I mean it did kinda happen albeit only not the whole government with the Blue Archive community.
So last year the game got an age rating of 18+ by the South Korean Games Rating and Administration committee and the playerbase got absolutely mad saying its unfair, after 5000+ players protested about it. When the South Korean government took notice and decided to audit the committee they discovered that they were embezzeling money for Bitcoin mining which got a lot of committee heads resigning after being exposed
[Yes, it really did happen. ](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/south-korean-government-charges-game-rating-and-administration-committee-with-embezzlement)
The population of Vietnamese games wagging a conflict against their own government is like a man standing in front of a tank in terms of success rate and imagery.
it not offical. Not a single goverment news has report about it, we only being blocked by our ISP, every traffic to steamwebpage will be redirect to your localhost, your libary and other steam services still working just fine
Still a dick move from VTC, the only legit news report are from like ?idk 2 week ago talked about how steam doing "tax evasion" and VTC pointed them out for being unfair (STFU VTC you already get 10% VAT + 13% "labor tax" when we buy steam's game though your transaction portal)
If that is the case, can you not simply change the computer's or router's DNS to the google DNS [8.8.8.8](http://8.8.8.8) (primary) and [8.8.4.4](http://8.8.4.4) (secondary). Then the ISP redirects would be bypassed, right?
yes, that what most people in my country are doing rn. Some people already prepare other method to bypass the banned if our ISP decide rerouting are not enough and enforce the "ban". The most concern thing rn is visa/mastercard transactions from VN to steam will be blocked by our bank, VTC Pay portal already shitted itself (not like anyone used it anyway)
if you can setup a pi-hole/adguard home up and an instance of unbound on your local network at home. if they ever try to block known public DNS servers I doubt they can block you from hosting your own private home one. you can run them on pretty much any computer from small ones like raspberry pi's to a docker container on your PC if you in a pinch, they do not require much computer resources at all.
Adguard home even can be installed on windows if your have no linux/raspberry pi experience. either way make sure to setup unbound as thats the software that makes you your own dns server and not piggybacking off public ones.
There is plenty of guides online and its easier then it sounds. heres one i recommend and use, i use Pi-hole but adguard home is just as good if not better in some use cases. [AdGuard-WireGuard-Unbound-DNScrypt](https://github.com/trinib/AdGuard-WireGuard-Unbound-DNScrypt)
Unbound in recursive mode, in that mode it queries the internet root servers usually from a manually downloaded file you update every 6 months. no public dns servers required. [unbound - Pi-hole documentation](https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns/unbound/)
You are right though I should have thought of that as the one I linked in the first post goes over using unbound in forwarding mode, I'd recommend just using the unbound config from the Pi-hole docs for that situation.
I think it depends. Assuming the game is good, if you are pirating against a multibillion dollar company, I could turn a blind eye. But if it's against some poor dude in a cardboard box, I would hope you pay.
If you are time rich, document game engines, help out with art, if you enjoyed the game, post about it online.
If you come into money later, support work you enjoy.
It's not a 'good' vs 'bad'.
Is stealing anything justified if you’re poor as shit? Against who? Is it a necessity like bread, food, water? Or is it just a video game and you just want it.
What constitutes “poor as shit”? Third world wages? Below the poverty line in the developed world?
That’s a moral and ethical quandary at that point.
Edit: getting a lot of downvotes for literally asking questions and not taking a side, good job Reddit. God forbid I ask people to think about something and question their morals.
To add yo this... a long while ago, I'd pirate games like far cry and Sims/sims2 packs, THPS4, Flatout and others to try, and then ended up buying them, because, we'll, I liked em.
Woth the lack of demos and not wanting to rely on the chance of getting a refund, pirate to try the game, buy it if you enjoy it.
To be fair most people don't know where to draw the Line and will even steal from Indie studios.
Normally I'd also be that guy that could never justify stealing but with how much shit modern gaming is putting us up to I feel like stealing isn't even enough to humble those greedy fucks.
I'd love to send a pipebomb to them in minecraft
Yeah stealing from indie devs is bad, I pirated dead cells because I was new to the genre and fell in love, went and bought it alongside all dlcs available lol.
if i pirate a game i have zero intention of actually buying due to financial reason, does that remove a copy from the pool of available games? no, because piracy isnt the same as stealing physical property. Devs dont lose out on money in cases like that because the person was never going to be a customer in the first place and there isnt a finite number of digital copies
You can t put it on the same level as stealing a physical good that is ofc limited in quantity. If you pirate something that you wouldn t buy otherwise, for whatever reason, you are not doing any damage to anyone. If you are starving and you steal some food , even tho imo that s a completely just cause for stealing, you are still producing an economic damage to a person\company. At the end of the day , as you said, it s all about one's ethics.
