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applfanboysbgon 3 hours ago

> What gamers are actually experiencing is the inherent injustice of proprietary software.

The inherent injustice of developers being able to eat? The entire reason we're in this mess of a field is because of this ideological purity crusade. We could have a world where independent developers make a modest living producing good software that people pay a reasonable amouunt for, but because everyone expects everything for free, the majority of developers are forced into working for soulless corporations, who make the money that pays their salaries with the most predatory software imaginable, spamming ads, tracking, and microtransactions all over "free" software.

You also always have control over the programs that run on your own computer. Reverse engineer it if you care; the tools have always been there. The article mentions DRM, which is almost always bypassed, and private servers, which people do host -- so where's the lack of control, exactly? You just feel entitled to be given everything on a silver platter, you can't even be bothered to put effort into taking free stuff. Give me a break.

To be clear, I am fully in support of Stop Killing Games. Especially given the annoying copyright regime around hosting private servers, legislation to mandate some kind of fallback for termination is helpful. But trying to pin this cause to this horrible movement that has done 100x more harm than good? No thanks.

F3nd0 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> You also always have control over the programs that run on your own computer. Reverse engineer it if you care; the tools have always been there.

It’s never been about what’s possible in theory, but what’s feasible in practice. By the same kind of logic you apply here, every country in the world is as good as democratic because you can work your way to free elections eventually, even if it takes a while.

applfanboysbgon 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The literal next sentence after your quote was addressing the feasibility, of which it is clearly feasible because people actually are reverse engineering games at scale.

F3nd0 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The point I was trying to make is that understanding and modifying software to do your bidding is significantly more feasible if you already have the source code than if you have to reverse-engineer it yourself, to an important degree.

applfanboysbgon 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure, and then it's significantly less feasible for developers to eat, to an important degree. It just comes across as entitled - it's too much effort to reverse engineer, give everything to me for free! Never mind that it can be done, I don't want to do it, I'm entitled to 10,000 manhours of free labour because software yearns to be free!!!

F3nd0 an hour ago | parent [-]

I think your rhetoric is needlessly antagonistic.

The idea of free software follows from fairly simple logic: You should be in control of your computer and any software that runs on it should be distributed under form and licence which facilitate this. It’s not about what the software wants or how much work people owe you; it’s about enabling you to own your computing when the code is literally already there. Surely you can disagree with that without making up (in my view) silly-sounding arguments for the other side?

an hour ago | parent [-]
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