guy who brags about the games he pirates, but his PC cost him $2000, and literally gets $100 a week in allowance from his parents. These people are just dicks for pirating.

That bit about marketing being dead is so true. I have no patience for advertising. I block it everywhere online. I don't even record stuff off commercial TV stations any more. I even lost the patience to fast-forward through the ads on a recording. Companies, you are wasting your money by having a marketing department at all. Just give us a big catalogue of all your products on your web site and links to buy them. That's all you need. We'll do the rest. Also, the biggest service problem for console games is the console itself. It's an expensive and overly-specialised device with a similarly over-specialised library of content. If the goal is accessibility, you're going about it entirely the wrong way. The real solution is to make it a form-factor, not a platform. Look at the handheld space: the Steam Deck is a Linux PC in a funny case designed for handheld gaming. You can play just about anything on it because it's fundamentally just a PC running Linux. That's what consoles need to do as well. Grab some budget PC hardware, shove it in a case that looks good under a TV, install some flavour of Linux with a UI optimised for gamepad use, and plug in a gamepad. Bam. Console done right. 40+ years of games available to play on one device under user-control.

Digital Devil Saga is one of my favorite rpgs of all time and even though I don't have my ps3 to play my digital copies anymore, i will do whatever I have to so i can continue to play it. I will even pre order a remaster if one is ever made Until then, im not going to just forget about its existence because its not easily available

warframe: we treat everyone equally, no matter if you have fast or slow internet, our system will make sure that everyone downloads updates the same way... slowly by checking every 5 nano seconds to see if there is anything updated in the files, and more often if you have better internet.

The only time i buy aaa game is when it is 85 / 90% discount on steam, and i treat is as an cloud storage fee and fast download service fee

As a diehard pirate I bought 4 copies of the game I loved. I would not have done that if I hadn't played it first, because it was badly presented. Just food for thought.

I live in Argentina and I'm entitled to pirate as much as I want, as there being a massive amount of people using VPNs to buy from here at lower prices, this leading companies like Steam to sky rocket the prices rather than punishing the scumbags.

Will also say this, I think the issue becomes the big Dev's are changing it from a Service issue to a Pricing issue, and slowly to a normal thing to do. If you have pirated games your whole life, why would you consider buying a game first, there's just no reason. Personally I've gotten to the point where I don't trust games enough (even indie) where I will Pirate a game first, more or less for a demo, and then pay for a game when it's actually worth what I am asked to pay. This has become ingrained in me after years of games just... not being worth it, and demo's being a non-existent thing.

I actually think the Ultrakill developer is misinterpreting the pirate’s tweet. The tone of the tweet to me implies that the pirate could absolutely afford the game, but won’t because he can just get it anyways for free.

A perfect example of players selling more than marketing is pvz GW2. the player base reached record highs years after popcap stopped updating the game. even now it has a sizable player base. It even has the EA style grind of needing hundreds of hours of gameplay to unlock characters but no one cares about it because the game is fun. companies need to learn that making the game fun to play will make the game last.

Moonring is an indie Ultima-style turn based tile movement RPG. The creator of moonring is also the co-creator of Fable, which some might be familiar with. The game is very good, like insanely good. Moonring is a fully released game, and the price is... 0$. its literally free. The creator says, and i quote; "Life is hard, Covid sucked, everyone's poor and stressed, I don't need the $300 this would make me: I'd rather take the goodwill." To this day, almost every moonring review in steam comprises of everyone begging the creator to let them give him money. Like hakita said; one can support something with at least word of mouth.