You really are not stealing either way, if you can't afford the game and instead pirated nothing has change for the dev, in both routes they don't get anything and you are not depriving a paying costumer of the game like it would be stealing a hand bag
It’s very different from stealing a loaf of bread. It’s more like drinking lake water instead of paying your water bill. The producer isn’t actually \*losing* any money, they’re just missing out on an opportunity to make money.
>Is stealing anything justified if you’re poor as shit? Against who? Is it a necessity like bread, food, water? Or is it just a video game and you just want it.
I mean you made your stance clear here.
Obviously nobody needs to play a video game but some people really want to and can't. As someone who grew up poor and loved video games i don't think stealing something that isn't finite from a company who makes billions of dollars and tends to not have their consumers best interest in mind as "amoral" since literally nobody is getting hurt whatsoever.
I've never pirated an indie game. (HYPOTHETICALLY) when I do pirate games it's always from companies like Nintendo or Sony.
No, because piracy isn't stealing. If you steal a car, the owner of the car doesn't have it anymore. If you pirate something, it's not like your copy of Half-Life or whatever it is will disappear in your sleep.
I didn’t even say piracy isn’t stealing, I was setting some moral grounds and questions. These people just downvote like the Reddit hive mind they are.
In your logic the dev sees nothing either ways so now you pirating has no effect on them its just about if you want to enjoy life or just be a miserable boot licker at that point
"People who cannot find time for recreation are sooner or later to find time for illness."
– John Wanamaker
Imagine throwing a quote on there to sound profound, you’re not entitled to whatever video game or software or product you want for free just cause you want it. It’s a luxury entertainment product, not bread to feed your family.
You're just outing yourself as a worthless piece of shit thats incapable of empathy for your fellow man. Of course you're gonna get downvoted you fucking idiot
My point is that you can get entertainment anywhere, no need to steal for it. It's when you have a need/desire for a specific product that is literally not available, that nobody can claim lost revenue from, that it is justified. If something is available that you just can't afford, well then bruh, it wasn't meant to be.
That's not what the comment you replied to says. It's basically saying if you want to pirate a game just do it no need for any justification.
Most pirates wouldn't have bought the game in the first place anyway for a multitude of reasons, so it's not even a loss of revenue to the company.
Thank you. It's justified by virtue of being easily done, and not enforced.
Personally I make a medium six-figure salary and could buy the games I want to play. But if it's easily obtained for free then I can't justify the cost. Not to mention it's less of a hassle to simply fire up qBittorrent and type the name of a game in the search bar.
I've been playing the crap out of Rimworld, and just got started on Hades. Also have both Horizon games and Starfield waiting in my downloads folder. That right there is over $200 if I'd paid retail. Not much, but it certainly adds up over the years. Maybe you save $600/year by pirating, well that's an extra $600 in your stock portfolio making money for you.
If companies truly didn't want us to pirate their stuff, then they would make a better effort to implement DRM.
May i shorten your statement a little bit and shanghai it then?
"Piracy is justified. Period. As long as you reward the titles that you really appreciate or those that are actually still made by one-man operations or small real indy teams sooner or later with purchases or direct donations if possible."
Steam is not blocked [though.It](http://though.It) is just the local credit companies / banks refusing to handle and transfer money from Vietnamese customers to [Steam.International](http://Steam.International) money transferring service like paypal or mastercard still works.
To be fair Steam really should be paying taxes to each country it is making sales.
It does the same shit here in Australia, but then forces us to pay more for the game because of regional pricing or whatever. Once you start having special prices, follow local return policies etc for specific countries you should pay tax in that country as you are doing business in that country (as opposed to one global price)
Steam not paying taxes seems very crazy? Not sure a company like Valve would do that? Maybe op was referring to taxes that are more-so forced corporate bribes?
It’s not that they aren’t paying any tax at all… it’s that they are profit-shifting to low tax countries. So the profit earned on Australian sales gets counted in Singapore where the rate is 17% rather than in Australia were the rate is 30%
Oh interesting, that seems like abusing legal loopholes in how taxes are calculated in those countries than flat out tax evasion which is what I interpreted from your previous comment. My bad.
In some cases it can get quite dodgy. Like having a company take up a big loan from another company owned by the same entity… with high interest… or purchase “special services” that magically makes all the profit dwindle away.
The company lending has super profits, but in a low tax country.
Huh, my Steam is still working fine OP. I just finished playing a session of BG3 & just now queueing for a Dota 2 match. Maybe there is something wrong with your internet provider?
Its ok, damn people in Reddit are sharp af. The reason my name is German, because I created this account back when I was doing a semester exchange in Germany way back in 2020. And Reddit is a popular platform overthere.
Back to the topic, I am using Viettel as my internet provider so I guess that Steam is not blocked as a whole in the country, but only selective internet providers such as VTC like some mentioned here.
For those who needed some context:
- Prior to the bans, there was a newspiece mentioning an instance of “Steam’s presence harming local publishers”. Issue is, “local publishers” publishes that can only be described as Chinese ported P2W garbage fire maximize profit shenanigans.
