I am far too poor to afford to buy shit. If I can’t pirate shit, I just do without. The only thing I pay for is music because they did it right. Mostly the same music on every platform. None of this exclusive bullshit. Plus it’s easier than piracy. Plus I listen to so much music
Cannot speak for anyone else, but it depends on his badly I want it and whether or not I am willing to give money to said compant/person/whatever.
Is it an old out of print game that suddenly had prices jacked up 500% by scalpers/scammers? It ain’t worth me trying to find a ROM if the sources I like don’t have it, nor buying it.
Is it from some indie dev/devs that probably don’t have the financial stability to afford everyone pirating their game? I’m more likely to buy if I can afford.
Did a large company like Sintendo, Activision, etcetera, make it? For older titles, I am likely to buy if it’s a low enough price and I have a real interest in it. Newer titles? I usually don’t bother because the quality for most triple AAA studios isn’t up to par for me since I don’t like buying reskins of the same game with somehow less of the basic features available unless you pay.
Side note: looking forward to Black Ops 99 where you have to pay $9.99 per pixel to be able to see the screen as you play and still have people buy the game, willing to pay for every pixel… only to find out the game servers are constantly offline for an online only experience they don’t get to play and by purchasing the game you somehow agreed to give Activision access to your bank account to do as they please with that money.
Edit:
For shows and movies, if I can’t easily find it, I don’t bother because it’s a much bigger hassle than video game piracy. Same with books.
When I was in college, often yes, as the “free” thing was typically a textbook I needed to actually pass a class.
Nowadays? Meh, I probably don’t need that random movie that bad. I have so little time for entertainment that if I can’t get it from a torrent site in a few minutes I just find something else.
Take it as a challenge and waste inordinate amounts of time finding it ‘free’!
Torrent stuck at 99.9% :/
The only seed has 99.9% availability, I am doubting anyone actually has 100%.
I have a funny storry:
there is a book I really wanted to read. It is an old af psychology science book. There is no pirated version of it anywhere.
I found one copy of it on the used market and bought it because the price was ok (70$).
At home, I open it up and go through it properly and see that THE MOST IMPORTANT CHAPTER WAS CUT OUT!!! Literally there were the ends of the pages still bound with strings and you can see a wavy scalpel cut where the rest of the page would be.
Thats the physical equivalent of an incomplete torrent. Felt so bad.
Who would do this 😭
Before it was sold, it was at a university library. The uni I went to had an open library, so anybody could come in. So either a student or somebody from the public, I guess.
A madman.
have you tried staring at the torrent? if it doesnt work try staring longer
I stared at it as if it were scp-173, nothing happened.
Maybe I need stare at SCP-96 and use it as the fuel for my modem instead.
That’s a special kind of pain.
“What do you mean ‘force start’ isn’t doing anything?!?!”
It honestly depends. If it’s something I was on the fence about AND it’s not absurdly overpriced, probably just buy. Or put on a Steam wishlist for some future sale while I keep trying to find elsewhere.
Ive had decent luck watching things stuck at 99.9% and having it work fine. Sometimes it’s just an .nfo file or the like thats missing.
Omg I might have done that to some people! Never realised!
Previously I skipped downloadning the “unneccesary” files like .nfo og random .txt, or subtitles for other languages.
Never considered that would result in incomplete downloads for others.
Which torrent is it
Some obscure audiobook. Highly doubt you’d have it.
Like its not one track, its separate files for each chapter, so I can still listen to most of it. only like two chapters have missing bits and is kinda semi-corrupted due to the missing bits.
Kinda feel like getting Audible because then its kinda unlimited access and I’ll binge through a a few books, then cancel when I’m out of content (that I’m interested in) lol. I don’t think I’ll have use for the audio files after listening through it once.
libro.fm has a nice drm free audio bookshop if you change your mind and do want to keep the audio files afterwards
Fuck that, don’t use audible! What is the title / author?
Libraries are generally pretty good for books and audiobooks. Get stuff through libby or hoopla.
Some obscure audiobook. Highly doubt you’d have it.
I don’t know; I’ve seen the internet pull some weird shit out of its back pocket
Are you on audibookbay?
Yes. Only one seed, its 99.9% availability.
I can technically still listen to most of it, but the missing 0.01% triggers me for some reason.
How long has it been on 99.9%? Still a chance you just need to wait for someone to turn on their computer?
If I can’t get an audiobook specifically I usually mark it as a request in the Libby app and hope the library will purchase some licenses. Does your library offer similar services?
