Remember that wonderful time when you joyfully fell off the mizzenmast, flew into the forecastle, stumbling over ropes piled up in a heap, and saluted the angry boatswain as you ran (“Why didn’t you take out the garbage, sailor?!"), with a trembling hand he stuffed the treasured disk into the throat of an old computer and..
And I saw this wonderful world of pixelated looking glass, where you, the cheerful Harvey Porter, were met by friendly Fred and his brother – George Whistley (they/them – appreciate the progressiveness of the promt). And then you saw this wonderful owl, which has seen all sorts of shit and, as a result of Zen Buddhist practices, has acquired such sharp contours that you can naturally cut yourself on it. One palm applause, ladies and gentlemen!
Show this to your children
And remember old Hagrid – the illegitimate son of a drop fish and Gimli, the son of Gloin, dripping with textures? It was a stunningly terrible gaming experience that you truly miss today. Because childhood. And also because we were all free and fearless pirates then.
A story about a baby elephant and a foolish motorcyclist
The first time my sloop climbed into the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea was when I was still a small cat. Parents bought a delicious-looking box at the Bishkek Dordoi market with a motorcyclist who for some reason is trying to brake with his knee, and a baby elephant, well known to everyone who saw the nineties.
I was happier than ever. Happier than when they bought me a Batman with a removable mask (and the mask was removed along with the head, and then a second, maskless Batman head emerged from the depths of the figure; This Chinese body horror caused deep psychological trauma to me as a child).
Of course, “Dandy” is not “Sega”, on which my major classmates played MK, but it’s also good. As Armstrong said: “This is a small step for humanity, but a huge one for Royal Cheese.”.
I started my thorny gaming path with tanks and shooting ducks with a light gun (whoever hasn’t shot ducks on “Dandy” doesn’t know life).
The “Dandy” era gave birth to a new phobia, which does not have a medical term, but is easily recognized by the phrase: “Stop playing, you’ll put the kinescope down.”. Over all these years, not a single kinescope was installed, but the phrase entered the annals of history.
Over time, I got cartridges with Chip ‘n’ Dale, Felix the Cat, Jurassic Park, where Alan Grant suddenly shot small raptors with a bazooka, and Spider-Man, where I got stuck in a boss fight for the first time in my life. My neighbor friend saved the situation, who gave me this stupid Electro. It was then that I first realized that I was not a saucer and was simply not born for these toxic swamps of yours.
Like many at the time, I wondered from where a spider shoots its web. Many years later, my beloved Ventura Brothers showed a spider that shoots a web from exactly where I thought it was coming from.
I’m listing all this only because Dandy is a completely pirated console, although at the time I didn’t even know about it. These were cheap clones of the NES consoles from Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive, which were sold by the Russian company Stipler. This miracle was assembled in Taiwan from Chinese parts, and then transported throughout the CIS. Since the price of the console itself and the cartridges for it were quite affordable, “Dandy” was sold out like hot cakes.
The business took off so quickly that Sega became interested in this story. One day, the managing director of Sega, Kunimasa Yagi, came to the homeland of elephants, but quickly realizing that it was impossible to defeat such an expanded piracy, and it was impossible to lead, he dumped the bottles of Stolichnaya and nesting dolls with the image of Gorbachev bought at Pulkovo back into his suitcase, and was gone.
Before leaving, Mr. Yagi assured journalists that he would fight piracy like a samurai: “with high quality and low prices.”. We are still waiting for low prices. We believe, we hope.
Nintendo also realized that piracy cannot be defeated. She not only did not try to sue Steepler, but even collaborated with him, releasing the Super Nintendo console. Moreover, it was sold in parallel with the pirated “Dandy”, which continued to roll out onto the shelves. It sounds funny today. These days, Ninka even bans fan games based on Mario and Zelda, which are distributed for free.