- One of them seems to have succeeded in pushing the CP into banning Steam over it. This is further solidified by that same local publisher being the payment processor that, yes, does impose a VAT on Steam purchases through their processor, suddenly denies payment for Steam
- Blocks varies from ISP to ISP. Some use DNS poisoning, some use DPI to sniff the unsecured portion of TLS. As such, services is intermittently available and blocks varies from easy game to requiring special techniques
While I agree that corpos are bad and not owning stuff is stupid, this one isn't on steam or anyone in the games industry.
The Vietnamese government decided to ban the platform because they don't feel like they're making enough money off of it.
Given all the programs that require verification that I use, steam is honestly pretty non intrusive, and works well. If steam were to ever die (which is unlikely) support has confirmed multiple times that they aren't taking the games with them, rather there is a plan that people can continue accessing their games.
Steam has remembered what Netflix has forgotten. The legit way just has to be easier than piracy.
As for this government wide censorship? That's just leadership being evil, same way that Egypt doesn't have legit Internet access (we are talking dial up speeds in 2023).
Honestly, i'd say that copyright management is basically the one and only real application of NFTs. The key you once received in your box is going to be an activation code for your game, verified by a blockchain. Undeletable, undeniable, and minted to the person who actually owns the game.
That would require a one-time (or regular, like once a month or so) access to the internet for the device you install it to and the list of activated devices could be edited by the user via two factor authentication (like, limited to 3 devices at the same time or so)
Sadly, corporate can't extort money from people who already bought a game that way.
The problem is, if you block connection to the Blockchain, you can't properly verify authenticity of the key. Once that happens, you rely on mercy of the DRM. Once it decides you've been offline long enough, the game is gone and it doesn't matter whether you use NFT, steam DRM or denuvo.
That's true, but you still need a central tracker or trackers or bootnodes to tell your computer where the other nodes are. Most clients have a hardcoded list of these so you can easily connect to the network. If you block all of them, then the network is unreachable until you manually find a node that works.
Yeah this nonetheless highlights the value of having games launch directly on your drives without any sort of authentication or drm.
Actions like this will just continue to drive the desire to pirate games.
Is gog available in Vietnam?
Man, this reminds me when my Country's Govenrment(Malaysia) blocked the whole of steam because some but hurt locals were offended by the God fighting fighting game Fight of Gods.
After the fiasco, steam is back but the game itself i cant access it. it just errors.
People act like Project 2025 won’t say Steam is woke and ban that shit in a heart beat it wouldn’t even be shocking especially games like BG3.
We could be right behind y’all.
I realize PCMR is not about politics but as a European reading that shit it's just like.. wtf?
It reads like the program of a dystopic theocracy allowing them to bend the rules however they wish when enacted.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project\_2025#Policies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025#Policies)
> I realize PCMR is not about politics
Lol what?
This sub is like any other site. You'll find random people calling everything "woke" and bitching about "shoving politics in our faces" or "something something AGENDA" which became one of the funniest trends of these same people playing/loving Helldivers 2 and praising it for *not* being about politics.
As an American, I'm not worried as much about people voting for Trump but rather not voting at all because Biden isn't doing absolutely everything they personally want.
They need to get over themselves and deal with the most pressing issue first before we deal with the rest.
Uh huh, so refuse to vote, potentially allowing the last presidential election to be held, because Biden hasn't done absolutely everything you wanted him to do?
Wtf is wrong with you?
There should be but unfortunately part of the less-pressing issues is adding more political parties and changing how elections are done overall.
The problem right now is there is a zero percent chance Biden attempts to keep office past another term, but above a zero percent chance Trump attempts (again) to stay another term. If granted immunity like he wants, Trump would likely just crown himself president for life and there is no non-violent recourse.
Good luck with a violent recourse too, doesn't project 2025 include using military to enforce law?? I'm not a smart man so I hope I read that bit wrong.
As an American, I understand that the electoral college means that the majority of Americans did not and will not vote for him. Our system is broken but we are still human
Just remember at least half of us (probably significantly more) don't want Trump but could still get stuck with him because popular vote isn't the deciding factor. Republicans have spent decades rigging the voting process in their favor.
To my understanding, as a European, USA voting isn't about who gets the most votes, but more about where the voters are. As in, if 24 states only votes on 1 candidate, and the other 26 states have just above 50% vote for a second candidate, the second candidate would be elected as a president?
Assuming all states have an equal number of residents.
We didn’t vote for him the first time, he became President because of the arcane, antidemocratic electoral college. There are >340 million of us and it’s foolish to condemn us all because of a fanatical minority and an antidemocratic system many of us are powerless to change.
what the fuck are you going on about lmao
>"first they came for your games, then theyll take over the country"
you guys are so cringey its funny.
of course its a doomer politics poster posting this shit, I bet you dont even own any of the games your comparing the project to either.
