Ethics of purchasing a remastered Bloodborne port
Howdy Hunters,
I have been playing the game through emulation non stop for the past week and loving every minute of it. A question cropped up in my mind, that I would be interested to hear your thoughts on.
It's concerning the ethical side of this whole operation. I think we can discount the argument of "Emulation is harmful to the industry and stealing" legality side of things, since if the game isn't able to be purchased on any current hardware outside of emulating it on PS5** , then this is the only way to enjoy the product. I personally bought the game digitally on a friend's PS4 and played on it there, and again on my college roommate's PS4, so I have absolutely no qualms about "stealing the game." Even if I didn't purchase the game, I would still emulate it because that is the only option I have aside from spending a huge chunk of money on just 1 game that Sony won't see a dime of if I go the used PS4 route.
What I am wondering, what if Sony announces an official PC port, with the DLC and online features, with no new content or features aside from different resolutions and an uncapped framerate with a price tag of... lets say $50. It is identical to the version we got now through Shad, but is official and released on Steam with network capabilities. Would you folks feel compelled to buy it to have an official version, or are you of the mind set "Snooze you lose, Sony."
I feel like the only downsides to the emulator are a slight barrier to entry, on both the knowhow of emulation and game dumping/pirating/moding as well as the hardware knowledge to know if your rig can even handle it. I have no idea how the backend technical side of emulation works, so I don't know if there will ever be a Jimmy-rigged online component with private servers or something of that nature to be implemented to Shad. But, lets level the playing field and say tomorrow the emulator magically gets full online support and the day after that, Sony stealth releases the remaster on Steam/Epic/Gog/whathaveyou.
There isn't an ounce of copium here, I don't expect or even really hope for a PC release now that we have the game running flawlessly (for me anyway) on PC. I'm not focusing on if there is a release, but rather would you buy it to show Sony that they had a money printing machine this whole time, or did they miss the boat by 10 years and now can eat shit?
Just wondering your thoughts. Showing support (to big corporations) vs Showing their fuck up (to big corporations.) Personally, I am in the camp of "Up yours Sony" but can also completely see myself picking it up on sale after a couple of years after my last playthrough.
**I originally completely forgot that Bloodborne is playable on a PS5, so does the fact that you can buy a PS5 currently from a licensed retailer muddy things, or does the fact that it is a 30 fps carbon copy of the PS4 version kinda nullify things?
EDIT: Spelling