Pictured: ResetEra forum user being warned by moderators for, gasp, Advocating Piracy.
There are legal considerations when you are bottom-lining a massive public forum like ResetEra, sure. Shit rolls downhill. But even if avoiding legal blowback is the main impetus here it sure seems sad to have to deny the obvious reality that so many of us "pirate" as a matter of course, as naturally as we breathe. Sad to have to keep up appearances to kowtow to the moneyed powers and stay in the appointed, respectable lane. That's the opposite of being real.
A similar phenomenon is endemic in corporate entertainment media, which refuses to be frank with readers / viewers about actual reality. Same reasons: can't offend the manufacturers / advertisers by advocating people work around oft-broken, user-hostile systems.
In games media specifically I am bemused by the intersection between emulation + piracy (different but often related things) and the need to maintain corporate / advertiser respectability. Not even a stuffy old-guard outlet like GameSpot can fully deny how exciting, useful, wonderful the MiSTer FPGA project is, but any coverage of it kind of elides and glosses over the fact that 99.9% of the games any user will play on their MiSTer will have been obtained gratis from the internet.
Would I prefer that you pay for games you've enjoyed, especially indie games? Yes, but only if you can reasonably afford to, and only because it can aid the survival of the people who made the games