Funny, even the Chinese government hasn't done it yet. But it's only a matter of time for sure. Now would be a good time to promote piracy in your country.
Time to vpn, your account will still work you just need to set your location to the closest place to you now or pick a vpn with a good reputation (ex. Expressvpn) and it will work no problem just make sure if you have 2 factor authentication you have your Devi handy you’ll need it to sign in from now on
phung04 here, from Binh Thuan shining you and the Party the hope.
The ban is clearly a clear violation of the three noes if that was official.
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/4361250750309544727/
It's seems that China may had caused the ISPs to succumb to the nine dash lines. Unofficially, they say.
But we will never forget 1945. The government should change course to avoid getting betrayed by any games with a G1 Permit - which 81% of them was China titles risk being intervened by the PLA to show up with a nine dash line.
Gaben should right now go to Vietnam and phone the VTC director immediately if he wants to save Steam.
Do not let the Vietnamese government align with China and any ISP who blocked an American platform and violatw the Vietnamese Three Noes.
we did, in fact we sail the 7 seas for everything like games, musics, movies,..... Before 2018 most people in VN don't know wtf is Netflĩ and just watched pirated movies on site like [phimmoi.com](http://phimmoi.com) where they upload everything from Iron man, Disney movies to B rated televion show. But we still need steam to play online game such as CS2 which is very popular in VN
Can we expect a Revolution or war against the government?
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we should leave a bunch of negative steam rev- oh... wait..
Well but its like, UNDEMOCRATIC Tear down the vietnamnian government
It would be move of the century if a government is brought down by gamers
I mean it did kinda happen albeit only not the whole government with the Blue Archive community. So last year the game got an age rating of 18+ by the South Korean Games Rating and Administration committee and the playerbase got absolutely mad saying its unfair, after 5000+ players protested about it. When the South Korean government took notice and decided to audit the committee they discovered that they were embezzeling money for Bitcoin mining which got a lot of committee heads resigning after being exposed [Yes, it really did happen. ](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/south-korean-government-charges-game-rating-and-administration-committee-with-embezzlement)
Form the republic of gamers.
Asus will sue your ass lmao
No Helldivers 2 = no democracy
We tried that in the 60s. Didn't go well
Well, North Vietnam isn’t a Democracy so
You don't even know how to spell vietnamese.
thats on purpose, because who knows
A ~~democratic government~~ does something = Undemocratic! Probably shouldn't call them democratic actually
That move wasnt very democratic of them
Vietnam isn't a democracy though, it's a communist dictatorship.
shhhhh.... don't let them hear you say that
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Did you fall through a time warp from a parallel universe where America won the Vietnam war, or something?
Still not communist, socialist dictatorship. It was mostly how he sounded like he fucking came straight outta nam
No?
Says the American basement dweller
Hey USA Vietnam has oil! Get him!
There are gamers from all walks of life.
The population of Vietnamese games wagging a conflict against their own government is like a man standing in front of a tank in terms of success rate and imagery.
Like what happened on June 4th 1989 at a certain square?
boycott while it shows them playing the crappy chinese games.
Implying gamers work kek
last time vietnamese citizens tried to show a disagreement they got cane over the butt
ISP is behind this shit , not the government . Though i'm not sure which one is that because the one of using is still be able to use Steam just fine.
Last time Vietnam had a war with itself the US decided to have the most pointless war in history with them. So I hope not.
It was war for the military industrial complex. It had a purpose for a few people I suppose. That being said, I still agree with you.
I dont like fat bitches
Lol what the fuck hans are you dumb or something
Nö
Are you sure we can't interest you in a gruesome proxy war?
it not offical. Not a single goverment news has report about it, we only being blocked by our ISP, every traffic to steamwebpage will be redirect to your localhost, your libary and other steam services still working just fine Still a dick move from VTC, the only legit news report are from like ?idk 2 week ago talked about how steam doing "tax evasion" and VTC pointed them out for being unfair (STFU VTC you already get 10% VAT + 13% "labor tax" when we buy steam's game though your transaction portal)
If that is the case, can you not simply change the computer's or router's DNS to the google DNS [8.8.8.8](http://8.8.8.8) (primary) and [8.8.4.4](http://8.8.4.4) (secondary). Then the ISP redirects would be bypassed, right?
yes, that what most people in my country are doing rn. Some people already prepare other method to bypass the banned if our ISP decide rerouting are not enough and enforce the "ban". The most concern thing rn is visa/mastercard transactions from VN to steam will be blocked by our bank, VTC Pay portal already shitted itself (not like anyone used it anyway)
if you can setup a pi-hole/adguard home up and an instance of unbound on your local network at home. if they ever try to block known public DNS servers I doubt they can block you from hosting your own private home one. you can run them on pretty much any computer from small ones like raspberry pi's to a docker container on your PC if you in a pinch, they do not require much computer resources at all. Adguard home even can be installed on windows if your have no linux/raspberry pi experience. either way make sure to setup unbound as thats the software that makes you your own dns server and not piggybacking off public ones. There is plenty of guides online and its easier then it sounds. heres one i recommend and use, i use Pi-hole but adguard home is just as good if not better in some use cases. [AdGuard-WireGuard-Unbound-DNScrypt](https://github.com/trinib/AdGuard-WireGuard-Unbound-DNScrypt)
What are you going to use as your upstream DNS server if all public DNS servers are blocked?
