Turns Out Kotaku Didn't Kill Metroid
Womp Womp
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond has been announced… Re-announced? Acknowledged beyond that one time like 8 years ago? Anyways, a new Metroid game is finally coming out.
That’s shocking news to me. Why? Well I was lead to believe by internet users that an article by Kotaku was going to kill the franchise off. The piece in question was a pretty interesting report on how Metroid Dread, which had just come out at the time, was running almost flawlessly on emulators. The GALL of Kotaku to advocate for the piracy of a video game from a franchise that historically hasn’t been a blockbuster.
If Kotaku shines light on this, it surely means that Metroid Dread and the franchise are in jeopardy?
As one ResetEra user aptly commented:
Elsewhere, an article by Nerdbot dives deep into surgery to dissect Kotaku’s article in order to justify one of the most editorialized headlines I’ve ever seen - Kotaku Possibly Sabotaging “Metroid Dread” Sales with Emulator Links. The author brings up a very interesting point that I’ve seen made by many, many folks - Metroid isn’t a blockbuster franchise, and articles like these can kill the sales, and then we won’t get anymore Metroid!!!
Plenty of comments in the same vein were posted on Reddit, Twitter, and other gaming forums. And guess what?
Metroid Dread ended up being the best selling Metroid game. Ever.
It’s probably obvious to all my readers that when websites do their job and the pearl clutching masses who bootlick corporations come in with wild accusations and predictions, that you can safely ignore them. It’s especially true when it comes to piracy.
As part of my research for an article that will remain in draft till the end of time, I came upon multiple sources of information that made some very interesting observations about piracy, namely a Vice piece called Study Again Shows 'Pirates' Tend to Be The Biggest Buyers of Legal Content.
The data paints an unexpected picture - People who pirate also spend more money on the content they consume, challenging a long prevailing claim from entertainment companies that pirates only steal.
“The entertainment industry tends to envisage piracy audiences as a criminal element, and writes them off as money lost – but they are wrong to do so,” MUSO executive Paul Briley said of the study’s findings.
Well fuck. Okay well what about the people who don’t buy anything and only just pirate? What about them? They’re scally wags aren’t they? As Fallout creator Tim Cain says in a video on piracy, “you’re not going to lose a sale if you never would have had a sale.” And he’s right.
People who are interested in buying a new game typically aren’t looking for ways to get it for free. They’re happy to spend the money, even if there is a better alternative, want to know why? Emulating video games is a fucking hassle to setup. Most people don’t even care to pirate things in general. Seriously! You can watch every movie, listen to any album, play any game, for free, if you have internet access and a torrent client! The barrier of entry is only time!
Think about it, if its so easy to commit piracy, why isn’t everyone doing it?
*taps. the. fucking. sign*
So what did we learn here? Well first off, we learned that Kotaku reporting on newsworthy stories like Switch games running flawlessly on emulators actually increases the sales of said game to best of all time. Second, we learned that gamers are really just corporate bootlickers who clutch their pearls in dire fear when the equation "Favorite Game + The Word ‘Piracy’ = Become Deathly Afraid” comes into their mind.
And lastly, we learned that piracy isn’t really the problem that a company worth $60 billion dollars makes it out to be.
P.S.
It’s inhumane as fuck that Doug Bowser must pay more money than anyone would ever see in their life to Nintendo, a company that is once again worth upwards of $60 billion dollars.