Word of mouth provided by pirates is still great for the AAA games industry, regardless of what they’ll tell you, and only helps perpetuate these bad practices you’re pirating to get away from. 99.9% of users are unwilling to pirate games, and thus when you reference them, say you played or enjoyed them, talk about pirating them, etc., it’s essentially just free advertising for those games to people who would in all likelihood just purchase them if they wanted them.
Meanwhile, playing indie games gives those devs some cash flow to keep developing and gives free, word of mouth advertising to other people through references, recommendations, etc. The more successful indie games with good practices are, the better the games industry as a whole. It’s not a zero-sum game, but there is some tradeoff involved.
Word of mouth provided by pirates is still great for the AAA games industry, regardless of what they’ll tell you, and only helps perpetuate these bad practices you’re pirating to get away from. 99.9% of users are unwilling to pirate games, and thus when you reference them, say you played or enjoyed them, talk about pirating them, etc., it’s essentially just free advertising for those games to people who would in all likelihood just purchase them if they wanted them.
Meanwhile, playing indie games gives those devs some cash flow to keep developing and gives free, word of mouth advertising to other people through references, recommendations, etc. The more successful indie games with good practices are, the better the games industry as a whole. It’s not a zero-sum game, but there is some tradeoff involved.