Tl;dr: skip to the bottom for links.

I originally posted this here, and linked to it in a subreddit where evidently a community of pirates hates piracy.

This post is intended specifically for the retro gaming communities, though it’s applicable for anything related to information sharing. In these spaces there’s a strange kind of self-harm going on circa 2024, in which a nontrivial amount of people(sock puppets?) are fomenting anti-piracy sentiment, and defending aggressive industry juggernauts, as if these corporations aren’t actively harming and seeking to eliminate these very same communities.

This is strange since retro gaming is all but founded and completely dependent on the free sharing of information and culture, which often includes piracy for better or worse. The word ‘retrogaming’ is nearly synonymous with emulation. It used to be that older games would rarely, if ever, be preserved on new systems. Even to this day there are still many games considered to be “abandonware”. It’s arguable that the growth of emulation - and piracy that most often accompanies it - played and plays a critical role in the renaissance of both indie retro-styled games, as well as the plethora of classic games which have officially had re-releases.

Ironically even as these behemoths are actively trying to destroy emulation, many companies have chosen the lazy route of using emulators to re-release their classic games, rather than making the extra effort to either open-source the classic engines or port the source material themselves.

As a sidenote, here is a list of legal video game engine recreations and source ports, however many of these do require you to own a copy of the original game to make use of them.

What it comes down to is that they don’t want to compete. With a retro handheld I can suddenly have access to thousands of games either through native ports, emulation, or open projects like PortMaster. What’s even better is that I can trust that whatever other computer hardware I decide to use in the future - whether PC, single-board computers, Android devices, or the plethora of retro console and handhelds flooding the markets these days - I can preserve and bring all of the content I already own into all of these devices and keep playing without a hitch.

Importantly, these communities enable the wonderful world of romhacking - free sharing of info, whether legally sanctioned or not - is a benefit for creators as well as consumers, and can easily be a gateway for the latter to grow into the former.

By contrast what the game console racket wants is to scam you into buying the same games you’ve already purchased over, and over again, through planned obsolescence, ignoring the environmental impact of these awful business models.

They want to leverage proprietary software and weaponize copyright law to eliminate competition and keep their users in a walled garden, where the entire experience is controlled from top to bottom by them. Their business strategies are dependent on the de-legitimization and elimination of the free sharing of information and culture.

Piracy is only bad for those who want to horde wealth and build monopolies.

If you’re a content creator or someone who aspires to create, you might feel like piracy is a danger to you. My hope is that if you read everything linked in this post, you might come to recognize that the free sharing of information can do the opposite - it can be an asset to your career. At a glance the Free and Open-Source Software movements are living proof of this. There is no need to remain attached to a Faustian pact.

• Who Really Has the Moral High Ground on Filesharing?

• File-sharing has weakened copyright—and helped society

• Artists Make More Money in File-Sharing Age Than Before It

• Study Shows Piracy Can Sometimes Be Beneficial To Markets & Consumers Alike

• Piracy Doesn’t Create A Loss To ‘The Economy,’ But To A Particular Industry

• Game Developers Can Beat Piracy By Copying Their Actual Competition

• Ed Sheeran: Piracy Is What Made Me

• Economics Of Abundance Getting Some Well Deserved Attention

• Step One To Embracing A Lack Of Scarcity: Recognize What Market You’re Really In

• How Being More Open, Human And Awesome Can Save Anyone Worried About Making Money In Entertainment

• Saying You Can’t Compete With Free Is Saying You Can’t Compete Period

• The Grand Unified Theory On The Economics Of Free

• Infinity Is Your Friend In Economics

• How to turn an open source project into a profitable business

• The Sky Is Rising 2024 Edition: Rather Than Destroying Culture, The Internet Has Saved The Content Industries