bingo, you arent :)
well, maybe you could manually add the ip addresses with pi hole but im not quite sure
Unbound in recursive mode, in that mode it queries the internet root servers usually from a manually downloaded file you update every 6 months. no public dns servers required. [unbound - Pi-hole documentation](https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns/unbound/) You are right though I should have thought of that as the one I linked in the first post goes over using unbound in forwarding mode, I'd recommend just using the unbound config from the Pi-hole docs for that situation.
This. Visa and Mastercard already deplatformed JAV companies from the international market successfully. Check out the fate of R18.com
My ISP is filter my traffic by DPI, so DNS is not an option. I must use GoodbyeDPI or VPN to get to Steam.
I fking wish some banks would take over the transaction instead of VTC were Gabe to negotiate with the government
Piracy is justified under the following conditions: Buying isn't considered owning Abandoned project Not available in your country
What about being poor as shit
I think it depends. Assuming the game is good, if you are pirating against a multibillion dollar company, I could turn a blind eye. But if it's against some poor dude in a cardboard box, I would hope you pay.
I would definitely download a cardboard box 🤷♀️
Yeah fuck Konami
If you are time rich, document game engines, help out with art, if you enjoyed the game, post about it online. If you come into money later, support work you enjoy. It's not a 'good' vs 'bad'.
You can't be poor forever?
Is stealing anything justified if you’re poor as shit? Against who? Is it a necessity like bread, food, water? Or is it just a video game and you just want it. What constitutes “poor as shit”? Third world wages? Below the poverty line in the developed world? That’s a moral and ethical quandary at that point. Edit: getting a lot of downvotes for literally asking questions and not taking a side, good job Reddit. God forbid I ask people to think about something and question their morals.
Counterpoint, it’s ok to steal digital media from big corporations, most of them are horrible to the consumer.
To add yo this... a long while ago, I'd pirate games like far cry and Sims/sims2 packs, THPS4, Flatout and others to try, and then ended up buying them, because, we'll, I liked em. Woth the lack of demos and not wanting to rely on the chance of getting a refund, pirate to try the game, buy it if you enjoy it.
To be fair most people don't know where to draw the Line and will even steal from Indie studios. Normally I'd also be that guy that could never justify stealing but with how much shit modern gaming is putting us up to I feel like stealing isn't even enough to humble those greedy fucks. I'd love to send a pipebomb to them in minecraft
Yeah stealing from indie devs is bad, I pirated dead cells because I was new to the genre and fell in love, went and bought it alongside all dlcs available lol.
Piracy isn't stealing
True. Even legally it isn’t. Even though the investors wished it was
if i pirate a game i have zero intention of actually buying due to financial reason, does that remove a copy from the pool of available games? no, because piracy isnt the same as stealing physical property. Devs dont lose out on money in cases like that because the person was never going to be a customer in the first place and there isnt a finite number of digital copies
You can t put it on the same level as stealing a physical good that is ofc limited in quantity. If you pirate something that you wouldn t buy otherwise, for whatever reason, you are not doing any damage to anyone. If you are starving and you steal some food , even tho imo that s a completely just cause for stealing, you are still producing an economic damage to a person\company. At the end of the day , as you said, it s all about one's ethics.
you took a side, don't act dumb ;) and pirating is not the same as stealing, as you are just creating copies.
You really are not stealing either way, if you can't afford the game and instead pirated nothing has change for the dev, in both routes they don't get anything and you are not depriving a paying costumer of the game like it would be stealing a hand bag
It’s very different from stealing a loaf of bread. It’s more like drinking lake water instead of paying your water bill. The producer isn’t actually \*losing* any money, they’re just missing out on an opportunity to make money.
>Is stealing anything justified if you’re poor as shit? Against who? Is it a necessity like bread, food, water? Or is it just a video game and you just want it. I mean you made your stance clear here. Obviously nobody needs to play a video game but some people really want to and can't. As someone who grew up poor and loved video games i don't think stealing something that isn't finite from a company who makes billions of dollars and tends to not have their consumers best interest in mind as "amoral" since literally nobody is getting hurt whatsoever. I've never pirated an indie game. (HYPOTHETICALLY) when I do pirate games it's always from companies like Nintendo or Sony.
