Piracy, preservation, and the devs who don’t mind if you have to pirate their game

The founder of the Video Game History Foundation and the devs of Slay The Princess on the place piracy has today

Image credit:Black Tabby

“Most of videogame history is alive and well due to the ability to pirate old video games,” Frank Cifaldi, founder of the Video Game History Foundation , tells me over a call. Last year, the preservation and archival non-profit put out a study revealing that 87% of games made before 2010 are out of print. “There’s no way to access them without either pirating them or buying antiques from vendors. That’s a scary place to be.”

The carnival of games discourse long ago sold off its other rides in favour of one giant merry-go-round, and even such shocking statistics rotate out of the zeitgeist far too soon - unless, of course, you live and breathe this stuff like Cifaldi. But the conversation has felt especially pertinent recently. UK high street mainstay GAME have recently opted to cease trade-ins , Ubisoft pulled one of their classic PR wins by insinuating a physical-media free future was on the cards, and Sony dabbled with deleting content that users had already paid for, before managing an about face .

RPS famously gave up console gaming in late 1872, shortly before the release of the first PC, but as console-focused as these sea changes are, they still point towards a worrying trend of dwindling consumer choice. Moreso in the wake of consolidation already reaping disastrous consequences. “The video game industry started essentially mimicking Hollywood,” says Cifaldi. “There’s basically five companies that own everything now. That sucks in a lot of ways.”

Talk of preservation inevitably leads to the ever-taboo topic of piracy. “Reading the temperature of how people are feeling about how they consume media right now,” says Cifaldi, “we might be coming full circle back to piracy being something that we need to be literate in, in order to be able to access the things that we love. Digital streaming scooped everything up and we all got content with it. We’re already seeing things wiped from existence before our eyes.”

Over the holidays, I saw two tweets. One may well have been a rephrasing or resurfacing of an old sentiment - if not, kudos to the OP for such powerful phrasing. “If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing,” it read. The other was from Black Tabby, the two person dev team behind the popular and excellent horror game Slay The Princess . “Since a lot of new folks are discovering Slay The Princess: The game is at its best if your first experience is playing it yourself instead of watching someone else’s play-through. (And if $ is an issue, pirate it and buy a copy later when you have money if you liked it!)”

I’d like to make clear here that this article isn’t intended to place either Cifaldi or Black Tabby as spokespeople for a larger cause. They’re each speaking for themselves, from different experiences, and many developers and industry folk have expressed similar sentiments before. I do feel that Black Tabby’s tweet is, at least contemporarily, significant due to the success of their game. As a genuine indie outfit, they’re in the position to decide how their audience interacts with their work. The impetus for me reaching out to everyone featured was simply that I think this is a conversation worth having pretty much constantly, and I appreciate their personal insights, experience and thoughts on the topic.

Image credit:Black Tabby

“We both think that the best way for people to experience it is to play our game first hand,” Tony Howard-Arias of Black Tabby tells me. “We don’t want money to necessarily be the game ender. We’ve all been broke college students, so there’s a degree of empathy for just like the frustration of arts and entertainment being financially inaccessible.” And piracy, adds Abby Howard, “is just going to happen no matter what. So it’s just a thing where we’re just telling people they don’t have to feel bad if that’s how they experience the game.”

“I think at the end of the day,” says Howard-Arias, “people are, you know, they’re fundamentally good. I think that when folks have a meaningful experience with art, they want to support the artists who make those experiences. Neither of us here need to be that protectionist about it.”

Howard describes Slay The Princess as about “Perception, and how that can actively shape the people around you, and the world that you’re in.” Howard-Arias says “if you like the Stanley Parable and you like Disco Elysium , you’ll probably like this.” Both feel that their approach to narrative design means that, as the tweet says, they’d rather folk pirate it than have a second-hand experience. Black Tabby tell me they didn’t intend for the tweet to necessarily be an advocation of piracy in general, but I still found it refreshing and powerful in the sense that, even if they’re just speaking for themselves, developers openly acknowledging that piracy isn’t the evil it’s often portrayed as lessens the taboo.

