Totally agree on the paycheck. However we need to stop acting like piracy is bad only. Buy the things you really enjoy and support the creator(s).
Back in the days a friend suggested i buy Skyrim and i was like: "Uuh not sure if i want to spend that kind of money on a 2yo game". But since he was quite a fan, i pirated it. Soon after I bought the LE version and today it is still my most played game.
NGL: i also pirated many things of which i never bought the original version. But because of the bay i also bought some things i most likely wouldn't have without.
I was vaguely interested in Dark Souls for years, but every time I tried, I bounced right off it. I went through a cycle where every year or two, I would pirate one of the souls games, try it out, give up on it after an hour or so, and do it all over again the next time I was sufficiently compelled to give the series another shot. This happened until several years ago when I tried Dark Souls II, and for some reason it finally clicked. I played my pirated copy of Dark Souls II for about 10 hours, before a random crash corrupted my save file.
After that happened, I immediately bought the game on Steam and proceeded to play it for the next month and a half, until I eventually beat it. I've since purchased every souls game plus Elden Ring on Steam, and recently imported a copy of Bloodborne GOTY edition after spending $700 on an exploitable PS5, just so I could play it at 60FPS. None of these legitimate purchases would have ever happened if I hadn't been able to repeatedly pirate Dark Souls for about five years.
I don't think piracy is bad lol i do think mega corporate publishers have bad practices for sure. Like cool, the one i worked for is publicly traded. Awesome. Every action is greed motivated. I hate that.
Every time i loose hope in games i just play undertale and ignore the world. >.>
I've thought about this. I think that happened was because of timelines, they released a super early build, fuckin producers.
It's not the worst thing for an early access game to be cracked, honestly. If the game is has more eyes, that's great. I am curious about what is out now however.
I am also curious about if the cracked version can be updated with content once the game goes live. Like i have no idea when that is or if it has already happened.