There was a time many years ago where I would pirate almost everything. It was a time of only a select group of people being aware of how something like this was accomplished without annihilating your computer with viruses or fake files. Then things got a lot easier and some dependable groups of people out there would hack any game that was released and on my gaming rig everything on it was a pirate version. Sometimes the games were so good that I felt bad about stealing it especially if it was a small studio and I would go and buy the game anyway despite having already completed it.
Things tapered down for me as my computer started getting a bit dated and I switched over to console gaming. Getting pirate games on consoles is a lot more difficult than it is on a PC so even though some of my friends had and have hacked PS4's I never jumped on that bandwagon. I also though t that the PS Plus memberships and other things similar to it were a pretty good idea and were available at a very fair price.
When you consider that back in the day we were renting individual games for $5 for a couple of days at Blockbuster compared to around $20 a month that have access to hundreds of games in a library that is constantly changing, this is a very good deal in my mind.
I never ended up with the latest and greatest games but that never bothered me much. Micro-transactions really bothered me though and "free" games where all the good stuff is locked behind paywalls annoy me just about as much. So the result was I simply played older games and since I am a 1-player gamer for the most part, this was just fine with me.
However, the videogame industry is a massive business and while I am certain there are some rather evil meetings that take place where they try to come up with ideas for how to fleece more money out of their customers, we never really got to hear about them. Every now and then though, someone in a high up position says something really stupid and the public blows it up. This is what is happening to Ubisoft right now.
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Memes were blowing up with a lot of hate directed towards Ubisoft when variations of this statement started to appear everywhere including reddit and the place no company wants to end up on, 4-Chan
So it's about feeling comfortable with not owning your game.
This was a part of a rather long statement made by an Ubisoft's director of subscriptions where he was detailing about how the world transitioned away from buying CD's for music and DVD's for movies but the gaming industry was taking a bit more time to embrace the digital only model. From what I read in the rather long speech that you can read for yourself here it doesn't seem like he had some sort of master plan to make it impossible for people to buy physical copies at all but that is what the internet has kind of turned it into.
I actually agreed with him on several of the points that he was making such as the fact that you can walk away from a game for a very long period of time, even remove it from your console and then come back to it years later and your progress is saved at exactly the same point that you were at when you last played. I really like that it is like this because the alternative would be starting every game over each time you decide to move on to something else. I'm sure you know what I mean.
Well like a lot of things on the internet, people are easily made furious when that mob mentality starts to kick in and now in a lot of these forums that I read everyone is talking about trying to make Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown the most pirated game of all time. They seem to have an objective to try to make that the case all because one executive was speaking his mind and saying what I think a lot of us already know: The days of owning physical copies of games is kind of coming to a close. Just visit your local GameStop if you don't believe me... oh wait! You probably can't because that brand has been closing stores like mad.
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There are loads of articles, blogs, and videos out there attacking Ubisoft for their executive's words and most of them use the above phrase. The executive in question that everyone is referencing never actually said that though. Sure he is probably thinking of how to make as much money for his company as he can because that is precisely what his job is. It is likely your job to make as much money for your company as well.
I think if people want to be upset than they can go ahead and do so but I also think that if you are going to get mad, get mad at what the guy actually said, not some YTber's interpretation of his statement.
My days of game piracy are behind me for the time being because the subscription models work for me and I think they do for a ton of other people as well. If Ubisoft gets hit hard on the latest Prince of Persia game it wouldn't surprise me, because a lot of these online groups, and especially 4-Chan are absolutely relentless if they decide they are going to focus on a particular target.