Hey guys so I've been stressing out lately because there's a game I wanted to buy but I don't know if I would enjoy it because game reviews aren't enough so I downloaded The Pir4ted version of the game to test it out for about an hour to see if I would enjoy it and my PC can run it, I liked it the game so when I was about to buy it I came to a realization that my first time playing the game was actually illegal and I don't like that I'm planning to play the game for years I'm afraid someone will ask me about my first time playing the game I just want to ease that feeling I also think that this is related to my morals.

thanks for answering

ps: I'm not good at english:)

@mackkkkkkkkkkkk: Yes. There is less reasons to do it these days as demos are kind of back (they sorta disappeared for a decade or so) and things like gamepass are effective at curtailing my visits the fitgirls torrents, but I still snag things when I can because every game on earth should have a demo. I’ve wasted $60 too often on something I disliked, and the 2 hour window for a steam refund was closed.

If you already bought it then in my books you're fine. I just think a lot of pirates hide behind that argument, they will play through a game 100% and then say that they didn't like it so they don't have to buy it and somehow maintain a healthy conscience.

The only thing I actually dislike about piracy are flimsy justifications for it.

Own to your theft, or don't do it. No in between.

Everyone has to make their own moral judgements on these things, but I do think the relative ease of getting a refund on Steam these days makes this particular scenario not feel like a very credible excuse to me.

I forgot about the refund thing. That goes a long way to mitigating piracy I'd imagine.

Agreed. Back in the day (probably from ~2002 to 2007) I used to pirate games to test if they ran because most stores that sold physical copies of PC games had strict policies against returning opened PC games and I got bit by this several times with games that had inaccurate minimum requirements (or more often their minimum requirements meant you'd have a bad experience because the game barely ran). Once I got Steam with the Orange Box in 2007 I stopped pirating at all because games were often so cheap that it wasn't a big risk anymore to buy games without testing.

Nowadays it's much less of a wild west when it comes to this stuff. It's easy to get refunds on most of the online stores and most games have much more conservative minimum requirements so you generally will know if you can run it and have a decent experience or not.

Morally it's not much different than borrowing a friend's copy. It's definitely nothing to feel bad about.

Nothing wrong with it imo. It’s the cost of doing business. In my late teens/early 20’s I downloaded a bunch of games. Didn’t have the money. Got older and stopped. Now I’m my 30’s and wouldn’t dream of pirating a game. Not worth the hassle in any way and I’ve more than made up for it by buying countless games I haven’t even touched yet.

Just don't chat shit. We all know you won't buy it. If you've already pirated it, there's no chance you're going 'Actually you know what, I could do with losing sixty bucks today'

To me, no way, so why not subscribe to Xbox Game Pass or EA Play instead?

@sombre said:

Isn't everyone doing that when they know they could pirate the game instead of buying it? They're actively making the choice to spend money on something they know they can get for free. Why is downloading the game then paying for it a less believable scenario than paying for the game then downloading it?

I actually did this with Half-Life 2. Ran it on an old PC, realised it didn't run so great so I got the Xbox version.

These are the kind of great decisions I live my life by.

Of course not, but of course it is.