In light of a "free" copy on Epic Games

75 points · 12 comments · view on lemmy.world

12 Comments

gustofwind@lemmy.world · 33 pts · 249d (7 replies)

Pirating this game is probably the most ethical way to play it

BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 249d (6 replies)

Unless you bought it when it came out, it’s now the only ethical way to play it.

funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 248d (4 replies)

OOTL casual scroller - what happened?

cjoll4@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 248d (1 reply)

ZA/UM was an artist-owned cooperative studio.

But then an investor fraudulently obtained financial control over the company, forced out the original leaders, and out-lawyered them. Now it's just another corporate game studio, and neither the lead writer, the lead programmer, nor the art director of Disco Elysium works there anymore.

eltoukan@jlai.lu · 2 pts · 242d

shoot, tried the game through my brother's free epic copy and then bought it for myself thinking it was so good that I had to give it back to the studio. It was on sale for 5€, but still I feel uneasy now..

At least one advantage of epic's shenanigans is that I'd probably never have played this game if the free giveaway had not happened.

domdanial@reddthat.com · 5 pts · 248d (1 reply)

I only know so much, something about switching dev teams/ownership and screwing the original devs but I found an article that claims to know the whole thing.

https://80.lv/articles/truth-behind-firing-disco-elysium-developers-za-um-s-canceled-sequel

funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 248d

to save anyone reading this: basically it's big business boys trying to rat fuck each other with a series of sneaky business moves to acquire shares or maintain operational control... at the expense of creative efforts and next projects. So some (presumably nice, innocent) people got fucked over by corporate greed at the expense of art but likely someone got rich off it.

BenLeMan@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 248d

Why look a gift horse in the mouth???

NaibofTabr@infosec.pub · 12 pts · 249d (1 reply)

zero rating

Basically, giving something away for free that would normally have a cost is a market manipulation tactic. Epic does this as a means to draw customers away from their competition, primarily Valve, thereby reinforcing their position in the capitalist market.

BenLeMan@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 248d

They're not drawing me anywhere. I made the mistake of buying something on there once and was dismayed to find that the updates for the game that had been available on Steam for months just weren't applied to Epic.

Now I just grab all the free stuff which is usually a bit older and thus fully updated anyway.

chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 248d (1 reply)

Does Epic pay the full amount to the game publisher per copy when they give away free games, or does it work some other way?