4:34 Regional pricing isn't a thing unless it allows people to INCRESE. their pricing. Take a look at the people who made ratropolis, They didn't touch their prices except to release a mobile game they could charge per charecters on Untill they randomly made an announcement saying "hey guys, just saw that regional pricing lets us charge more in America, and say that it's fair, sooo. Now we're charging more! Isn't that cool?!" But when it comes to changing the pricing so their product is.. oh, I dunno. Cheaper? Nope, never, Only more. Only ever more. A lot more.

when these large companies drive people to piracy, it then makes those people much more inclined to pirate other products that they might have otherwise bought. it breaks the ice and makes it mentally easier for gamers to justify pirating any and all games/products.

pirating is like the hardcopy for digital products

I pirated Slay the Princess, a visual novel of many genres (it's marked as psychological horror on Steam, but it's more than that) by Black Tabby Games. My dad had already bought a copy, but any time I was in the mood to play, either he was playing a different game or I didn't have access to his computer. When they made a post saying "if you can't buy it, pirate it and buy it later", I felt so much relief: I could find a safe place to download it for free on my own personal device, knowing that I had the graces of the devs to do so. While I would never pirate an indie game without the dev of that game giving some sort of go-ahead, I'm glad that indie devs are acknowledging that not everyone can afford to buy their games and are telling them to just tell others about it if they love the game.

you gotta understand, Hakita is probably the chillest indie dev imaginable

Imagine paying 50 million iranian rial "FOR A GAME"

I don't know if Hakita in all his politeness intended to absolutely humble that guy, but damn. That was powerful

Im from Bulgaria, salary here is $300, once we pay our monthly bills we barely have any money left and apps like s team or discord etc never gave us regional pricing

Its not that piracy is okay, its that piracy shouldn't need to be okay

as a Brazilian, my favourite hobby has seriously become impossible to actually legally do.

2:58 BRAZIL MENTIONED!

I've seen it said a lot. If buying something doesn't mean you own it, then piracy isn't theft.

also, good to know: R$700 (in brazil) is more than half of the mininum wage. The average AAA game here costs R$250 - R$300, which is fucking expensive too. That's why piracy is so big here

Hakita is honestly so based for his response

If you can't afford it, supporting it via word of mouth (not the exact quote, shoot me) deserved a like on this video

Best part about that Hakita wasn't angry he wasn't upset he understood the Ultrakill devs are one kind group and I personally respect them for that, God bless.

as somebody in a big industry once said: buying doesnt mean owning the game. then pirating isnt stealing.

If someone makes a single-player game that I want to play, that I can just buy, keep a copy and play - I will buy it. If they also make it always online, and/or stack a mountain of DLC on it, don't offer a download/archive package, ask for too high a price, require running a client or other middleman software or lock/restrict it any way, I will pirate. Because fuck all that nonsense.

He DID PAY FOR THE GAME, but wanted to pirate it to his school computer.

There was a reason Demos were so common years ago. Make Demos Great Again.

Totally agree with you and the Ultrakill developer's tweet.

I want to play Watchdogs so bad yet I also don't want to give Ubisoft my money for a game that they can take away my access to at any time for whatever reason they want. The industry is cooked mang.

I find it hilarious how easy it is to bypass Epic's KH3 Online DRM check, just by putting a warp that puts you past the check.

So in my case I use piracy for things that I have no guarantee to have access to even if I buy it, which is completely legal in the UK and many other countries under the case that it cannot be legitimately bought. There are limits to what companies can get away with sometimes but the law doesn't play nice so lawyers try to word things to fit their case and sometime the only way to fight back is to use other laws to cause mutual cost to make the case to risky for a company to pursue; one example being able to prove a company doesn't provide the thing they claim to sell and put things in place to reduce how many people can get their money back thus proving the 'sale' of the product to be a scam.

Bro will buy ultrakill soon enough .

Ngl, kind of a dick move to pirate an indie game and brag about it online but I understand why people pirate in the first place. Nobody wants to spend a lot of hard earned money for a shit product, especially nowadays when AAA is down the shitter, you kinda want to see first if it's ACTUALLY GOOD or not, among other legitimate reasons why. This is why I usually buy games after playing a pirated version. Did it with Elden Ring (I know it's AAA) because I wanted to see if my low-end system could take it, who the fuck wants to buy an expensive game only to find out your machine can't take it. Turns out, it could, and it's a banger game. So I bought it because I love the game and other shit FromSoft puts out and I get to play it all over again. But for indie devs, I dont think they should be pirated too much but in time it should be a standard that their work isn't pirated at all. They're not big budget like those AAA devs. They deserve all the support they can get to be able to scrape by. And if they give you an outstanding or satisfactory product in the end, then it's a win-win. It's better to gamble a measly amount of cash for indie games that could either turn out to be something you like or not than to spend a shitton amount of your hard earned cash for mainstream AAA games that turns out to be shitty products made by devs that could care less about you, especially the greedy ones like Ubisoft and others.

