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Comment by charcircuit | Hacker News Reader

Sales or economics is not the only thing a developer may care about. Some people want control over their work and will be upset from people pirating their game even if it doesn't mean they lose a sale. Similarly many artists do not want you to repost their art or use their art as your profile picture.

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Ok, but should we care if those developers/artists get what they want? Some companies would also really like to take games they have sold you away from you so they can sell you the next installment. Some developers don't want certain groups of people they dislike to enjoy their game. Not all things that developers want are reasonable.

Limiting sales to the “right” people is a totally different proposition than revoking sales after the fact. Both are dumb, but one is within a copyright owner’s rights, and the other is not.

What does "control over their work" mean if it's not about losing a sale?

Developers exerting control over a copy that's already in someone's hands has never been a good thing. Too many games have had content ripped out years later because the developer had a change of heart, or was contractually obligated to remove it due to some licensing agreement (unbeknownst to their customers, of course). Both of these scenarios are immoral (arguably illegal) and don't deserve support.

For example an artist may create a character and they don't want that character to be used in relation to politics. Such an action may not affect sales but it would be annoying to happen to the artist especially if the politics didn't match their own. Similarly if it was promoting a religion that was not your own that could be uncomfortable.

Sure, but the specific thing the person I was replying to said the developer was complaining about was not getting paid.

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