I’m using “business” here as a general word, you can think of it for any field: physical stores, indie developers, startups, etc…

How many times did this happen before? Every big company was once a small one. Google used to be the good guys at the beginning.

We’re currently seeing the old praised Proton starts its small pseudo-monopoly business in the privacy focused services field.

You might think you’re helping the world by putting your money in the “morally correct” place, but at the end you might be just helping a new greedy company to arise.

I had this thought after seeing the page of a indie game on Steam, it’s been a few months I’m pirating everything related to digital media, but then I saw this game from an indie developer that I wish listed in 2023, it got launched oct., 2025. As I decided to pirate everything I had a second thought on this one, “maybe I should pay for this one, it’s a good cause, this guy put some effort on it, why not?!”, the game currently has 802 reviews, which isn’t bad for a indie game.

But then WHAT IF? What if the game becomes popular? What if people start demanding more and buying a lot? What if the developer decide to start a small company to attend the people demand? And what if this company become the new average modern company adding paywalls, DLCs, cosmetics? What if they start abusing AI use to “boost productivity” and ship faster?

What have I done with my money?

Now I face this moral dilemma, should I pay for it or just pirate it like I usually do?