Cifaldi tells me he believes that “piracy literacy,” is dwindling, especially among young people that might not know how a torrent works (whatever that is). Tweets like Black Tabby’s might well spur on some research. Xitter agreed: Black Tabby were officially based, with many suggesting they were far more likely to buy the game now anyway. He says it’s hard to quantity, but Howard-Arias felt there’d been an uptick in sales, and also tells me that none of the conversations they’ve had about potential physical editions were hurt by their public stance. There was some minor pushback, however, mostly through misinterpretation.

“Something that has been challenging as this sort of tweet has spiraled out of our control is that, a lot of people tend to view this stuff through like a single perspective lens,” says Howard-Arias, “but multiple things can be true at the same time.” Some wrongly assumed Black Tabby were upset at streamers. Howard-Arias describes their position as a “strange intersection”. As artists, they want people to experience their art. Naturally, they’d also want a sustainable business. “We want people experiencing it in the way it’s intended to be played. And we also really like when streamers play the game and get it out in the world and share their experiences. So it’s like it’s a situation where all of these things are true at the same time.”

Image credit:Black Tabby

Do Black Tabby feel there’s any potential risk of normalising piracy in a harmful sense? Not really. There are, says Howard-Arias, much riskier trends in indie dev, like undercutting prices to unsustainably low levels. He loved Vampire Survivors and its -likes, but felt the price had an impact. “A lot of people were interested in exploring that space. But it meant that if you’re going to be competitive, you also have to charge like $3,” he says. That’s before Steam’s 30% and card fees, which aren’t insignificant at such a low price, meaning developers have to shift huge numbers just to survive in that genre space. “I don’t blame any developers for doing that, but I think the tendency for indies to undervalue and underprice their work is a much more real risk to sustainability than, you know, not being mad at people for pirating your game.” Pirated copies, says Howard, aren’t ones they would have sold anyway. “These are numbers aren’t just cutting into your bottom line so much as they are bonus numbers. That’s how it’s always felt to me.”

They’re not finished yet, either. The Pristine Cut is a free update slated for sometime this year, aiming to add several new chapters to the game. Much of it is ideas and elaborations on the story inspired by seeing the game in the wild. “It’s one thing to construct something like this, and then another to see people experience it,” says Howard.

Image credit:Black Tabby

Again, I don’t want to put revolutionary slogans in Black Tabby’s mouths. But in making great art, continuing to work on their game after release just out of a vision for how much better it could be, and then refusing to be protectionist over their work, their stance definitely felt like a torch at the end of a rough year for the industry. Or, you know, a candle illuminating a twisted staircase leading to a horrible basement containing a chained princess.

Meanwhile, Cifaldi says there are, at least, a few reasons to be hopeful about the future of preservation. “One of the hurdles toward a game staying in print, which is the question of of legal ownership and what company owns the code, I think that’s starting to be solved,” he says. “And the idea of remastering a game for the next hardware refresh has become normal.”

Still, though, is a strong note of caution. “I don’t believe that we’ve found a commercial solution for your video game staying alive forever. No one is against the idea of video game preservation, but companies and their shareholders are against the idea of not making a profit,” he adds. “It’s a technical black hole; It costs a lot of money to port a video game, and if the margins are just not there, then there’s not a business rationale to keep things alive.”

So, if anyone knows what a ‘torrent’ is, please let DM me. It sounds like they could be useful.

Slay The Princess

PC

Rock Paper Shotgun is better when you sign in

Sign in and join us on our journey to discover strange and compelling PC games.

All 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints and where to get them

These areas have the highest chance of giving you Blueprints

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Looking for more Arc Raiders Blueprints? It’s a special day when you find a Blueprint, as they’re among the most valuable items in Arc Raiders. If you find a Blueprint that you haven’t already found, then you must make sure you hold onto it at all costs, because Blueprints are the key to one of the most important and powerful systems of meta-progression in the game.

