Cannot speak for anyone else, but it depends on his badly I want it and whether or not I am willing to give money to said compant/person/whatever.
Is it an old out of print game that suddenly had prices jacked up 500% by scalpers/scammers? It ain’t worth me trying to find a ROM if the sources I like don’t have it, nor buying it.
Is it from some indie dev/devs that probably don’t have the financial stability to afford everyone pirating their game? I’m more likely to buy if I can afford.
Did a large company like Sintendo, Activision, etcetera, make it? For older titles, I am likely to buy if it’s a low enough price and I have a real interest in it. Newer titles? I usually don’t bother because the quality for most triple AAA studios isn’t up to par for me since I don’t like buying reskins of the same game with somehow less of the basic features available unless you pay.
Side note: looking forward to Black Ops 99 where you have to pay $9.99 per pixel to be able to see the screen as you play and still have people buy the game, willing to pay for every pixel… only to find out the game servers are constantly offline for an online only experience they don’t get to play and by purchasing the game you somehow agreed to give Activision access to your bank account to do as they please with that money.
Edit:
For shows and movies, if I can’t easily find it, I don’t bother because it’s a much bigger hassle than video game piracy. Same with books.
If something is worth paying for I just do that up-front. (Outside of some exceptions where I actively don’t want to support the creator or license holder)
Depends on what it is… if it’s a movie that I can’t find, I’ll usually just wait until an ethical version shows up somewhere later.
If it’s a research paper or a book I’m looking for, though, I take paywalling as a personal insult - I usually go to extreme lengths to obtain it, and I usually do get it.
deleted by creator
Give up, it’s all just entertainment for me, so i can just go and be entertained by something else.
this is da wae
I give up on having that thing. I’m unemployed, I don’t have any income at all. When I have a well paying job though I’d rather just pay, there are a lot of people I would like to support.
Take it as a challenge and waste inordinate amounts of time finding it ‘free’!
Torrent stuck at 99.9% :/
The only seed has 99.9% availability, I am doubting anyone actually has 100%.
have you tried staring at the torrent? if it doesnt work try staring longer
I stared at it as if it were scp-173, nothing happened.
Maybe I need stare at SCP-96 and use it as the fuel for my modem instead.
I have a funny storry:
there is a book I really wanted to read. It is an old af psychology science book. There is no pirated version of it anywhere.
I found one copy of it on the used market and bought it because the price was ok.
At home, I open it up and see that THE MOST IMPORTANT CHAPTER WAS CUT OUT!!! Literally there were the ends of the pages still bound with strings and you can see a wavy scalpel cut where the rest of the page would be.
Thats the physical equivalent of an incomplete torrent. Felt so bad.
Ive had decent luck watching things stuck at 99.9% and having it work fine. Sometimes it’s just an .nfo file or the like thats missing.
Omg I might have done that to some people! Never realised!
Previously I skipped downloadning the “unneccesary” files like .nfo og random .txt, or subtitles for other languages.
Never considered that would result in incomplete downloads for others.
That’s a special kind of pain.
“What do you mean ‘force start’ isn’t doing anything?!?!”
It honestly depends. If it’s something I was on the fence about AND it’s not absurdly overpriced, probably just buy. Or put on a Steam wishlist for some future sale while I keep trying to find elsewhere.
Are you on audibookbay?
Yes. Only one seed, its 99.9% availability.
I can technically still listen to most of it, but the missing 0.01% triggers me for some reason.
How long has it been on 99.9%? Still a chance you just need to wait for someone to turn on their computer?
If I can’t get an audiobook specifically I usually mark it as a request in the Libby app and hope the library will purchase some licenses. Does your library offer similar services?
To answer your original question though I don’t generally buy stuff I’ve failed to torrent. I intermittently search for it again unless I forget about it though.
Which torrent is it
Some obscure audiobook. Highly doubt you’d have it.
Like its not one track, its separate files for each chapter, so I can still listen to most of it. only like two chapters have missing bits and is kinda semi-corrupted due to the missing bits.
Kinda feel like getting Audible because then its kinda unlimited access and I’ll binge through a a few books, then cancel when I’m out of content (that I’m interested in) lol. I don’t think I’ll have use for the audio files after listening through it once.
libro.fm has a nice drm free audio bookshop if you change your mind and do want to keep the audio files afterwards
Fuck that, don’t use audible! What is the title / author?
Libraries are generally pretty good for books and audiobooks. Get stuff through libby or hoopla.
Same. For me it’s not about the money but the service and experience. I wouldn’t mind buying a blu-ray and ripping it but I’m not going to subscribe to some service, log in, and use their app to watch a single show or movie because I find that whole process to be a chore.
A chore, frequently an obnoxious experience and lastly a trap.
I don’t want a promise of ‘maybe we will let you view this until we capriciously remove it from our service’. Either I own what I pay for or no deal. I try to heavily prioritize GOG over Steam and while I have some streaming services in my orbit (not my choices) I always have ‘backup’ copies of my own.
It is very infrequent that I find myself needing a form of entertainment. Generally, when I am unable to find it on the high seas, it is entirely unobtainable through legal channels.
It is far more frequent that I find myself purchasing a thing I have previously pirated.
It’s never really about the price, it’s about the convenience.
Yeah, sometimes I go so far to buy a game on Steam that got given away for free by Epic. EGS has the tendency to log me out all the time (maybe too many login across a bunch of devices) which annoys the heck out of me.
You either die a leecher or live long enough to become the seeder
When I was in college, often yes, as the “free” thing was typically a textbook I needed to actually pass a class.
Nowadays? Meh, I probably don’t need that random movie that bad. I have so little time for entertainment that if I can’t get it from a torrent site in a few minutes I just find something else.
Depends on the thing, how much money I have, and whether I think it’s worth it for the price they’re charging.
Like when I don’t have time to make bread I just steal it from loblaws.
I usually give up or find a free alternative. Typically, if something is available at a good price I won’t bother trying to get it free to begin with.
Depends. A while back, I was looking for an old, relatively obscure but unimportant album, and could only find one copy on eBay. It was only a couple bucks, so I bought it, ripped it, and uploaded it. Now it’s preserved and available.
I also had an experimental EP album I downloaded from YouTube that I really enjoyed. At some point the author took it down, so I uploaded it to archive.org, again for preservation and availability. Later the author found it and commented something like “hey this is my work, what’s it doing here”, so I took it down. But I still have it and I’ll put it back up when they stop making music.
If it was something easily available for a few bucks, I wouldn’t publish it. Creators deserve compensation for their labor too. They need to eat. For something that they’re charging way too much for, and they’re not hurting for cash, especially if it’s not easily available, yeah I wouldn’t have a second thought about pirating and republishing it.
In your case, with the 99% availability, I’d try to complete the torrent and seed in any way possible. If that’s not possible, I’d purchase and republish, filling in the missing files if possible or creating a new torrent if not.
Keep searching , never ever give up .
