Just buy used. You get all the goodies without supporting their shitty practices, while not even having to deal with the ethics of piracy. It’s all win.
Not even just out of spite. In a way its another form of “voting with one’s wallet”. It will affect their sales, and if their heads aren’t too far up their assess (like, sitting on their own shoulders), they’ll finally get a clue.
You’re right. I wasn’t sure if you were talking about new or old games. I’ll always encourage owning ROMs as opposed to paying monthly to access them for the few years they’ll be available on [current device]. And with such a tiny library, too.
Then there are other factors, like not being able to access certain versions (Nintendo offers only the Shindou version of SM64 because breaking an ancient single player game for fun is verboten).
Personally, I think I’d rather not even give them the word of mouth of having played their game. There’s so much out there to play, and plenty of it doesn’t come from a company doing lousy stuff like this, even if it’s second hand.
If there’s any time playing only indie games is viable it’s now. We’ve had high quality indie releases outpacing how fast you can play them for a few years now.
Especially on PC. Also, people forget that Indie doesn’t necessarily mean “made by a small team/low budget”. It just means it was produced by a studio that isn’t at the behest of some massive corperation/faceless number crunching shareholders. CD Projekt Red is an independant studio, as is Valve.
Also, some games are developed independently by small studios, but then marketed and published by a larger company. Devolver is an example of a publishing house with an excellent track record of just letting the indie dev teams they work with do whatever they want.
More specifically, I only play new games that I can verify the author is receiving a fair wage. That tends to be pretty indie.
In the rare case that I’m somehow caught up on my indie game library, I also play open source games and AAA title abandonware.
Moving from “patient gamer” to “gamer with a strong stance against Nintendo’s and EA’s bullshit” honestly wasn’t a huge deal. And it continues to be easy on my wallet.
More and more lately, but not exclusively. I have an increasingly long list of things that are deal-breakers for me, and I haven’t run out of stuff to play.
Why bother? Paid, non-transferable cloud backups, low-spec hardware that wears out in a few months, over-hyped/half-finished games (assuming they’re ever released), back catalogs that aren’t available if you don’t subscribe or repurchase every generation… Just skip em.
If you want AAA games, there’s plenty you can play mobile or on PC (or both), or if you specifically want indie, there’s plenty of them too on Itch.io , individual websites, and steam (among many others; GoG, HumbleBundle, etc). You frequently don’t even need to pay for these games, since a lot of them are free or via user-decided donations (mostly re: indies).
Hardware that can run them range everywhere from GPD handhelds to Steam Deck to any number of either’s competitors, and they also function as more than just game machines since they run either Linux or Windows.
Nope. I’d still have to buy games somehow and I’m fucked if I’m paying a tenner less for second hand because Nintendo games rarely drop in price. Also not paying full price. If anything I’d buy a hacked switch and pirate the games.
Good for you mate. I have about 20 and I hardly ever play the damn thing. There hasn’t been enough exclusives on it that has made buying it worthwhile and I don’t play handheld ever so I just buy multiplat on pc or ps5.
Just buy used. You get all the goodies without supporting their shitty practices, while not even having to deal with the ethics of piracy. It’s all win.
Honestly, pirating Nintendo products should be considered an ethical obligation at this point, just to spite them.
I have been since 1998, but I ramped it up recently since they went after Yuzu.
You know what they say; if buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing.
It’s not stealing in any case, it’s copyright infringement. Which I will happily do!
Same. I’m not buying an entire console just for Zelda.
Same with Sony. I’m not buying a PS5 for final fantasy.
Fuck you Nintendo. Fuck you Sony.
I just downloaded the entire GameCube library on my seedbox yesterday, SNES, NES, N64, etc are next.
Not even just out of spite. In a way its another form of “voting with one’s wallet”. It will affect their sales, and if their heads aren’t too far up their assess (like, sitting on their own shoulders), they’ll finally get a clue.
But I’m not holding my breath.
Pirated copies of old ROMs that Nintendo doesn’t sell anymore cannot be counted as “lost sales,” so that really only applies to their latest releases.
You’re right. I wasn’t sure if you were talking about new or old games. I’ll always encourage owning ROMs as opposed to paying monthly to access them for the few years they’ll be available on [current device]. And with such a tiny library, too.
Then there are other factors, like not being able to access certain versions (Nintendo offers only the Shindou version of SM64 because breaking an ancient single player game for fun is verboten).
Personally, I think I’d rather not even give them the word of mouth of having played their game. There’s so much out there to play, and plenty of it doesn’t come from a company doing lousy stuff like this, even if it’s second hand.
So you only play indie games? Because that’s basically the only way you avoid “companies doing lousy stuff.”
If there’s any time playing only indie games is viable it’s now. We’ve had high quality indie releases outpacing how fast you can play them for a few years now.
Especially on PC. Also, people forget that Indie doesn’t necessarily mean “made by a small team/low budget”. It just means it was produced by a studio that isn’t at the behest of some massive corperation/faceless number crunching shareholders. CD Projekt Red is an independant studio, as is Valve.
Also, some games are developed independently by small studios, but then marketed and published by a larger company. Devolver is an example of a publishing house with an excellent track record of just letting the indie dev teams they work with do whatever they want.
CD Projekt is publicly traded.
Yup. I tend to like Annapurna published games.
Steam Deck and other Linux handhelds make it super easy to play indies.
Pretty much.
More specifically, I only play new games that I can verify the author is receiving a fair wage. That tends to be pretty indie.
In the rare case that I’m somehow caught up on my indie game library, I also play open source games and AAA title abandonware.
Moving from “patient gamer” to “gamer with a strong stance against Nintendo’s and EA’s bullshit” honestly wasn’t a huge deal. And it continues to be easy on my wallet.
More and more lately, but not exclusively. I have an increasingly long list of things that are deal-breakers for me, and I haven’t run out of stuff to play.
Why bother? Paid, non-transferable cloud backups, low-spec hardware that wears out in a few months, over-hyped/half-finished games (assuming they’re ever released), back catalogs that aren’t available if you don’t subscribe or repurchase every generation… Just skip em.
If you want AAA games, there’s plenty you can play mobile or on PC (or both), or if you specifically want indie, there’s plenty of them too on Itch.io , individual websites, and steam (among many others; GoG, HumbleBundle, etc). You frequently don’t even need to pay for these games, since a lot of them are free or via user-decided donations (mostly re: indies).
Hardware that can run them range everywhere from GPD handhelds to Steam Deck to any number of either’s competitors, and they also function as more than just game machines since they run either Linux or Windows.
Nintendo who?
You can also get an Odin 2 for $299, that runs quite a bunch of Switch games plus every earlier generation of games too.
Nope. I’d still have to buy games somehow and I’m fucked if I’m paying a tenner less for second hand because Nintendo games rarely drop in price. Also not paying full price. If anything I’d buy a hacked switch and pirate the games.
I’ve got 500gb of games on my switch, about 10 of them were bought…
Good for you mate. I have about 20 and I hardly ever play the damn thing. There hasn’t been enough exclusives on it that has made buying it worthwhile and I don’t play handheld ever so I just buy multiplat on pc or ps5.