What's bad in helping someone move their save files from a cracked game?

Question

This question was asked and closed:

The Binding Of Isaac: move stats from pirated version to legal, steam-bought version?

How is it suddenly not a good idea to help a person move their progress from a pirated to a legal copy of the game? If anything, it discourages people from buying legal versions in favor of keeping their progress.

I know there is a point about support with pirated versions being off-topic in the FAQ, and I understand that not helping with problems related strictly to a pirated version is a kind of a penalty for that, but in cases like this, I do not support that policy.

Answer 1

As Frank states, we don't want to support piracy here on Arqade. Yes, people will always pirate stuff, and yes, those pirates can see the error in their ways and buy a game they've previously pirated, but that doesn't negate the fact that they originally pirated the game.

This runs deeper than just pirates having a change of heart though. There's also issues surrounding legality that I wont pretend to know everything about, but suffice it to say if the Arqade or the Stack Exchange network were to openly support cracks, key-gens, DRM workarounds, pirated games or anything else of questionable legality, then that opens up a doorway for litigation to be brought against the company as a whole, and possibly individual users of the site.

Quoting agent86 on our stance toward not-quite-legal games (emphasis mine):

When it comes to legality, we tend to err on the side of assuming good faith here, and only prohibit questions that are clearly on the wrong side of the law, the terms of service, or the EULA for the software in question. <snip>

This means that outright discussions of piracy, EULA/TOS violations (game hacks, etc) are off topic, but most of the rest of the legal questions surrounding gaming we leave alone. For instance, emulation and issues with emulators are considered fine and on-topic.

What I take away from this, is that by aiding a pirate (even if they bought the game eventually) is off-topic, as it is an outright discussion in support of piracy.

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If anything, it discourages people from buying legal versions in favor of keeping their progress.

I disagree. By answering your question and having it available for future readers, we are then providing a resource that pirates can use to justify pirating the game, with a thought process similar to "Oh well, I can always buy it if its any good, as my progress will carry over to the bought game".

You're right that we should be encouraging people to buy the game, but realistically the game should sell itself through descriptions of gameplay, mechanics, or storyline, not the ease at which one can pirate it and then buy it, as is your case.

Answer 2

The user only bought the game after asking out of peer pressure. It was originally asked in the terms of "is this worth buying or do I lose my save files?"

Now this sounds at least in the letter like a piracy support question. The implicit assumption is that it's not worth it to buy it if progress can't be shared, or that it's okay to pirate it now and buy it later if progress can be migrated.

I have made the call and this question is piracy support in letter and spirit. I deleted it several hours ago then forgot to actually click Post Your Answer here.

Answer 3

It looks like the question's been deleted now.

To flesh out my earlier comment, the basic stance seems to be that we don't support piracy. No exceptions. We will generally assume good faith if we're not told straight out that it's been pirated, but we will not help at all if you tell us that.

There can be arguments made for allowing specific scenarios, such as this one, but you'll need to be very convincing if you want to change our current stance.