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My Comment on EPIC HARDWARE’s “My Experience Using Original Software and Games Versus Pirated Ones” Video

 |  ESTIMATED READING TIME:  2 MINUTES

You can watch the video by clicking here. It’s in the Egyptian dialect, mind you.

Yet another great video, Mohamed! Good job! Here’s my take on this: Most of the shareware software I use is cracked, except for Action! by Mirillis (bought a lifetime license with my Payoneer card like 5 years ago), and Internet Download Manager (bought 2 lifetime licenses for IDM with BTC.) I also pre-ordered Cyberpunk 2077 to surprise a friend, and before that, Rise of the Tomb Raider. We humans are strange like that. I pirate most games, and programs, and I donate to YouTubers, and developers from time to time. Heck, I even donated to FitGirl a couple of times. It’s just the way I am, and just like I don’t judge people who buy everything by calling them “stupid” or “naive”, it’s uncool to judge those who pirate software for whatever reason, especially those who know what they’re doing, and not some noobs who end up nuking their computers every time they get duped into downloading something that is obviously too good to be true. If I find myself using a certain piece of software very frequently, buying it seems fair, but paying a monthly subscription for a software I use once in a blue moon just seems like a complete waste of money to me — so far we agree on things. One thing to remember though is that, when you buy a software, you don’t really own it, so it’s like you “rent” the thing, which means the publisher could drop support for it at any moment, and it becomes a “legacy” software, so then the only way that you’ll be able to use it again is to pirate it — it happened to people who own older versions of Adobe software (CS). Also, some people do actually release new patches/updates with cracked files, and even DLCs, and some people even claim that DRMs like Denuvo have some undesirable effects on performance, so, in a way, using a cracked game is like using the same game released from GOG — both are technically DRM-free. So, while I agree with you that using cracked software (including games) can be dangerous (and not worth the risk when you consider Steam Winter Sales, and websites like G2A), piracy isn’t some kind of Hitler-level evil — not by a long shot. I was hoping you would dive into the advantages of piracy, too; at least, then it wouldn’t sound like you were bribed into making this video vilifying piracy — just an impression. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, of course; this is more like a vibe I would get when people only focus on one side of things. Your video would’ve been much better had you followed a “pros and cons” approach.

Anyway, as an IT expert with 16 years of experience, I don’t recommend that people use pirated software, especially if they have no idea what they’re doing. That does not mean that all cracked software is dangerous. The main difference between a pirated software, and a so-called original one is that, one still has the DRM protection code implemented, and one doesn’t; there’s no amount of fear mongering that can change that fact. A while back, Dmitry Novoselov from Hardware Canucks had a problem with his Da Vinci Resolve copy. I bet you $295 (see what I did there?) that he wouldn’t have run into the same problem had he used a pirated copy, because I can tell you from experience that many times, pirated software can be superior to the so-called original one, and that’s simply because you don’t have to deal with silly bloatware (to this day, I hate game launchers, and necessary (?) evils like anti-cheat software, and I’m sure I’m not the only one), integrity checks through servers, etc. So, in a way, piracy guarantees ownership; it’s not always about saving a buck here and there.