Love devs' attitude towards piracy, TruePianos v1.9.8 (audio VSTi plugin)
This message showed when I entered the serial specifically made for pirates. Right now feeling nothing but respect for plugin devs. Next month Imma buy this plugin 100% fixed, need it or don't need it doesn't matter anymore lol.
To be honest, that would make me pay for the plugin.
Unfathomably based
I had a colleague who would buy legal versions of software and then shelve them while using pirated cracks because he hated the EULAs.
It is also an honorable course of action. Developer gets paid for their work, you use quality service with convenience.
This is what I do with movies. I still, to this day, do not understand what possible purpose studios have for including 3 minutes of copyright warnings and other bullshit ahead of movies that people paid for. Pirates don’t see any of that shit, morons, and the people who are ripping these films already are ignoring the warnings. What the hell?
I do this with games. A lot of games dont even really get a demo anymore. So its gambling to buy it...
I pirate the games and if i like it i buy it. Generally ill keep playing the pirated version unless it has a multiplayer i want to play as well.
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Edit: Can any fellow infosec nerds chime in and say whether this is readable or not? I feel like I just wrote it incoherently because I was stoned. I hope that's what happened anyway, and people pirating software aren't actually this ignorant about network security.
tl;dr: Disgruntled employee wants to make a bunch of easy crypto from the company he hates. cracks contain viruses a non-minimal amount of the time. This turned into a story about an easier way this coworker could be doing it to introduce his own ransomware and get away with it, and then I went into how I would do it if that was the intention.
I have no idea if this is the reason or if OPs colleague really hated scrolling down and clicking Accept. Maybe he just wanted the legit version for himself.
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This sounds like a great way to introduce your 2-year-delay ransomware on the company without it being as risky of a charge if you're caught. Only fired for causing a ransomware infection out of neglect and stupidity if caught, just make sure you tell a few coworkers about it.
Although it'd be easier to plug in a USB drive you found in the parking lot with folder [company name blackmail] which contains "[hot male coworkers name] NUDES.zip.ws" and "[hot female coworkers name] NUDES.zip.ws"
Just make sure you buy a throwaway laptop and install a Russian or Chinese language pack and use that as the primary system language when opening the final source code before you add some CN/RU strings in the file and compile. Use Google Lens to translate in realtime from a burner smartphone /e/OS and location disabled. Make 3 drives and toss 2 of them from your car window in hard to find places a week before, with multiple days between. Then on the day you find yours, covertly chuck it from the roadway an hour before opening in the general area you park, and show up 5 minutes early in the spot you usually park. Make sure you always show up somewhat early. Then "notice it" and walk in and plug it in.
Ransomware starts after a 2 day delay, they being in LE and find the others that were dropped. Make sure to use neoprene gloves, as latex can pass fingerprints through.
Haha okay infosec engineer here.... I think this blurb is hard to read maybe a little because you wrote it high and maybe a little because you're overestimating what the average person knows about security.
Your first paragraph there makes sense but it would've definitely benefited from a little additional explanation. I don't think it was super clear you were referring to an insider threat scenario. People probably could've got that by breaking it down a little more, but naturally they jumped to the next part hoping for more context.
But you jumped into a hypothetical alternative means to introduce ransomware to a device. And it's not necessarily that people don't know plugging in strange thumb drives is bad, as you suggested in another comment. It's the jargon (maybe not really jargon but thats the best word that came to mind) you used. You talked about a lot of things a bad actor would do, but the average Joe does not know why you'd be doing most of those things. And even if they do it's still not going to make much sense if they didn't grasp what you were saying in the first paragraph.
But ultimately yes, what you said does make sense if you have some Security knowledge (at least a bit more than just basic awareness training) and break down what you're first paragraph is trying to say.
WTF are you on about?
This is the way
This is the way
Smart developers, the make you feel good about pirating and then purchasing when you decide it suits your needs.
Some people just get it.
You catch more bees with honey than vinegar. Smart developers treat all their users well and then they get the same treatment in return. It's the smartest way to do things.
Big brain move, getting you to acknowledge that you’re pirating for when the lawsuit comes.
More people need to accept that piracy helps sales in the end, not take sales.
If ppl like it enough to pirate it, ppl will also like it enough to buy it. That's the rule of thumb imo.
The caveat is that it has to be easy for people to find it and buy it without jumping through hoops. If you gotta jump through hoops just to buy it, you might as well jump through hoops and get it for free.
I really don't think this is true though, the cost of piracy is severely low when compared to buying it, I can see myself downloading some shit games just to play them for 15-30 minutes but I'd never buy them.
I am not a lawyer, but... This does not prove you're pirating the software. It's informing the customer (who, as far as they may be aware, obtained the key in a totally legit manner) that the company thinks the key to be a pirated key (of which, it might not actually be, but, rather identified as such by the company or software in error). It is definitely designed to illicit some form of guilt if you did in-fact pirate the software (which is between you and your conscience), but it is not proof that you pirated it. That said, I totally back what this company is doing!
Doesn’t matter how you acquired the key, it’s still a pirated copy.
Do you think buying a stolen car or phone changes that it’s still stolen? Plenty of places also have laws against buying or keeping knowingly stolen items. So even just being informed and you continuing to keep it can now be used against you as well.
Kind of debatable depending on the floor price but not bad an idea either way, it's all about margins and looking to let yourself understand how much your product is really worth to the customer vs simple market cost
Remember when blizzard let you install a spawn copy on a friends computer so you could play together?
