I hope it was worth it LOL. Only a fool would work like this
Congratulations, you've demonstrated exactly the kind of immature behavior im talking about in my above post.
Just like people who serve in the military to protect the rights of people they don't agree with, I too accept that my contributions to the scene will be under-appreciated by a large subset of grown-children, including yourself.
pirating is taking other peoples work without crediting them for their efforts, pirating licenses is the same thing, if you are a pirate why do you care so much?
Piracy is the theft of commerically licensed products for sale to the public. The difference here is you are essentially stealing (mostly) from multi-national billion dollar corporations who have bought up the game development market. In a lot of cases when you choose to pirate a game, you probably wouldn't have bought it anyways, thereby not depriving these corporations of revenue. If you are pirating a game from a small indie developer it hurts them much more and I have a stronger position for these use cases. Im a firm believer that if the game is good enough to play, its good enough to buy. Thats my personal position but I try not to judge others against that position because others are not as fortunate as I am. There is also the previously discussed backup use case, which articulates you should be able to store images of your own legally purchased software since the company doesn't give you the option to do so with your physical games.
When you steal open source code without attrribution, you are directly hurting the developers who make your products possible/better. There is also no legal argument for this. This has long-term effects upon development. I personally know several developers who feel burnt out from the xecuter theft without attribution.
The problem is that most people think in black and whites. They can only see the perspective from a narrow vision and don't understand cause and effect. The cause here is theft of source code without attribution, and the effect is that the less developers contributing to the switch scene means slower progress. The way this will be most apparent is on newly patched units. xecuter apparently no longer has the means for real H/W RE/R&D, meaning they are not going to be the ones uncovering new exploits that their hardware can take advantage of, nor did they ever really? Others have always found the means, and xecuter has relied upon their work to base their products off of. Give me a single example otherwise, im all ears. This means they have to rely upon the real talent to discover these holes, then they copy it to build their products off of.
But what happens when all the real talent is disenfranchised because this shitty company can't even bother to give them credit? What happens when these people no longer want to publicly disclose their work because all it will be used for is piracy?
Do you realize this has been
exactly the case in the ps4 scene for the last year? This is not just speculation. This actually happens. Mathieulh has had a exploit chain for ps4 systems for a while and has chosen not to release it. Why? Becuse the only thing that the previous exploits were being used for is piracy.
Thats exactly whats happening with xecuter. They have focused solely on piracy without expanding upon the homebrew aspects of the scene. They have chosen to steal all of the homebrew stuff without crediting them, while only focusing their own labor on piracy efforts. While great for the people who buy their products solely for piracy, it ends up fucking the rest of the community in the long run by creating a toxic ecosystem for developers.
I get that most people don't understand this, but when you have someone with nearly 2 decades experience working in the underground of this community telling you exactly how it is, don't you think you should take in the new information and adjust your stance?
The TL;DR of that is basically - Piracy of games doesn't seem to effect the market. Game producers still produce games despite piracy. But the theft of open source code without attribution personally attacks individual hardworking developers who are the ones behind the innovations that the products the offenders are based upon. Think about that for a second and actually let your brain process it. Im not sure you truly see the irony here. When these hardworking security researchers watch these companies rip their shit off without giving them credit,
the only thing they've asked for, it dis-incentivizes them from future progress.
Incentives for game developers are still there. Companies make millions (and in some cases billions) off games despite piracy.
Where is the incentive for a security researcher who contributes open source code? The incentive is social. It makes them feel good to have their identity associated with an achievement that is rewarded by the community. But what if this incentive is taken away from them? What if
the only thing they asked for is taken away?
What incentive then is there for security researchers to release their work?
There is none. That is the point im trying to nail into your head and others, but you all cannot seem to grasp it. You cannot seem to grasp it because you don't have the knowledge or history to create the framework for understanding. But if you acutally read and process what im telling you, and understand this is not just speculation this really happens in our community, then you can start to understand the cause and effect of this behavior.