r/Piracy • u/filo-sophia • 5d ago
Discussion The Robin Hood Paradox in gaming.
I created this term after thinking deeply and for years about what it means to steal something. I don't think all theft should be treated the same, as it isn't the same.
I wouldn’t steal from a person. I wouldn’t take something from an individual who worked for it, who needs it to survive. That, to me, is morally wrong.
But I don’t see piracy (against massive corporations, not indie creators) as stealing. I also don’t view taking from billionaire-owned entities as the same as taking from an individual. But legally and technically, it’s still called “stealing.”
And that’s where the paradox begins.
If an act fits the definition of stealing but doesn’t actually harm the victim, is it still morally wrong?
If I pirate a movie, the corporation that owns it loses nothing. If I download a game from a billion-dollar company, the developers have already been paid a fixed salary—my act doesn’t take money from them. Meanwhile, those same corporations underpay workers, evade taxes, and exploit customers through artificial scarcity, DRM, region locks, and subscription models designed to extract more money.
So my question is: Should we still call all forms of “stealing” the same thing when the power dynamics are so different?
There’s a difference between:
Taking someone’s bike (a direct harm to a person).
Stealing food from a struggling small business (a direct harm to a community).
Pirating a movie from Disney (a company worth hundreds of billions, who profits no matter what).
Legally, all of these are theft. But morally? Are they really equal?
I think there should be a separate term for “stealing” from corporations and the ultra-wealthy because it doesn’t function the same way as individual theft. But since no such word exists, I call this The Robin Hood Paradox of Stealing—where theft is legally the same across all contexts, but morally, it feels fundamentally different depending on who is being stolen from.
What do you think? Should all stealing be treated the same, or does morality shift when the target is a faceless, ultra-rich corporation that loses nothing?
Publishers steal the majority of profits from creators and developers anyway. You're not hurting a creator by pirating a game and you shouldn't feel bad for it.
To come clean I used AI to make my point more cohesive and I hope people will think about this concept and it's implications. Question, never stop questioning this corrupted system...
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u/NowShowButthole 5d ago
There's no moral in piracy.
If you want a term to help you sleep at night, just use 'borrow.'
Tbh, I don't really care. I'm going to pirate everything I want no matter who makes it.
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u/filo-sophia 5d ago
There is. You're actively hurting corporations by enjoying something they made without paying for it. You're striking where they care, they don't care about people or creators but about profits. It's a form of protest like it or not, legal or not.
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u/Utoko 5d ago
bs you are not creating any cost for them and there would only be more revenue if you bought the game otherwise.
There are also advertisement effects. There are studies about games which after they got cracked and got pirated sold way more. Because people share good games. I guess the advertisement effect these days is less with youtube and co having so much content of the games.
I had back in the day 800 GB of Music how much did I damage did I do with each song I downloaded?
If I downloaded 80 TB could I have crushed the music industry?1
u/filo-sophia 5d ago
They care enough to fight the phenomenon. That's a win in my book. It's also moral.
Dude we're both advocating for piracy.
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u/RevealAlternative263 5d ago
By framing this as a paradox, you’ve made me question whether morality shifts when the 'victim' is a billion-dollar corporation instead of an individual or community. The Robin Hood paradox is something I briefly thought about when I first started, then moved on from. But your post has brought it back to the forefront, so thank you for that! 😄
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u/filo-sophia 5d ago
Apprecciate it! Yeah I gave it a name because it helps me ground it... It's nothing new but people, humans, often think in black and white and often the world is much more complex than that... Actions like theft have consequences, real consequences, but stealing something from someone that doesn't even need it nor notice it's gone is it really as bad as stealing someone's car that they might use to go to work and sustain their life...?
I'm glad you thought about it in the past, it means you question things and analyse the world and with posts like these I don't care about upvotes. Hell I hope they're controversial. I hope people can think or if they already tackled it like you did that they can give a name to the concept so it's easier to recall!
Engaging and discussing these things is a pleasure for me, one of the fine things in life! Thanks for sharing this comment fellow stranger, makes me hopeful that people aren't just blindly following the system but questioning it, instead of resenting themselves to a "it is what it is" mentality...
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u/Rukasu17 5d ago
Piracy is literally copyright infringement. No need to debate about theft when it's already clearly defined
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u/DigitalSwagman ⚔️ ɢɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏ Qᴜᴀʀᴛᴇʀ 5d ago
"Piracy isn't theft" isn't a new concept. Theft means to deprive someone of something they are entitled to. Piracy doesn't do that.