Only plush games
At the age of 13, Royal Cheese was given the first PlayStation, which, of course, was a royal favor, but do not rush to envy him. As Hippocrates would say: “We are what we play at.”. And we play what our parents buy us. And parents buy what costs less, what has a nice cover, and what could safely get to Tomsk without running into Polovtsians and Tatars along the way. McDuck, for example, arrived only in 2016. Judging by the “royal” assortment of discs, “change” came to us from Novosibirsk, the nearest million-plus city. That’s why I didn’t have such goodness as Resident Evil, Spider-Man, Oddworld, Silent Hill and Tekken.
But there was Casper, Tarzan (today it looks like a game for mobile phones), Need For Speed, Kiriku (a strange game about a naked-assed African boy, based on some original French cartoon)… But most importantly, I had the second and third Spyro, as well as the third Crash Bandicoot, which remained in my heart forever.
But we’re here to talk about piracy, so let’s skip this small but happy episode. Because then Royal Cheese will grow a beard, pull a fur hat on his shaggy head and begin to look with menacing disapproval at the unwashed men scurrying under the bright windows of the high chambers, like mangy dogs.
Boyar life
Boyar life began with two games of games that are as far from each other as possible. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone" And "Heroes of Might and Magic 3". Both completely consumed me, but for different reasons.
In GP I admired the very opportunity to walk around Hogwarts and its environs. And I was not frightened by either the scary angular models, which even at that time looked dumb, or that very Promtov translation. I crawled all the corners of the virtual Hogwarts, found all the secrets, found all the trading cards and collected all the colorful beans.
Hermione looks at you somehow dissatisfied, fiercely and at the same time sad and bewildered
It was an absolutely pointless exercise, because, if memory serves, beans couldn’t buy anything. They were only needed for a story mission so that Fred and George would fill Snape’s office with this crap. But I, driven by the cave instinct of collecting, still continued to greedily fill my virtual Gryffindor pockets with delicious-looking multi-colored pixels.
The most annoying thing about GP was the voice acting. The actor voicing Harry shouted out spells so solemnly and expressively, as if he was watching the universe collapse at that moment. “Alohamoooraaaaa! Flipeeeeendoooo!». Lord Jesus! Harry, breathe out! You just pick the barn lock and just knock down the gnome. By Hogwarts standards, this is the equivalent of washing dishes and throwing out trash. It’s hard to imagine a more prosaic activity.
There was also a “horror” episode where you had to hide in the library from Filch and his cat. This was a section with forced… let’s call it stealth, if it failed, Filch shouted in a vile voice: Intruder, intruder! In the forbidden corridor! How I hated this phrase!
But I sincerely loved “Harry Potter” for its lamp atmosphere and feeling of some kind of home comfort.
With “Heroes” the situation was a little different. It was “Rebirth of Erathia”, the intro of which naturally blew my mind. Wizards, gorgon jellyfish, minotaurs, titans – all in one minute video. Mythological “Avengers”, collected from Greek-Celtic-Arabic and who knows what other legends, seasoned with awesome music. I still listen to the theme of Stronghold and Fortress.
I also lost hours in the heroes, but if the GP was something immersive for me, then here I simply replayed the same levels over and over again until I found the perfect tactic that left no hope for my enemies.
A little later I bought a disc of the fourth Heroes, which I love as dearly as the third, despite the fact that the game looked rather ugly. I liked the opportunity to play as the heroes themselves, and the ability to control individual squads of units (it’s very convenient to scout the map), and even the mutually exclusive buildings that everyone criticizes.
Favorite topic among the four
At that time, torrents were not yet so widespread, so people bought pirated files on disks. As with Dandy, it was a good decision. The disc wasn’t too expensive, looked pretty decent, contained working builds, and at the same time you had the feeling that you owned something. This has become especially true these days, when the publisher can secretly cut content or simply take the game from the library (hello, Ubisoft). You will always have the disk, no one will take it away.