Imo if a developer doesn't produce a demo on-par with Factorio's demo, then I think they're not doing enough. If they don't offer a demo, then I think they want me to pirate it. It's why free sample portions of foods will often result in increased sales in the long term. If you can try an oreo for free you'll be able to figure out whether you want a whole pack or not. Growing up I often pirated games because I just had no money to spend on games. I still have extremely fond memories of torrenting Unreal Tournament '99 in literally 5 seconds on school internet because there were literally 3K seeders at the time. I love supporting developers, but I also like being treated like a human and not a bank account, so it's hard to know if a dev I don't know will treat me with dignity and respect.

used to pirate every game as a teen because believe it or not there were 0 original PC games where i lived, went to every store and only found PS3 and XBOX 360 games so i had no choice but to pirate but now i buy every game i play (mostly indies) i even bought the games i pirated years ago. It's not always black and white sometimes people are forced to pirate let me give you another example; i wanted to buy a game called SAND LAND and couldn't find it on steam, turns out the game will never release where i live (the devs themselves commented about this) so there is no way i could support them by buying it even if im fully willing to

2:56 Just for clarification, when you said that's over R$700, that is, actually, half the minimum income for Brazil and it can actually range from half to one third of a month's worth of salary for the average Brazilian. So yeah, it's actually much worse when you think about it.

Very true. Online only is BS. What if I want to download game and then play it someplace without internet. It means legally purchased game is not playable! What am I paying for then?? Oh right.. we dont own games anymore, we rent access. Such BS!

I am from Brazil. I was an avid consumer, i have over 2600 games in my steam library and i never tought that now that im a grown man i would end up in a tight spot and indulge in piracy again. Even tough i shouldnt i still buy something cheap every sale, but beyond cheap games or 90% discount old titles are a no go for me for awhile(i need to keep my expenses tight). I still hope i will buy the favorites i did later when i can afford then. To add salt im worse off now while steam changed its regional price suggestions, a couple of publishers just ditched regional pricing at all and bigger games are getting more expensive on top... its insane

I don’t like pirating indie games but pirating triple and “quadruple” A games is amazing

I pirate everything I don't know enough to be sure I'll like the game, but if I like it enough, I'll buy it, but I don't see any difference between pirating AAA games vs Indies, more so, I think people should be more carefull when purchasing Indies, since the chance you find a good Indie, is so much less, there are thousands of indies released every year, and maybe a hundred, or a few hundreds are even decent enough to diserve being called a game.

700 brazilian real is literale 50% oof the minimum wage

Oh Hakita, why can't more people like you exist in the gaming industry?

Tabs online features still work when pirated

God damn it I love Hakita. He just seems like a perfect game developer in so many ways. Great game, great design philosophy, in touch with the community, has put together what seems to me like a great team from what I saw in the in game museum thing, said something about how the game would suck if some of its fans had made it, which, yeah, then he says stuff like this, he just seems like an awesome guy. I have some ideas for video games and am pretty good at programming so I might do something at some point and I aspire to be like this guy. Ultrakill is sick, first game I've gone crazy with the difficulty and stuff trying to master it, had a P-2 attempted P rank on Violent dif get to Flesh Panopticon and then I died to dumb horizontal beam hitbox but y'know, now there's brutal and I have to do everything again, it's fun, big rant, cool game, cool dev.

Because the economy is shit no other reason is necessary

To think that piracy was reduced to unimportance.. and then the big publishers single handedly brought it back... i mean piracy is allmost mandatory nowadays with big projects, either to avoid performance crippling DRM (Denuvo) or just to figure out if the game runs on your system and isnt full of game breaking bugs.. wich nowadays is allmost every game at launch

I just play games out of my backlog and only buy during the summer sale. Usually I'm only buying last years games.

AAA slop publishers: "We must appeal to a wider audience!!1" Also AAA slop publishers: lock out and price out most of that audience