Tbh WB practices (but also other publishers that release broken/unfinished/unoptimised ports), make people who obtained the game in legit ways look like naive peasants who never learn. Although piracy will probably never go away, WB does not help to fight it - rather the opposite. They bring reasons for pirates to keep pirating/looking for deals in shady places. They have released a broken game, unplayable day one at that, and everybody who postponed buying this game or pirated it won: they saved their money and nerves.
If I recall well Ubisoft was crying about rampant piracy among PC gamers for years, but recently it turned out that PC is their second platform after PS4 if it goes for sales of their games. So apparently, all it takes to prevent many pirates from pirating is to release an optimised game that will work day one. Another words: not to scam their customers. Impossible!
I don't agree with piracy, I hope denuvo will help fight it, but let's not forget that unethical practices of almost every major 3xA publisher is also to be blamed here. I can't condemn people who got this game from grey market or torrent, knowing how bad WB fked it up for all of us who paid full price or - like stupid me - pre-ordered it.
I have mixed comments about the above. Purchasing a product properly and legally does _not_ make anyone look naive, it means they are an honest customer. Honest customers, however, have a right to expect a good product and to get their money's worth.
Piracy does not help anyone, customer or publisher, period. First, it is theft and illegal; no more needs to be said on that. Second, publishers don't receive profits from it (obviously) and can deter them from providing content/support for a specific market or platform, but also publishers have and will use it as an excuse to beef up DRM and other such means of control, which often goes on to hurt legitimate customers.
The game was not unplayable for all on Day 1, though that streaming install was a mess and I don't know if that was WBIE or Steam itself to blame. I was able to play the game very well from the beginning, and it just got better (for the most part) with patching and I know many others who were able to do the same. The game certainly had strong issues at launch, don't mistake me, but it didn't last as long as many always make it out to be and sadly, broken products on launch are such a norm regardless of publisher these days (and one of the key reasons I rarely buy anything at launch anymore).
I personally don't support Grey Sites, since they are questionable and the publisher likely will not see any or no profits from the sale, however in the case of WBIE and based on their own failings in customer service, I'm now going to purchase any of their PC related products I want from grey sites.
I'm still doing a proper transaction, it is not illegal, and WBIE will likely not profit from the sale, but I'll still get to enjoy the product and at a discounted rate. I believe that is a good statement to send to them through voting with my wallet.
However, I believe people jumped on the grey market site bandwagon for the game far too soon, and that hurt things. If the game's only a few months old, and already much of the sales are happening their and the publisher is not getting profits, it would not be surprising if they cut their losses and stopped as they seem to have done.
Note: I had to write the above quickly in two sittings as I'm at work. Hope it all makes sense.
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