I find @maneater_dgr's reaction to the Tekken 6 project a little troubling. Not because he opposes piracy, which I can understand, but because he seems to believe that people who see this situation differently must have such incompatible moral values that there's no point even discussing it.
I think that's a pretty extreme conclusion to draw from a disagreement about copyright, especially when the people involved may have very different reasons for supporting the project.
And I don't think having different views on this means we can't even have a conversation about it.
Distributing a mod isn't automatically copyright infringement, even if it uses a copyrighted game. It depends on what the mod contains and how it's distributed. For instance, there are many websites with mods for Street Fighter 6, including several different kinds of costumes.
And this is one of the reasons behind players revolting against companies. If fans can make decent mods with a crappy computer, for free, why are the companies taking forever to come up with a single costume for each character?
And how come buying 1 costume for each character ends up costing more than the entire game?
Now consider Tekken 6. If fans are willing to spend their own time and resources adding rollback netcode to an old game, shouldn't we at least ask why the company that owns it hasn't made a modern version with those features available to its customers? That doesn't automatically justify piracy, but it does explain why many players see these projects as something more than a simple attempt to get games for free.
There's a strong tradition in the West of questioning corporate authority rather than simply accepting whatever companies decide. We don't trust them unconditionally, because here (or anywhere, really) they will try to lobby their way into gaining more power and crushing their competitors.
And that's partly why corporations are so often portrayed as villains in Western culture: they're seen as powerful institutions that prioritize profits and shareholders over the interests of ordinary people, sometimes at the expense of the very employees and creators responsible for their success.
Of course, not every company behaves this way, but the suspicion comes from a long history of corporate abuses and attempts to influence governments.
This is also why many Western gamers have enormous respect for individual creators like Nobuo Uematsu, Hideo Kojima, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Koji Kondo, and Hideki Kamiya, even when they strongly criticize the companies those people work for.
We recognize that the creativity, talent, and passion behind the games we love ultimately come from human beings, not from corporate logos. Supporting those creators doesn't mean we have to agree with every decision made by the corporations that own their work.
Part of that mindset is questioning if the product is worth the money earned with the finite amount of hours of our lives. Our time, labor, and money belong to us, and we have every right to decide whether a company deserves any of them.
That line of thinking is what makes companies step up, deliver better products, and put some actual effort into making better products and being better than the competition.
That's one of the fundamental ideas behind market competition, and it's also why consumer rights matter. The legal system should balance the rights of creators and consumers, not simply protect big corporations that lobby to make it harder for competitors to exist.
And I'm not saying I agree with piracy, or that wanting to play a game automatically gives someone the right to pirate it. That's not my argument.
But when a fan project attempts to bring an old game to modern platforms, improve its online functionality, or keep its community alive, I think it's reasonable to discuss its actual purpose and impact rather than dismissing the entire effort as morally indefensible simply because copyright issues are involved.
But the very idea of treating copying a game as theft is very debatable. It's like saying that if I draw Goku, I'm stealing from Akira Toriyama because I'm using a character I don't own, even though drawing him doesn't deprive anyone of the original work.
And what if I draw a fan-made manga of Kenshiro fighting Goku? Am I now stealing from two artists simply because I'm using characters they created? If nobody has ever made a manga featuring that fight, should I be forbidden from drawing it myself, for myself, just because those characters don't belong to me?
Of course, distributing fan works can raise copyright issues, but does that automatically make them morally equivalent to theft?
Which brings me to another important distinction: just because something is legal doesn't automatically make it morally right, and just because something is illegal doesn't automatically make it morally wrong. History is full of examples of unjust laws.
Slavery was once legal in the United States, and Japan has its own examples, such as laws that restricted freedom of speech and suppressed political dissent before and during World War II. Those laws were legally enforced, but that didn't make them morally justified.
Of course, I'm not comparing copyright restrictions to slavery or political oppression. My point is that legality and morality are two separate questions. Laws are created by human beings, can reflect the interests of those in power, and can be changed when society decides they're unjust or unreasonable.
That's why questioning a law, or the extent of the rights it grants to corporations, isn't the same as believing people should be free to disregard any law they dislike.
Also, some economists and philosophers, including thinkers associated with the Austrian school of economics, argue that copying information shouldn't be treated like stealing physical property, cause when you copy something, you haven't taken the original away from its owner. Their copy still exists. That doesn't mean unauthorized copying is necessarily legal or harmless, but it does raise a legitimate philosophical question.
There's also a common saying in the West that works as a response to things like Sony removing content from people's accounts even after they paid for it: "If buying isn't owning, copying isn't stealing."
It's a slogan, not a legal argument, but it illustrates the frustration people feel when companies can take away access to something they've already paid for.
You see, the very birth of the U.S. comes from a defiant way of thinking. The country was founded through a revolution against British rule, driven in part by colonists who rejected taxation without representation and the idea that a distant authority could govern them without their consent.
And one of the fundamental ideas behind American copyright law is that intellectual property rights exist to promote creativity and progress, not simply to give copyright holders unlimited control.
The legal systems of Western countries aren't identical, of course, but individual rights, limitations on power, and the public interest are important principles within them. The point of granting intellectual property rights isn't to give companies absolute authority over their creations, but to encourage creativity and innovation while balancing those rights against the interests of society as a whole.
And individual rights matter precisely because individuals have far less power than governments and large corporations. A person shouldn't have to surrender their autonomy, their freedom to criticize, or their ability to question unfair restrictions simply because a powerful company claims those restrictions are in its best interests. Legal rights deserve respect, but their scope and justification should always remain open to debate.
To serve your country is often seen as honorable, but that doesn't mean serving the interests of a corporation should be treated as equally honorable, or that questioning corporate decisions is somehow immoral.
So I understand why Dogura objects to the idea that people should be allowed to pirate a game simply because they want to play it. I don't agree with that reasoning either.
But I don't think it's fair to assume that everyone who supports the Tekken 6 project is motivated by that sense of entitlement. Some people genuinely want to preserve a game they love, improve it, and make it possible for a community to continue enjoying it. We can acknowledge those motivations without pretending that every method used to achieve them is legal or justified.
What I'm questioning is the assumption that whatever a company considers a violation of its intellectual property rights must also be morally equivalent to theft, or that people who disagree with that interpretation have fundamentally incompatible moral values.
Those are different questions.
Respecting creators and questioning how much control corporations should have over creative works aren't contradictory positions. In fact, defending individual rights means recognizing that the people who create games, the people who play them, and the corporations that sell them do not necessarily have identical interests.
And if we can't even have a conversation about where those rights should begin and end, then we're no longer discussing what's morally right. We're simply treating the existing rules as though they were beyond question.
@PzhHugWAatQJqSM@sephi22 Obviously there is going to be people who pirate regardless. But most piraters pirate because there isn't any real feasible way to pay for said product legally.
@PzhHugWAatQJqSM@sephi22 While it is indeed bad if everyone pirates, denying the people who created the game to make a profit, I think that isn't the way you should be thinking about it.
If a large subset of people are taking the time to pirate it, it shows a market of (potentially) willing customers.
@DukeNukem1996 They were getting back in their bag when doing Ghost, Advanced Warfare, and Infinite Warfare imo. They really needed to just do an entirely new cast. Too bad none of those games really kicked off.
A US lawmaker has announced plans to introduce a new bill that would give gamers ownership of the games they buy ๐ฎ
The Power To The Players Act would require publishers to make games playable offline before shutting down their servers
A US lawmaker has announced a new bill that would give gamers ownership of the games they buy
The Power To The Players Act would require publishers to make games playable offline before shutting down their servers