So they got into my https://misterxcasino.uk/login/ collection "Max Payne 2", which was released on two discs at once, the first Assassins Creed (the game impressed me so much with its parkour and atmosphere that I forgave it for the monotony of tasks and have been a fan of the series ever since), a collection of two "Bioshock", "Mirror’s Edge" And "Dizonored». “Dishonored” was actually funny. I went into a store where they sold CDs, and from the doorway said: “I have assassin withdrawal symptoms, give me something similar.”. The seller, without hesitation, handed me a disk with a mysterious mechanical mask on it. Says: "Try this". I tried. This was not an assassin place by any means, but this is how I got acquainted with another of my favorite game series, which, unfortunately, died for a long time. I regularly replay Dizonored, and this game does not get boring, although I have already studied it thoroughly.
Also caught in my raking paws Batman Arkham Asylum. At that moment, Rocksteady used cunning anti-piracy protection – they themselves leaked a non-working build to torrents. The game soft-locked approximately halfway through: the bathook did not want to cling to the plot ventilation grill. And that’s it, we’ve arrived. Fortunately, this version of the game passed me by, but at least I had a wonderful translation in the style: “Mockingbird went on a big kill, didn’t he?”?».
I fell into the anti-piracy trap already in the second part of the adventures of the big-eared detective. The scheme is the same. In Arkham City, after defeating Ra’s al Ghul (this is approximately the middle of the game), Batman climbs out of the sewer and at that moment a black screen appears. You hear sounds, but you see nothing. Neither reinstalling the game, nor resetting the graphics to minimum, nor calling the Yakut shamans – nothing helped. The only thing that helped was purchasing a licensed version on Steam. And although it was memorized by Windows live, it was nevertheless completed to the end without any problems. And my joy knew no bounds. And there was even more joy when Microsot decided to bury live, and the game began to launch without being tied to this cancerous tumor.
The second assassin was also a pirate. The irony here is that the licensed copy on release resembled that same pancake from a shovel. It seems to be something edible, but you don’t even want to poke it with a stick. Ubisoft, which already had pirate paranoia back then, became so tense that it squeezed out the Uplay service (its description can be found in Dante’s ninth circle of hell) and demanded that everyone play Assassin only with the Internet always on. This was necessary so that the service could constantly check whether you have a license or whether you have requisitioned this brig.
I didn’t have any problems. My guys from the Coastal Brotherhood wrote a Uplay emulator, and the game launched without any problems. Moreover, the official server was constantly crashing at that time, while the unofficial one, for obvious reasons, worked without problems. There was nothing to fall there.
This is the paradox of pirate games. We’ve all always been told that the official service is convenient and cool. And it’s better to pay money than to suffer with torrents (although why bother with them? Everything is simple and clear with them).
But in reality it often turned out that convenience resided in the pirate. When purchasing a license, you often have to download Russifiers, because the third most popular Steam language, even before well-known events, was for some reason considered lousy by publishers. Or, on the contrary, look for English voice acting, because the steam version of the game is only available on the great and mighty (this was the case with the first Max Payne, for example). Or make other unnecessary movements.
With pirates you didn’t even think about it. You had a working assembly with all the additions, with the latest patches, with the Russian language already sewn in and a bow on the box. That is, in fact, the convenient service and user-friendly experience was given to you not by Yves and Giim, but by the repacker Vasyan. I have already touched on this topic in a blog about launchers.
It’s ironic, because thanks to the linking of games to this very Uplay, which has been drinking the blood of gamers since 2010 (sounds like a corporate slogan), Ubisoft is now taking away your old games. The French publisher has already cut DLC from Brotherhood, and also completely took away Crew from gamers, which they honestly bought with their own money. So who’s the real pirate here??
Piracy is back?
With the advent of Steam, piracy in Russia was defeated. Kolobok left his grandparents, but when he was faced with penny sales, internal forums, a built-in workshop and the ability to buy games without taking his ass off the chair, here, as they say, our powers are everything.