Also some DS games had similar where only one copy of the cartridge was needed to play with friends. Think one was mariokart DS
Would be a very popular move to letting people play together without everyone needing to be nickel and dimed(i feel like thats also a dated phrase now that i read it. Old gamers remember! Young gamers please help us find cool things, we are old and cant keep up!)
Back when Blizzard campaigns were so good you paid for the single-player while the online multiplayer was free.
Loved playing Mario with my buds that way.
The DS feature was called Download Play. It’s an awesome feature.
I feel like this is what bungee was going for with Halo infinite. Multiplayer is free, but if you want the story/campaign, you have to pony up for it.
Too bad infinite was not the strongest game for Lanning.... And that it's requirements are kinda silly... And that it's huge, even just the free version.
It looks great if you have the hardware for it, but the guys I usually LAN with are all working professionals with bills and mortgages and stuff... No time or money to keep up to date on the latest gaming hardware.
we're being gacha'd and fomo'd sir
WinRAR attitude, I respect that o7
I want that on a t-shirt.
Git Fork has the same attitude. I bought it
The Buckets (budgetwithbuckets) budgeting app is also a personal favourite of mine. Unlimited evaluation period, no subscriptions and even a regional pricing program called "Buckets by the Loaf". I really love how they go about it
The developers of Just shapes and beats also did this.
It kinda reminds me how Reaper DAW lets people have a really long trial version that I used for ages and then eventually decided to buy it when I could afford it. It's been great.
Reaper is great. It's only like 60 dollars for a personal use version, too. 225 dollars for a commercial license version if you make enough money off of your music. Pro Tools is like 700 dollars for comparison.
Plus there is a native Linux version!
Good on them.
I had a similiar experience with Mount and Blade warband, I pirated to try it, bought it after and when it didn't work the folks at TaleWorlds helped me out fix the issue. Absolute lads.
Now i wanna buy that piece of Software, so i k ow somebody can Pirate it and does not feel Bad about it.
As an adult, I pay for winrar purely because it helped me so much for free as a kid (especially pirating other software).
This is fantastic. I’ve no use for this software, but I would absolutely purchase it if I did.
For me sometimes its enough if i can get a plugin demo with FULL functionality and without some sort of beep or white noise every x seconds, to buy a plugin if i like it after tests. And for more then a few days. But this is nice too
I just bought a license just because
I can't find the video, but I remember someone at Ableton said they pretty much had the same view of Live piracy. If someone pirates it, they weren't willing to spend the money on it, but perhaps they will be willing to in the future.
For creative software like that, the vast majority of people getting it pirated are amateurs, and if they get good enough, they'll eventually be paying back.
Same thing with photoshop, if I hadn't pirated it, I NEVER would have developed the skill set required to use it effectively. Piracy is the company getting thousands of future potential customers for free. How many thousands of people pirated it and went on to work professionally and pay for it? Adobe wouldn't be near what it is without piracy.
If a thief makes a copy of your very money that you use then your work is worth them copying your money
I still remember Zoë Keating commenting on torrents of her album on the pirate bay back in the day. Free marketing tbh.
More devs should be this understanding of piracy. So should companies in general.
Asking nicely is a lot better than hitting. More flies with honey than with vinegar.
To be fair this is an approach that works better with continued use software. Most software that makes headlines are video games that live or die on that first purchase.
Similar attitude by the HoI devs caused me to buy HoI2 and every new release after that.
Googling hol2 finds nothing useful
Hearts of Iron
Never caught that. As an adult I've purchased every Paradox back catalog for years of high seas as a youth.
True Pianos is a really solid piano VST by the way. It's been years since I used it, but it was really good back when I was dabbling with this stuff.
If you donate, dev doesn't have to pay taxes. If you buy, dev becomes more popular because one more sale.
Advice?
If you donate to the devs, of course they still have to pay taxes. That's still income.
do both
Just because you give money to someone or something it doesn't make it a charitable organization that doesn't get taxed.
Why shouldnt the dev pay taxes?
If there's no return service you don't have to pay taxes in germany, afaik, ianal.
Oh would you look at that, something I would pay for
How's the plugin?
interesting
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On a related note, I'm very glad I pirated Starfield.
I'm thinking that I might buy it once we have creation kit access and mods that add story and flesh out the game a la Fusion City Rising and companion mods for Fallout 4
I don't know if it's worth the drive space
I played it as part of Xbox live, paid $20 for 2 months. Ended up playing a lot more of Senua Sacrifice than I did Starfield.
That price is very acceptable, almost a convenience fee that I gladly pay so I don't have to look for torrents and stuff.
I would never pay the hyperinflated prices that are being asked for AAA nowadays, especially for digital copies that, as PlayStation is keen to teach us, are worthless.
Demos used to be a lot more common. It used to be the norm for most games. Now it's extraordinary.
Indie devs seem to be bringing them back. Played quite a few demos recently. Hopefully the trend continues.
PlayStation making you pay for their highest sub tier just to access demos.
Not entirely or at least in a different way. Steam still has free weekends occasionally on games. Or more likely some publishers still offer them sometimes probably
I too remember shareware. Ahh im old
Old enough to remember the Ambrosia Software game, Escape Velocity? That game had a shareware setup involving a really powerful ship that would message you several times in a game and eventually get so annoying it was almost impossible to play. If you accidentally shot him, he's ruin you. Oh, gone are the days of true "try before you buy."
Imo “vote with your wallet” is more about companies/brands that have proven to do shitty games, as in “don’t buy any more games/dlcs/microtransactions from them”.
exactly, had a pirated version of frostpunk. but when i played through it the first time i immediately wanted to play the DLC.
so i went on epic games and bought it for full price.
good job devs, that game is a masterpiece and you deserve my money.