>>37087
I just wanted to interject on this post because I had an opinion about the "Extortion industry" article in the recent kohlzine.

Mainly that it makes no sense in my eyes. Videogames up to this point are like businesses, especially AAA games. They're made to make money, not give things away for free. Piracy is pretty much someone stealing the crops that took you a year to cultivate and were planning to sell at the market soon and giving to people in the market. Even if something is illegally and freely available, it doesn't make it right to take it without permission.

During the development process, they hire a multitude of people to work on a single videogame, with the average videogame costing around $50 million to develop, release, advertise and manage digitally as well as physically for selling. It's an extensively exhausting and incredibly time consuming process which last from years at times, sometimes even a decade. Final Fantasy 14 is a good example. Teams of up to 20-100 people are hired just for a normal and regular game to be made

Most of the time, they get funding from investors or from their own company bank idk how they call it. You can see relevant data for all of these in the following articles I will post below

https://www.cgspectrum.com/blog/game-development-process

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_development

https://venturebeat.com/2018/01/23/the-cost-of-games/

https://vironit.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-video-game/