In case I purchase a game here which I stole at childhood and regret about doing so, can I be sure I did a pure moral act and the companies who made the software get their fair exchange back? I repent of having illigal copies of the games I stole when I was a child. I paid on them here and it is not the original price but a discounted or it is either a remaster of the original, how can I make sure that I did right and in case I did right, did it covers everything or I paid only partially on the thefts?

Also, does the payment go to the companies who originally made the game or to a side party of any sort and even if it goes to the company that made the game, will the original developers who worked hard on it will see their dimes?

I feel like I did an incomplete covering of my wrong doings. God may be forgiving, and it is the actual people who made these games that should come with demands and if there is God he might judge me for the wrong doings I made to these developers. I am a believer but I also have moral standards that if you steal something you have to give it back to it's owner and pay for the theft, as well as if someone would cheat on me or steal from me I would expect some point of honesty from the wrong doers. If not for me as I can forgive, then at least for my friends who may not be able to forgive...

Sometimes I ask if the 100$ I paid here for all these games worth been done so, or I better save people with cancer using all that money, if morally it would better spend all that cash on people who really really need it now because of a severe illness or extreme poverty instead of paying for games which the companies and programmers didn't even notice all these years that I once stole...

I was honest as possible, please do not harm me for that, if you can just give me a moral answer and I will do my best to correct my wrong doings further...

That really depends on the case, but for instance if you are talking about games like Sierra On-line games, that company no longer exists and the original developers won't be seeing a single cent of your purchase.

There are ways to compensate for that, you can support their later projects with different companies, and in some special cases there are other ways, like Al Lowe has a tip jar on his website. :-)

If you feel like you need to pay more than the cost of the game, you can always buy more copies as gifts, and then give those to other people or donate them to some giveaway thread here.

A 50$ that you stole in the past isn't equal to a 50$ nowadays, expecially if now you paid 5$.
Also, that money will probably never reach the original people.

That said, your "crime" is still minor and committed as a child, so the important thing is that you understood your error, avoided repeating it and tried to return at least something. IMO you're good now ;P

More like when I was 13 years old up to around the age of 19... I was actually a teen ager... After being used at work by a manipulative boss at around age of 21 I decided I would not steal any software or game anymore... I wish I could find the real people I stole from and not do a symbolic act, because I could basically use the money to save people with severe illness.

Both of you who respond, I thank you.
I would like to hear more opinions.

I hope indeed I could find the tip jars of the original creators and repay them for the wonderful childhood and adulsence I had with their games!

Sorry to rain on your resolution, but it's seldom that an amend made today will reverse an harm done in the past.

For example:
- The act of piracy may have resulted in the game company going broke/out of business.
- Your piracy [and talking to others about it] may have made others also pirate games instead of buying them, aggravating the harm done,
- ... [many more reasons] ...


That said:
- many/most times the harm done by young pirates is minimal [probably many of them didn't even have the money to buy the game, so the company wouldn't have got it anyhow].
- Better late than never, and let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

That is wonderful to know... I would like to know more and hear more answers and opinions about this subject.
Thank you all.

It depends completely on which specific game you pirated. In some cases, the company may not still exist, in other cases it may no longer have the rights to the game or get profits from its sale anymore.

I'd say that for the vast majority of "classic" game cases (pre-2000), your money is not going to the original company (or at least definitely not the original developers at that company).

If you want to make amends, and the company is still existing, it might be more sensible to buy the game directly from their website.

The world doesn't work that way.

Just like in any job, employees get a monthly (or hourly) pay for their work, and that's it. There is no clause that they will continue getting some cut from any games they were developing among others, for the rest of their lives (and beyond), even if they have left the company decades ago and joined some other company.

Whether the "original company" gets any money from the game... that naturally depends whether that original company, and the company who today owns the IP rights to the game, are the same company. If not, then obviously the original company doesn't get any money for a game whose IP rights they don't hold anymore.

If I've worked 10 years ago in some software company developing or testing some piece of code that is still bringing money to that company, I am not expecting them to send me money over the revenue from that piece of code now.