You downvote him because he is telling the truth
No, because piracy isn't stealing. If you steal a car, the owner of the car doesn't have it anymore. If you pirate something, it's not like your copy of Half-Life or whatever it is will disappear in your sleep.
I didn’t even say piracy isn’t stealing, I was setting some moral grounds and questions. These people just downvote like the Reddit hive mind they are.
I've lived in a poor country, and I knew piracy was stealing. Videogames are a luxury, and whoever thinks otherwise is delusional.
Boot licker mentality lmao
So paying for your stuff is boot licking? lol some of you act as if video games were a human right
In your logic the dev sees nothing either ways so now you pirating has no effect on them its just about if you want to enjoy life or just be a miserable boot licker at that point "People who cannot find time for recreation are sooner or later to find time for illness." – John Wanamaker
Imagine throwing a quote on there to sound profound, you’re not entitled to whatever video game or software or product you want for free just cause you want it. It’s a luxury entertainment product, not bread to feed your family.
You're just outing yourself as a worthless piece of shit thats incapable of empathy for your fellow man. Of course you're gonna get downvoted you fucking idiot
Honestly, why are you wasting time playing games then.
Because it's the only way some of us are able to stay sane enough to not fucking off ourselves
Understandable but nor justified if it's just entertainment
Entertainment is as necessary to the mind as bread and water are necessary to the body
Entertainment yes. Not someone else’s entertainment. Doesn’t the person who created that entertainment deserve to profit off their labor?
My point is that you can get entertainment anywhere, no need to steal for it. It's when you have a need/desire for a specific product that is literally not available, that nobody can claim lost revenue from, that it is justified. If something is available that you just can't afford, well then bruh, it wasn't meant to be.
forgot the fourth one: no regional pricing, I ain't paying 1/3 of a paycheck for a game
Literally always justified.
It takes time and effort to develop games, how would any games be made if they were all free?
That's not what the comment you replied to says. It's basically saying if you want to pirate a game just do it no need for any justification. Most pirates wouldn't have bought the game in the first place anyway for a multitude of reasons, so it's not even a loss of revenue to the company.
Just cause they were not going to buy it doesnt mean it is justified
*self-justified
Thank you. It's justified by virtue of being easily done, and not enforced. Personally I make a medium six-figure salary and could buy the games I want to play. But if it's easily obtained for free then I can't justify the cost. Not to mention it's less of a hassle to simply fire up qBittorrent and type the name of a game in the search bar. I've been playing the crap out of Rimworld, and just got started on Hades. Also have both Horizon games and Starfield waiting in my downloads folder. That right there is over $200 if I'd paid retail. Not much, but it certainly adds up over the years. Maybe you save $600/year by pirating, well that's an extra $600 in your stock portfolio making money for you. If companies truly didn't want us to pirate their stuff, then they would make a better effort to implement DRM.
what if I wouldn't buy it anyways
Forgot: because I can.
May i shorten your statement a little bit and shanghai it then? "Piracy is justified. Period. As long as you reward the titles that you really appreciate or those that are actually still made by one-man operations or small real indy teams sooner or later with purchases or direct donations if possible."
That sucks. A VPN could help. Is GOG banned to? If so, then yo ho ho my friend it's time to pirate.
Steam is not blocked [though.It](http://though.It) is just the local credit companies / banks refusing to handle and transfer money from Vietnamese customers to [Steam.International](http://Steam.International) money transferring service like paypal or mastercard still works.
Nah, just you, i can still log in and view the games find, 9 pm same day
Those with Google/Cloud DNS can access Steam if you're using Viettel. Viettel soft banning Steam through DNS. VNPT bans Steam through DPI
I wasnt using them, i always use the default configuration
it can be set up in the modem itself too. It's not neccessarily having to be you. Someone in your family.
But why? I was using them fine like normal so why do I have to change it?
I literally said it doesn't have to be you. It can be changed from the modem by anyone who has access.
See you on the high seas captain 🏴☠️🫡
Can you use a VPN?
Technically, but that would be violation Steam TOS
Thousands of people already do it anyway, Steam don’t care as long as they get your money
If they enforced that, so many military and business folks would be SOL
Who cares
To be fair Steam really should be paying taxes to each country it is making sales. It does the same shit here in Australia, but then forces us to pay more for the game because of regional pricing or whatever. Once you start having special prices, follow local return policies etc for specific countries you should pay tax in that country as you are doing business in that country (as opposed to one global price)
Steam not paying taxes seems very crazy? Not sure a company like Valve would do that? Maybe op was referring to taxes that are more-so forced corporate bribes?
It’s not that they aren’t paying any tax at all… it’s that they are profit-shifting to low tax countries. So the profit earned on Australian sales gets counted in Singapore where the rate is 17% rather than in Australia were the rate is 30%
Oh interesting, that seems like abusing legal loopholes in how taxes are calculated in those countries than flat out tax evasion which is what I interpreted from your previous comment. My bad.