It turned out that it is possible to defeat piracy. It is enough to set adequate prices and create a convenient, customer-oriented service. Gaben taught gamers to pay so well that some of them still kick and bite, move to Kazakhstan and Turkey, pay 8 thousand. rubles for the opportunity to add a sanction to your library, instead of just going and stealing it.
I honestly admit to you, gentlemen and gentlemen, after switching to Steam, I myself became a strict supporter of the license and also suffered for my new faith. Like Giordano Bruno, I resolutely told my persecutors: “No! Do with me what you want, but I will continue to buy games honestly.". But now the era of 6K gaming has arrived, and the number of pages with the mocking “Oh, sorry” began to approach a critical level, and then I remembered my old cocked hat, parrot and headband.
Recently, I managed to get acquainted with the torrent edition Last of Us And Alan Wake 2, which cannot be obtained legally in Russia. Secured all available trucks and maps in "Snowrunner". There’s a murky story with Ford, which was eventually renamed and redrawn, but the game was never returned to sale. Well, no, no trial.
Next up is my turn Silent Hill 2, who also oh-sorry and was so filled with hatred for the Russian gamer that even to receive a Gift he began to demand a change of region.
And no, your humble servant does not suffer from pangs of conscience. If the publisher doesn’t want my money, then why doesn’t the noble don get the game for free??
Fans of Internet freebies and sea robbers from the times of great geographical discoveries have a common name for a reason. People became filibusters not because of a good life, but because robbery was often the only reasonable alternative.
A brief history of Royal Cheese’s pirate past allows us to draw several simple conclusions.
1. Piracy thrives when publisher prices do not match market realities.
2. When games are physically unavailable.
3. When a publisher puts a screw on the quality of their product, cutting out content from it, Russian localization and imposing unnecessary services on anyone.
You will never play licensed GTA4 with radio Vladivostok again. And you won’t hear hit music in "Mafia". You will never solve Da Vinci’s mystery in Brotherhood or find Captain Kidd’s treasure in the third Assassin. This content can now only be found on torrents.
All this together forced at least one person to return to the open sea and begin to engage in robbery again. And I do not rule out that piracy will soon be fully revived in Russia, as it was in the 90s. And whether Uncle Gabin will be able to lead us into the fold of civilization a second time is a big question.
Write what you think about the prospects for a full-fledged revival of piracy in Russia. And have you started piracy yourself over the past three years??
Best comments
It turns out Port Royal Cheese.
Everything is correct. It is only thanks to me that piracy in Russia is thriving. I remember the famous words of Woods Roberts: “Your Majesty, give me the opportunity to block the Royal Cheese blogs, and Jamaica will be free from the sea rabble.”.
And let every publisher tremble before my flag. Fear the King’s Cheese, for he popularized torrenting! And you will have no peace while this old sea wolf walks the internet seas!
It was especially wonderful to play the licensed “Silent hill” in Russia. Which was never officially sold. Yeah, look for a licensed disc, good luck, as they say. And the amount of hemorrhoids that you will get in the process of righteous disk mining in pre-Internet times was not worth it. Therefore – a pirate.
I’ve been using piracy ever since I learned about torrents, which was about 12+ years ago when I was in high school. The appearance of Steam in my life has not changed anything in this regard. I pirate both games and movies.
I buy a license only in the following cases (in descending order of frequency):
1) The game is not hacked;
2) The game is only available on the console, for which there is no emulator (currently ps4 and ps5);
3) I want to support the developer (there are only a few such projects for me);
4) The version of the game leaked online is not fully completed (you can remember the leaked build of atomic heart at release).
Reasons why I do this:
1) Saving money (I played a huge bunch of games, you can calculate how much it would cost if I bought a license for each);
2) Pirates finish games and restore content (this was mentioned in the article).
3) There are games for which you can’t buy a license (for example, old Nintendo games).