The only way you can recompensate to the developers whose income you stole ages ago by pirating their software, is to try to find out whether they are still alive, and if they are, send them a letter with the money you feel you owe to them, hopefully taking into account inflation and such. You can write something like "Sorry I pirated a game you developed when I was a kid, so here's the money I owe you."

Most probably it was some game development team working on the game so you need to divide that money you owe them among all of them and send them all a letter. Maybe giving the developers a bit more than the game testers, and then the marketing team members some coins as well.

Oh and don't forget to send some money to the guy who made the music for the game as well! However, the guy who developed the copy protection system, don't send him any money. It just encourages him/her/it.

Well, that's not entirely accurate.

For instance, some of the old Sierra people said in some interview (was it the Coles, maybe?) that they were given a choice: to get paid as employees and get guaranteed money for the completed game, or get royalties from sales which means no(t much) money immediately, and whatever comes later depends on the success of the game.

There are also special cases where the original creators have bought back rights to their game, or even more special cases like DoubleFine remasters, where the original creator has licenced rights to the original game to create a remake.

Of course there are countless of other options too, so it's not a situation where one answer fits all cases. In most cases, however, the original creators probably saw the last money from the project soon after the game was originally released.

What a load of crap.

ROYALTIES!


May not be the case for some of the games on here, but its something thats real.

Do you also feel compelled to send authors money for books you read at a library? If you go to a friend's house and watch a film, do you send the studio, producer, director, writers, soundtrack musicians, and second location key grips, assistant riggers, etc money? Or send the theater money, because you are stealing their audience? Keep a list of the songs you hear from the radio, and ready your wallet! If you ever record the radio onto a tape (shame, shame, shame), you can be absolved of your absolutely stolen and completely immoral telltale mixtape by hosting a big concert for all of those bands' studios' production assistants.

When doing those things you can become a fan of content you would otherwise not experience. And I disagree: by copying media, I don't believe you automatically are depriving anyone of anything.

But remember to never copy that floppy: Don't Copy That Floppy (Official Video - Digitally Remastered)

Ahh, I just watched a video and didn't pay for it, quick, find me a priest! :-/

Unlike most other artists, game developers very rarely receive on-going royalties on the sale of their game. Developers usually work for a fixed salary or contract rate and sometimes receive a bonus a few months after a game's release if it reaches certain sales and/or critical review score targets. Purchasing a game more than six months after it's initial release will seldom do anything to help the original developers. They've already moved on to other projects. Your purchase at that point will simply put money in the pocket of the publisher and/or whoever hold the intellectual property rights.

Your intent is noble, and I salute you for wanting to correct past mistakes. If you are continuing to play games that you pirated in the past, then I firmly believe you need to "get legit" and purchase them. But to answer your question truthfully: no, you will NOT be able to compensate the original developers for ripping them off years ago.

I usually keep my spiritual/religious beliefs to myself, but since you opened the door I will simply remind you that: forgiveness of sin does not mean absolution from the consequences of the sin. You made a poor decision in the past, and there is no action or ritual you can do that will undo that mistake and the effects that it had. Learn from it, make better decisions in the future, and leave the past behind you. The only exception to this would be: if you ever find yourself in a pub, and the person sitting next to you casually brings up that they're a game developer and worked on a game that you pirated.... the drinks are on you that night. :-)

So. It is the publisher I owe and not the developer I see.
Can I make sure that the publisher got it's fair compensation if I bought the game on Steam or on "Great Old Games"? Is it ends up fair, overally?

Even the publisher may have changed due to acquisitions. It could be just a bunch of random investors (shareholders) who benefit from the sale today. They have made their investments based on balance sheets that don't include any "childhood theft debt" so you aren't ripping them off.

I think it's pointless trying to make up for theft that didn't happen. Neither the publisher nor the developer lost money when a kid copied their game. Now if you find a self-publishing solo dev who's still going at it, sure, go ahead and support them. AAA owned by big business? Forget it.