> If buying games can be made easier than piracy, lots of people will probably do that. But if piracy is way easier, then that’s what 99.9% of users will do.
Apart from folks who have no way to perform online transactions and would have to physically visit a shop to pay using cash, piracy hasn’t been “way easier” than buying games in more than a decade.
Everybody has online shops now. On the Switch, you can even buy from your computer using their web shop, if the Switch itself happens to be out of your reach (or in the hands of your child or etc).
In the vast majority of cases, these days, I suspect that piracy is a lot more about “cheaper” than about “easier”.
> On the Switch, you can even buy from your computer using their web shop, if the Switch itself happens to be out of your reach
How? When I go to a Nintendo store page for a game I want to buy digital [1], all I get are the options "Add to Wish List", "Download demo", "Buy physical".
UPDATE: I'm in Denmark (EU). On nintendo.com, I don't get a "Buy digital" button. If I go to the region-specific site nintendo.dk, the search function is broken, many games aren't listed, and there's no buttons to buy games or any login functionality at all (it seems half-baked). If I go to nintendo.co.uk (the UK site), I can log in and buy digital, hurray! What an incredibly inconsistent experience!
Sorry, I meant for emulators specifically. Buying a cartridge and ripping off the rom is much harder than just downloading an illegal copy. So 99.9% of games played in emulators are pirated copies.
It would be great if it was more like PCSX2. Not that I have any idea at all how you’d do that.
Apart from folks who have no way to perform online transactions and would have to physically visit a shop to pay using cash, piracy hasn’t been “way easier” than buying games in more than a decade.
Everybody has online shops now. On the Switch, you can even buy from your computer using their web shop, if the Switch itself happens to be out of your reach (or in the hands of your child or etc).
In the vast majority of cases, these days, I suspect that piracy is a lot more about “cheaper” than about “easier”.