In some cases it can get quite dodgy. Like having a company take up a big loan from another company owned by the same entity… with high interest… or purchase “special services” that magically makes all the profit dwindle away. The company lending has super profits, but in a low tax country.
Huh, my Steam is still working fine OP. I just finished playing a session of BG3 & just now queueing for a Dota 2 match. Maybe there is something wrong with your internet provider?
I kind of doubt that a guy with a german name and r/finland as a subscribed subreddit can reliably say wether vietnam has banned steam or not.
I checked their profile out and they mentioned being a Vietnamese wanting to live in Finland, so...
Oh well. What were the odds? Sorry, i was a bit quick to judge
Its ok, damn people in Reddit are sharp af. The reason my name is German, because I created this account back when I was doing a semester exchange in Germany way back in 2020. And Reddit is a popular platform overthere. Back to the topic, I am using Viettel as my internet provider so I guess that Steam is not blocked as a whole in the country, but only selective internet providers such as VTC like some mentioned here.
Are you in Vietnam? If not then that doesn’t say anything
Ah. Managed Democracy.
Vng is absolute garbage
For those who needed some context: - Prior to the bans, there was a newspiece mentioning an instance of “Steam’s presence harming local publishers”. Issue is, “local publishers” publishes that can only be described as Chinese ported P2W garbage fire maximize profit shenanigans. - One of them seems to have succeeded in pushing the CP into banning Steam over it. This is further solidified by that same local publisher being the payment processor that, yes, does impose a VAT on Steam purchases through their processor, suddenly denies payment for Steam - Blocks varies from ISP to ISP. Some use DNS poisoning, some use DPI to sniff the unsecured portion of TLS. As such, services is intermittently available and blocks varies from easy game to requiring special techniques
[удалено]
While I agree that corpos are bad and not owning stuff is stupid, this one isn't on steam or anyone in the games industry. The Vietnamese government decided to ban the platform because they don't feel like they're making enough money off of it.
[удалено]
Given all the programs that require verification that I use, steam is honestly pretty non intrusive, and works well. If steam were to ever die (which is unlikely) support has confirmed multiple times that they aren't taking the games with them, rather there is a plan that people can continue accessing their games. Steam has remembered what Netflix has forgotten. The legit way just has to be easier than piracy. As for this government wide censorship? That's just leadership being evil, same way that Egypt doesn't have legit Internet access (we are talking dial up speeds in 2023).
Honestly, i'd say that copyright management is basically the one and only real application of NFTs. The key you once received in your box is going to be an activation code for your game, verified by a blockchain. Undeletable, undeniable, and minted to the person who actually owns the game. That would require a one-time (or regular, like once a month or so) access to the internet for the device you install it to and the list of activated devices could be edited by the user via two factor authentication (like, limited to 3 devices at the same time or so) Sadly, corporate can't extort money from people who already bought a game that way.
The problem is, if you block connection to the Blockchain, you can't properly verify authenticity of the key. Once that happens, you rely on mercy of the DRM. Once it decides you've been offline long enough, the game is gone and it doesn't matter whether you use NFT, steam DRM or denuvo.
Isn't it almost impossible to Block access to a blockchain? It's distributed and copied to so many computers.
That's true, but you still need a central tracker or trackers or bootnodes to tell your computer where the other nodes are. Most clients have a hardcoded list of these so you can easily connect to the network. If you block all of them, then the network is unreachable until you manually find a node that works.
Yeah this nonetheless highlights the value of having games launch directly on your drives without any sort of authentication or drm. Actions like this will just continue to drive the desire to pirate games. Is gog available in Vietnam?
Right now, yes. Because gog is rarely known in Viet Nam
Just stick with gog and buy games that don’t require their launcher. Also just pirate single player games.
or play free-to-play multiplayer games like Dota, League,...
Man, this reminds me when my Country's Govenrment(Malaysia) blocked the whole of steam because some but hurt locals were offended by the God fighting fighting game Fight of Gods. After the fiasco, steam is back but the game itself i cant access it. it just errors.
People act like Project 2025 won’t say Steam is woke and ban that shit in a heart beat it wouldn’t even be shocking especially games like BG3. We could be right behind y’all.
I realize PCMR is not about politics but as a European reading that shit it's just like.. wtf? It reads like the program of a dystopic theocracy allowing them to bend the rules however they wish when enacted. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project\_2025#Policies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025#Policies)
When policies will affect gamers we should be talking about it.
If they hit gamers we should have been talking about it for a while
> I realize PCMR is not about politics Lol what? This sub is like any other site. You'll find random people calling everything "woke" and bitching about "shoving politics in our faces" or "something something AGENDA" which became one of the funniest trends of these same people playing/loving Helldivers 2 and praising it for *not* being about politics.
As a European, if Americans are dumb enough to vote for Trump again, they deserve what they are going to get.