Actually, the advantages of the license in the form of achievements, online (all sorts of games-services, co-op mods, and especially donation free games don’t interest me; I beat the game and forgot – you go to a new one or wait for a sequel), security, long-term support, ease of installation I don’t need)
That’s the kind of person I am.
And what happened to BG3 and Larian, how they released their game in Russia and at regional prices, I don’t remember any major scandals or any reputational losses among them. For 2k rubles right away, on the same day it came out, I already installed it on Steam. And I’ll give you an example of Dragon Age (this is an example from the last one that comes out, please don’t make a fuss about “why buy dragonaga”. How can I buy a game that is not only unavailable in the country, but also the price tag is 8k, excuse me, four BG3 can be bought. Even if we don’t evaluate games in BG3, then at our prices, a game costs an average of 2K rubles for the minimum edition, and you can buy any 4 powerful projects, but in the end, what to do with such prices? I bought the crew motorfest for my beloved and for myself too, because we played the second part together before, she likes racing. And that’s 4800 per game, 10k rubles to play one game with your beloved. And who will tell me that paying 10k to play is normal?? The processor in my computer costs the same.
I condemn your condemnation in any form. Piracy is a consequence of the pricing and regional policies of publishers, the economic and political situation in the world. If you want to pay inflated prices and not play half the new games, that’s your business, don’t restrict the freedom of others.
Precisely, regional prices are needed.
In my region-free region, where prices are calculated according to American prices, a modern standard AAA release is almost the entire minimum wage.
I would love to buy it, but no, thank you very much, it’s a blessing to snatch something on sale. So I keep the installers on my hard drives, I will always have them.
As for Steam’s “oh, sorry” for RU accounts, there is another option to buy a Free Region key, if the price tag is adequate, which is rare.To. Steam Free Region Key is in most cases 4k gaming XD
The funniest and stupidest thing is when the conditional Battlefield 2042 Free Region for EAapp (aka old Origin) costs 1499 rubles on PlatiMarket, and the steam version of the same game is not sold there for less than 4200 rubles XD
Creating a conditional, Turkish or Kazakh account for the sake of some game in order to get the opportunity to buy “another masterpiece” is a dubious pleasure for me. The logic is simple: if you don’t want to just sell me a game without dancing with a tambourine at a normal price – goodbye. To create a left account for the sake of some Diablo 4 in order to be able to buy the game for 8k rubles (converted to 80 euros in rubles) – no thanks.
I recently wanted to replay Mafia, I looked in my library, I see there is a 2nd part and Dificenzo Edition appeared from somewhere. Launched, replayed. Few. Give me, I think I’ll buy the updated part 1. I open it – “Oh, sorry!». I’m sorry, I say and download without a twinge of conscience. Checked out of interest on PlatiMarket – 1000 rubles. 1000 RUB FOR OFFLINE GAME. I walked through without any remorse, spat in some places, but overall it’s okay for once. I definitely wouldn’t give 1000 rubles for this. For 300-500, to hell with it.
In current realities, I buy games using my RU accounts, only MULTIPLAYER. If it lets me buy it in the launcher, I buy it in the launcher; if it doesn’t, I look at the prices for Free Region and think twice about whether I need it or not. I buy SINGLE PLAYER in exceptional cases, if it is officially sold in the launcher and there is an adequate price, or I check Free Region keys for adequate prices. As for the rest, I either don’t care anymore, or I’m calmly downloading a pirated version. I play for a couple of hours and delete it because the game sucks XD
I didn’t become a new pirate. With the advent of Steam on my computer since 2009, the number of pirated games gradually tended to 0. And then he returned to playing with a curling iron again (then 3). PS1 and PS2 were pirated. So, now I’ve mostly switched almost completely to PS5 console gaming, I use discs and occasionally the Turkish region for purchases. Well, in Steam I top up my wallet, buy as before, I don’t see the point in changing the region. What is in RU Steam, I take, what is not, I buy through gifts with intermediaries. I’m also going to play games like CX2 on PS5 with a disc, so there won’t be any problems. Something like this.
