Just finished 100%ing Sea of Stars. The combat was fun, and the general story and game play is very much so a nod to Chrono Trigger. Would absolutely recommend if you enjoy that type of game.

Just last night I downloaded and am about an hour into Dave the Diver. So far the game loop seems interesting, but im hoping it doesn’t just become a stacked chore game (so to speak).

I think the difference can be drawn in parallel to cigarettes: an unfiltered cigarette is worse than a filtered one for smoking. Both are obviously bad for you, but if you’re stacking carcinogens and other health concerns, eventually you’ll reach someone’s breaking point. I don’t think anyone is claiming alcohol is healthy, but I also don’t think the response should be “it’s already unhealthy, so this isn’t won’t stop anyone”. Every risk associated decision we make adds to the statistics pool for whether we get sick. Mitigating that might actually worry someone enough to switch to a healthier (not healthy) form of alcohol consumption.

FOSS is made because people want it to be made and made available. People who make games and art vary between it purely wanting to be made and wanting to make a profit off of that. If you’re dense enough to think saying you value something at $0 and then still enjoying it like the other people willing to support the IP, then you’re an asshole.

There is a balance between what the creator is allowed to value their idea and what people are willing to pay for that idea. If they can’t find a middle ground, then the transaction shouldn’t occur. If you force that transaction by stealing their idea and efforts, you’re being a thief. What you use to justify your actions is up to you, but you’re a thief nonetheless.

It is theft, but the argument is better framed as to whether or not it’s moral theft. Most people who pirate feel comfortable pirating from larger corporations over small time creators/groups, with the usual justifications you’ve provided above. Personally, I’ve justified it at times because I couldn’t afford to purchase the thing, which leads to another argument of “if I wasn’t going to buy it in the first place, is it actually effecting them”.

There is no argument to be made, however, where it isn’t true that if you were to have purchased it, the owner of the idea will make more off of it. Whether you care or not about that owner getting more is a different argument, but you are robbing them of value for the idea, however little that value might have been.

I’m not arguing for or against pirating, but people in the comments saying it isn’t theivery really seem to be arguing whether stealing is wrong or not. Call it what it is and go back to the argument people have been having for thousands of years.

Which, I realize I didn’t address libraries. Taxes pay for libraries to operate, and then the library pays to have copies of the works. If no one wants to read my book, libraries aren’t going to just go out and buy thousands of copies. And trying to tackle libraries would also start to erode arguments for reselling something. And to bring it back to the OP, I’ve read books in a library before that I enjoyed enough to purchase a copy of my own. I’ve also read books I haven’t. But someone purchased that book for me to rent, and in a small part, I’ve paid for that book myself by paying taxes.

I find it funny you’re calling him intentionally obtuse right after you seem to just simplify theivery at whether something physical is stolen. If you’re basing it off of something being stolen or not, IP is used to protect the realized gains off of an idea. Yeah you aren’t stealing a physical something, but you are robbing the creator of what the item is valued at. It is exactly the issue that you can’t own an idea that IP is usually heavily protected. Ironically, the intention is to help new ideas(and their profiting worth) from being stolen by someone (or something ie Coporations) with better means to distribute and profit off of the idea. Otherwise, why wouldn’t I just get a copy of a game, underpriced it, and sell it as cheap as I wanted? I’ve put no thought or labor into actualized the idea, so I have no reason to price it beyond my initial investment. It why when someone (or something) sells full rights to their IP, it can be worth millions. They don’t care about the idea. They care about what the idea can provide in the future.

To draw a parallel, saying IP isn’t real is like saying currency has no worth. On the surface, duh of course currency isn’t actually worth anything. It’s not like people can (practically) eat a dollar or make shoes out of a dollar, but we’ve (generally) collectively decided it’s worth something. It instils confidence that when I walk into a store, my currency has a conversion rate of so many dollars per good. If thousands of people added millions of dollars into their bank accounts by just “copying” the electronic money, no one has lost money, but the value of the currency is deflated by those actions because there’s nothing stopping everyone from from just adding millions to their accounts. The confidence that people will be harshly dealt with for deflating the currency like that is one of the innate things that gives currencies (and IP’s) their value. Handwaving it away by saying it isn’t actually real is also just being obtuse.

I’d like to bring your attention to Crystal Project on Steam. It’s honestly one of the best jrpg games I’ve played in the last 5 years. It’s less story driven than the DW/DQ series, but it is platformy and very exploration based. I haven’t played since the balance patches, but the game was about everything I could possibly want in an exploration jrpg. It’s more Final Fantasy like, but it scratched a deep itch I didn’t know I had.

I found the controls a little awkward for the dragon quests, but I enjoyed them nonetheless. Fantastic rpgs.