To answer your original question though I don’t generally buy stuff I’ve failed to torrent. I intermittently search for it again unless I forget about it though.
There’s also a chance that the seeder finished the download but their software didn’t actually finished processing the files. Sometimes just copying the content to another location (to be safe) and renaming the “part” files to its intended file extension is all you need to do.
I have spent 3 hours once to find this with a reasonable resolution, bitrate and subtitles (the subs were the hard part):
Same issue with “FUTURE WAR 198X年”.
In the end I got a copy from archive.org with hardsubbed english subsThat’s how we do it! Take no prisoners and don’t accept substandard booty.
Yarrrr!
Same. For me it’s not about the money but the service and experience. I wouldn’t mind buying a blu-ray and ripping it but I’m not going to subscribe to some service, log in, and use their app to watch a single show or movie because I find that whole process to be a chore.
A chore, frequently an obnoxious experience and lastly a trap.
I don’t want a promise of ‘maybe we will let you view this until we capriciously remove it from our service’. Either I own what I pay for or no deal. I try to heavily prioritize GOG over Steam and while I have some streaming services in my orbit (not my choices) I always have ‘backup’ copies of my own.
I’m rich, so I buy it, rip it and upload it to pirate bay.
Thank you for your service.
King shit
o7
The millionaire of Lemmy
Give up, it’s all just entertainment for me, so i can just go and be entertained by something else.
this is da wae
You either die a leecher or live long enough to become the seeder
It’s never really about the price, it’s about the convenience.
Yeah, sometimes I go so far to buy a game on Steam that got given away for free by Epic. EGS has the tendency to log me out all the time (maybe too many login across a bunch of devices) which annoys the heck out of me.
I agree, I choose the option that gives me the best experience. That is normally an unofficial option. For instance, I want to choose the tv shows accessible for my daughter. I want her to have access to tv shows from all over the world. There is no official service that offers that.
Give up. I refuse to pay for artificially scarce goods.
This same applies to public transport tickets, end up either staying home or walking for hours so I don’t have to pay for the damn tickets that should be free.
public transport tickets
should be free
Coming soon, NYC ETA. 2026
Why should public transport be free? There are energy and building costs
Just wait until you find out how much roads cost. No, gas and registration taxes don’t even come close to covering it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0
Why should driving on roads be free? It costs the government money to build and maintain them, and it ain’t cheap to bail out the auto industry whenever needed. And cleaning up the atmosphere isn’t gonna be cheap. Why are the costs of driving mitigated at every level of society instead of just fully funding public transit?
It isn’t free. You pay road tax on every vehicle.
I should have acknowledged that in my highly rhetorical line of questioning, but are we going to pretend road tax covers the full cost of roads? It’d have to be much higher if it did, and it still wouldn’t cover the environmental cost of runoff and emissions, nor all the squandered space from parking minimums, etc.
These costs always get externalised to a large extent and we pretend we’re doing something normal because moneyed interests have made it the default option. But we’re not.
In my state at least millions in federal funding goes towards projects. Day to day operations are funded by state tax dollars and they still want people to pay ever increasing prices for public transport.
Honytawks argument further falls flat when you consider tax dollars do go to public transport.
Edit:clarified state tax vs federal
solid
I mean most “free” stuff isn’t literally free, it would be more correct to say its socialized, tax-payer funded.
Ask that the state that should back it and make it cheap.
Why should only the wealthy be able to move around??
Depends on what it is… if it’s a movie that I can’t find, I’ll usually just wait until an ethical version shows up somewhere later.
If it’s a research paper or a book I’m looking for, though, I take paywalling as a personal insult - I usually go to extreme lengths to obtain it, and I usually do get it.
I usually give up or find a free alternative. Typically, if something is available at a good price I won’t bother trying to get it free to begin with.
It’s usually the opposite that’s the issue for me. If it’s not free, OK, let’s pay, but if it’s not a reasonable price for the product (including both the content, usability, and reusability, in case of media), then I’ll go out of my way to get it free or totally give up on it depending on how much I want it. That’s why I switched from piracy to Netflix for many years and now am back to piracy because I like shows in the background while working on projects, for example, or piracy, then Steam, then, fuck gaming as much because I found other hobbies.
It is very infrequent that I find myself needing a form of entertainment. Generally, when I am unable to find it on the high seas, it is entirely unobtainable through legal channels.
It is far more frequent that I find myself purchasing a thing I have previously pirated.
Piracy is typically my last resort. It means it’s already unavailable under acceptable conditions.
The latter, because I don’t have money