I don’t blame those who returned to Pirate Bay. Publishers themselves refuse money, we don’t have to run after them, change regions, etc. It’s in THEIR interest to sell us games. And those who are smarter and did not leave, so sales go to them.h. and from Russia. Fortunately, you can top up your Steam wallet in a bunch of ways.
The first 3 paragraphs are complete delight. It was written so well that I wasn’t sure if I was on to something or the author. But overall the blog is good, plus
Why play dragonaga?? 🙂
I’m too old to worry about finding the right release, downloading it for updates, waiting for these updates and hacks of the games themselves, remembering what Daemon Tools are, etc. (the latter applies to old games), and in recent years I’ve mostly been playing on consoles (XSS and NS), so it’s easier for me to buy and launch games in one click from the console/Steam, because I just want to pick it up and play, and there’s nothing to say about online and the Steam workshop. Yes, and when I have access to a ton of pirated games, they depreciate in my eyes, and if I don’t like it, I immediately abandon it, but if I bought it, then I need to go through it, and it usually turns out that the disadvantages discovered at the beginning of the game do not make it a disgusting project that can be immediately abandoned. I gradually go through what I bought on sales, and don’t constantly take on many games so that I never finish half of them.
Of course, there is no way without piracy: if the game is very ancient, it is not on sale or it is stuck on old consoles, well, or if there is some fan-improved edition of Manhunt or the original SH 2 on torrents for running on modern systems with all the amenities, then, naturally, we go to the pirate bay. I also have no desire to buy re-releases of antediluvian games with minimal changes at fabulous prices (hello from Konami and Felix the Cat for $25), thanks, I’d rather download the rom to my Anbernic. By the way, in recent years I have been trying to download only GOG versions of modern releases of PC games, so there is less chance that some kind of rubbish will be shoved into the repack, and the hated Windows Defender will not remove hacked files, because there are none.
“VK Play won’t allow it” – this is very funny. How many years have we had the root tracker and filibuster blocked – ten years, or already fifteen? And nothing, they function normally. With YouTube, people came up with a workaround in a few days. Yes, it’s still more difficult with it, because a lot of people use it, and not everyone is tech-savvy enough to install a VPN on a router and continue watching YouTube from the TV, or someone feels sorry for the traffic on their phone, or they’re just too lazy to turn the VPN on and off every time. But still, the ru-segment did not sink so much that Rutub and VK Video celebrated their victory. Especially considering that some purchased bloggers returned from domestic sites somewhat discouraged.
I remember buying the disc when it wasn’t officially released yet. Early access, so to speak. The game crashed constantly and always suddenly, but I beat it anyway. I paid)))
I didn’t understand this thesis at all. What does marginalization have to do with it?? Pirates are simply a community of people who, as a rule, share games with each other completely free of charge. This is in the interests of regular players because piracy gives them something they can’t get legally. What’s marginal here??
And all this makes no sense, because someone will be banned, a mirror will appear. You will not ban or imprison people who exchange torrents using the peer-to-peer system. The only way to fight piracy is to make games available. But few people get such a simple idea.
Otherwise I would never have known about piracy. Well kamon!
And for that matter. Latest research shows that piracy helps sales, not hurts them. The man played, liked the game, bought it. And since torrents are a popular thing, more people learn about the game than would have known through advertising. I see that you really hate “parasites”, but they are not as scary as they are made out to be.
Sounds like some form of youthful maximalism, don’t take it as personal. The fight against piracy is purely an economic issue. And the only ones who are interested in this are publishers, in order to raise their rating in the eyes of investors. It’s unclear what kind of fight against piracy in Russia in the absence of legal opportunities to buy games are you talking about?. But if we continue these thoughts, we will go into the realm of politics and may violate the rules of the site.