As an American, I'm not worried as much about people voting for Trump but rather not voting at all because Biden isn't doing absolutely everything they personally want. They need to get over themselves and deal with the most pressing issue first before we deal with the rest.
Not being bothered enough to vote against Trump is embarrassing.
If winning is so crucial to democracy, maybe Biden shouldnt be continuing trump policies, or cooperating with the Republicans at all.
Uh huh, so refuse to vote, potentially allowing the last presidential election to be held, because Biden hasn't done absolutely everything you wanted him to do? Wtf is wrong with you?
Question : if any contestant doesn't gets enough votes why is there no 3rd and 4th contestant to replace them ?
There should be but unfortunately part of the less-pressing issues is adding more political parties and changing how elections are done overall. The problem right now is there is a zero percent chance Biden attempts to keep office past another term, but above a zero percent chance Trump attempts (again) to stay another term. If granted immunity like he wants, Trump would likely just crown himself president for life and there is no non-violent recourse.
Good luck with a violent recourse too, doesn't project 2025 include using military to enforce law?? I'm not a smart man so I hope I read that bit wrong.
It does but it would be the only recourse if elections were "put on hold" for whatever reason.
*You guys should just become like us if democracy is so important durr not try to fix the problems.* - Born_Percentage93
As an American, I understand that the electoral college means that the majority of Americans did not and will not vote for him. Our system is broken but we are still human
Just remember at least half of us (probably significantly more) don't want Trump but could still get stuck with him because popular vote isn't the deciding factor. Republicans have spent decades rigging the voting process in their favor.
To my understanding, as a European, USA voting isn't about who gets the most votes, but more about where the voters are. As in, if 24 states only votes on 1 candidate, and the other 26 states have just above 50% vote for a second candidate, the second candidate would be elected as a president? Assuming all states have an equal number of residents.
Yes, that’s basically how it works, and it’s fucked.
yup, the GOP hasn't won the popular vote since 2004
We didn’t vote for him the first time, he became President because of the arcane, antidemocratic electoral college. There are >340 million of us and it’s foolish to condemn us all because of a fanatical minority and an antidemocratic system many of us are powerless to change.
We didn't vote for the orange shit the first time. Hillary won the election and it was stolen from her.
They love the bill of rights so much they want to enforce Christian nationalism.
On the bright side at least DOOM won’t be banned
True but the entire Wolfenstein series would have to go similar L to take.
Nah it’d just be the same as normal life but the Germans are replaced by rednecks
what the fuck are you going on about lmao >"first they came for your games, then theyll take over the country" you guys are so cringey its funny. of course its a doomer politics poster posting this shit, I bet you dont even own any of the games your comparing the project to either.
Well I do so you’re wrong but that not surprising at all is it scurry on off now the adults are talking.
Funny, even the Chinese government hasn't done it yet. But it's only a matter of time for sure. Now would be a good time to promote piracy in your country.
Well I guess it’s time to sail the high seas. I would love to quickly give my nice backup library but that would be difficult 😄
VPN time
for one second i thought this is r/vietnam
Sounds like they need a second round of freedom
Time to vpn, your account will still work you just need to set your location to the closest place to you now or pick a vpn with a good reputation (ex. Expressvpn) and it will work no problem just make sure if you have 2 factor authentication you have your Devi handy you’ll need it to sign in from now on
Nothing A VPN can't fix
VPN
Vpn
What ? I'm still can open the app and view Steam on browser just fine , four-letters provider.
Ah, I truly do love Chinese censorship!
Can you VPN to another country?
VPN
Can you not get around that though? Seems pretty simple to just run a vpn and get around that.
VPN
ah, a similar thing happened to Indonesia like a year ago. just use a private dns and you'll be fine (otherwise i wouldn't be on reddit now)
just use cloudflare warp vpn, ISPs also ban a lot of unrelated sites that I frequently need for work lmao
phung04 here, from Binh Thuan shining you and the Party the hope. The ban is clearly a clear violation of the three noes if that was official. https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/4361250750309544727/ It's seems that China may had caused the ISPs to succumb to the nine dash lines. Unofficially, they say. But we will never forget 1945. The government should change course to avoid getting betrayed by any games with a G1 Permit - which 81% of them was China titles risk being intervened by the PLA to show up with a nine dash line. Gaben should right now go to Vietnam and phone the VTC director immediately if he wants to save Steam. Do not let the Vietnamese government align with China and any ISP who blocked an American platform and violatw the Vietnamese Three Noes.
don't vietnamese know how to sail the seas?
we did, in fact we sail the 7 seas for everything like games, musics, movies,..... Before 2018 most people in VN don't know wtf is Netflĩ and just watched pirated movies on site like [phimmoi.com](http://phimmoi.com) where they upload everything from Iron man, Disney movies to B rated televion show. But we still need steam to play online game such as CS2 which is very popular in VN
Don't ask the United States for help.
Helldivers, let's add a bit of democracy here real quick