Telecoms tradespeople in Canada are paid like absolute garbage. They used to be (and some still are, but they’re dwindling) part of the steelworker’s union, but they were hit hard by union busting, so now the majority are contractors who get paid by the job. This means a full 5 hour run of fibre to get a home set up pays the same as plugging a single wire in at the CO. But it’s luck of tue draw, and with the telcos cutting corners on everything, the “plug in a wire” jobs are like unicorns.
Plus the rack people have all been laid off, so the guys have to do that job on top of their own, and the IT side has all been offshored to folks who are not trained or paid enough to be competent. So what should be a 45 minute job that they could do 11 of in a single day now takes 2 hours, meaning they’re only getting paid for 4.
It would not surprise me if other blue collar industries started following suit.
Pirated games can be one or several of the following:
More directly relevant to you: the money you give Nintendo goes to their legal teams, to continue to find loopholes around the protections you have. They’re the ones fighting the “Stop Killing Games” movement. Nintendo recently won a lawsuit against 1fichier in France for hosting emulated games. It has been marked as a “significant” win against any level of piracy in the EU. Nintendo is continually working to make sure that despite living in the EU, you won’t be fine regardless. Your purchase directly funds that.
Maybe you have no intention of playing pirated games, but I hope you can appreciate that this is larger than just some teenager feeling powerful because they stole something?