2019, the eighth month, the third world. Minimum wage? About 1300 lei in hand. The cost of a new game? Priceless. For all the others there is PirateBay. I didn't know how to open this story better than a spoiler about the ending, but I'd like to have a serious discussion. It is a discussion about piracy raised to the rank of art by Romanians, a debate about the causes that led here and a story, I could say, from the perspective of a man who went from downloading games in pieces from dubious sites to buy even a Windows license from your personal PC.
Chapter 1 - What Causes Piracy?
I could say that piracy is a problem, that it is something that hurts the entertainment industry; which makes us look like profiteers who do not appreciate the work of people who waste hundreds of hours creating a game, movie, series, etc. But the context differs from one "world" to another, because in Romania, piracy is not such a big problem but just another bad habit that I have acquired over time. You all know what I'm talking about and whether you admit it or not, I don't think anyone can say that they never downloaded a game from torrents, or rather, DC ++ to "try" it for a few hours. Or track records with music, or evenings where everyone would gather at someone's house to watch movies. I was all there and I can say with all my heart that I miss those times.
But what caused this hysteria? Where did I get the skill to buy things without paying for them? I could get into a semi-political discussion but we are a tech publication, so it doesn't make sense and I prefer to talk about real, palatable facts, not assumptions about dictators and bad school teachings. Let's talk about the real issues. Until recently, services such as Spotify and Netflix were a luxury that the Romanian, no matter how honest he wanted to be, could not afford, and this is not due to the price which is decent even for the poorer standard of living. from us, but because there is no such service, physically, legally, in Romania. That's it! The fact that all the entertainment industries have emerged and developed in western countries, especially the USA and the UK, but have advanced slowly or not at all towards us is one of the many reasons why we have become accustomed, as a people, to we procure the desired materials differently, and as Romanians you can do exactly that, we did it.
Another valid reason that I managed to think about is the multitude of platforms, especially in the case of games that can be a big obstacle for some, or the decisive factor between using a credit card or a Filelist account. Personally, I hate having to keep five separate programs installed in order to play the multitude of about five or six games installed on my home PC, and I know people for whom the game doesn't exist if it's not on Steam and prefers to hack what I can't buy. there. A rather big problem, by the way, because we return to the previous discussion about the offer and the market. While Steam is a well-integrated platform in our country's tech culture, the software usually offered by publishers such as EA (Origin) and Ubisoft (Uplay) is very rudimentarily implemented and offers can often appear on the UK market. for example, which we as Romanians cannot enjoy. I encountered the same problem with movie platforms when I wanted to watch the three seasons of The Grand Tour. The show is exclusive to Amazon Prime which, even if available in Romania, once I subscribed and played the first episode made me ask for a refund because in Romania the maximum resolution for this series is 480p! So not even on the phone would have been acceptable. Why this? Then again, God doesn't know how or if it came to be, so I'm not going to question the enlightened minds at Amazon who made that decision.
Finally, I want to talk about the most pressing issue for the average novelist who wants "the latest and greatest" in terms of entertainment, namely the purchasing power. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we live in one of the poorest European countries and that has a hard time saying when it comes to buying a game for 60 euros from a minimum wage of about 275 euros. Fortunately, however, there are lights of hope for the honest and the poor, but I'll talk about that later.
Chapter 2 - The need to be good and to be noticed aka. game cheats
I cannot write a word in this chapter without a little connection to the education that our culture promotes. I don't think he's a man who doesn't know at least one case of a child being reprimanded by his parents after he got a bad grade at school on the grounds that he made fun of them and that someone else's offspring was better. This causes a whole series of unfortunate events and decisions on the part of that child who will either end up learning until his theories come out, or cheating to get a higher grade next time, with the emphasis on the second option. This is the principle by which players appear who use cheats to stand out and show that they are better than their opponents; it is no longer about the pleasure of playing no matter the outcome, but the stupid need to be the first to feed a wounded ego.
I read a post on reddit that made me swallow hard and thank the stars for not being one of the people I talked about above. It was the story of a young man from China, the country with probably the most cheats in the world, who told how in their culture you are either good or mocked. It was a difficult speech to swallow because it was full of sad realities that I found in people I knew or simply seemed so familiar to me, even if it is a country from another continent, without too many connections with Romania. our everyday. This young man was talking about his friends and the fact that the use of cheats in games is not considered wrong, but just a way to adapt to the teachings received and the doctrines that were forcibly put on their necks by a society that try to get the best out of people without losing control of them.
Now you may be wondering what this has to do with Romania. Let's do an imagination exercise: what are the first countries that come to mind when you think about using hacks in games? If the answers were Russia and China, it means we are on the same wavelength. What do these countries have in common with Romania and mainly with piracy? Well, let's think about what kind of leaders and political regimes these three countries have had in recent history and the similarities, along with the sought answer, are beginning to emerge.
Chapter 3 - What to do?
Well, I could go on indefinitely and say that we are hopeless, that we will not buy 60 euro games from our low salaries anyway and that the problem of game codes is valid for everyone, not just a few countries, but we know with all that the reality is different. Fortunately, however, solutions are beginning to flow, with game makers and distributors realizing that not everywhere in the world has the same purchasing power.
Probably the best solution to our financial problem is the subscription model. You can subscribe to Origin Access and more recently we have the same solution from Ubisoft, through which you get unlimited access to a lot of games, not only from EA, in the case of Origin Access, but also from other manufacturers. You can play any new game without limitations and the only thing that could be a downside is that the games are not yours. You can't take them in your hand or place them on a shelf, just access them while you play. It is a very good solution, as I do not know how many people return to a single-player game after they have finished it and the prices are affordable, so the one-year subscription to Origin Access starts from 120 lei (25 euros) for the Basic edition which gives you access to 201 games at the time of writing, with the option to pay only 470 lei (100 euros) for Origin Access Premier which provides you with all the games published by EA (and not only) since the launch day, along with of all possible DLCs and extra packages. This means that if you pay 470 lei now, for a year you will be able to play quietly whatever appears new without paying anything extra.
Netflix and Spotify are the perfect solutions for classic entertainment, both offering a good solution if we consider the price / quality balance offering more content than you could consume at a relatively low price, so for Netflix and Spotify I pay 75 lei per month and I have access to all the movies and series that interest me and I listen to music anywhere, anytime, without downloading it from torrents. Numerous alternatives such as HBO GO, Deezer, etc. are already available. with competitive prices and maybe just as good content. The decision is yours.
Conclusion
What else? Piracy is and will remain for a long time one of the habits of the Romanian who does not yet understand how long it takes to develop a game or a movie, how many people work in a project like it or how their actions and use of illegal benefits in games it affects the experience of other people who only want to enjoy their free time. It's a long way to go, but I see on social media that things are going in the right direction and the collective consciousness is starting to come to the surface like mushrooms after rain. I know people who used to download wallpapers from the torrent but now buy games on Steam at a discount and sacrifice that five euros a month to listen to music legally on Spotify instead of downloading it from somewhere because it has simply become much more convenient. to be legal than to search for hours maybe, a specific song available for download on any site.
Taguripirateria piraterie Romania