This guide aims to be the very best guide on Blueprints you can find, starting with a primer on what exactly they are and how they work in Arc Raiders, before delving into exactly where to get Blueprints and the very best farming spots for you to take in your search.

We’ll also go over how to get Blueprints from other unlikely activities, such as destroying Surveyors and completing specific quests. And you’ll also find the full list of all 75 Blueprints in Arc Raiders on this page (including the newest Blueprints added with the Cold Snap update , such as the Deadline Blueprint and Firework Box Blueprint), giving you all the information you need to expand your own crafting repertoire.

In this guide:

• What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?
• Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes
• Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders Blueprints obtained from quests Blueprints obtained from Trials Best Blueprint farming locations

What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?

Blueprints in Arc Raiders are special items which, if you manage to extract with them, you can expend to permanently unlock a new crafting recipe in your Workshop. If you manage to extract from a raid with an Anvil Blueprint, for example, you can unlock the ability to craft your very own Anvil Pistol, as many times as you like (as long as you have the crafting materials).

To use a Blueprint, simply open your Inventory while in the lobby, then right-click on the Blueprint and click “Learn And Consume” . This will permanently unlock the recipe for that item in your Workshop. As of the Stella Montis update, there are allegedly 75 different Blueprints to unlock - although only 68 are confirmed to be in the game so far. You can see all the Blueprints you’ve found and unlocked by going to the Workshop menu, and hitting “R” to bring up the Blueprint screen.

It’s possible to find duplicates of past Blueprints you’ve already unlocked. If you find these, then you can either sell them, or - if you like to play with friends - you can take it into a match and gift it to your friend so they can unlock that recipe for themselves. Another option is to keep hold of them until the time comes to donate them to the Expedition.

Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes

Below is the full list of all the Blueprints that are currently available to find in Arc Raiders, and the crafting recipe required for each item:

Note: The missing Blueprints in this list likely have not actually been added to the game at the time of writing, because none of the playerbase has managed to find any of them. As they are added to the game, I will update this page with the most relevant information so you know exactly how to get all 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints.

Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders

Below is a list of all containers, modifiers, and events which maximise your chances of finding Blueprints:

• Certain quests reward you with specific Blueprints .
• Completing Trials has a high chance of offering Blueprints as rewards.
• Surveyors have a decent chance of dropping Blueprints on death.
• High loot value areas tend to have a greater chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Night Raids and Storms may increase rare Blueprint spawn chances in containers.
• Containers with higher numbers of items may have a higher tendency to spawn Blueprints. As a result, Blue Gate (which has many “large” containers containing multiple items) may give you a higher chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Raider containers (Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, Medical Bags, Grenade Tubes) have increased Blueprint drop rates. As a result, the Uncovered Caches event gives you a high chance of finding Blueprints.
• Security Lockers have a higher than average chance of containing Blueprints.
• Certain Blueprints only seem to spawn under specific circumstances: Tempest Blueprint only spawns during Night Raid events. Vulcano Blueprint only spawns during Hidden Bunker events. Jupiter and Equaliser Blueprints only spawn during Harvester events.

Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, and other raider-oriented container types have a good chance of offering Blueprints. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints have a very low chance of spawning in any container in Arc Raiders, around 1-2% on average. However, there is a higher chance of finding Blueprints in particular container types. Specifically, you can find more Blueprints in Raider containers and security lockers.

Beyond this, if you’re looking for Blueprints you should focus on regions of the map which are marked as having particularly high-value loot. Areas such as the Control Tower in Dam Battlegrounds, the Arrival and Departure Buildings in Spaceport, and Pilgrim’s Peak in Blue Gate all have a better-than-average chance of spawning Blueprints somewhere amongst all their containers. Night Raids and Electromagnetic Storm events also increase the drop chances of certain Blueprints .

In addition to these containers, you can often loot Blueprints from destroyed Surveyors - the largest of the rolling ball ARC. Surveyors are more commonly found on the later maps - Spaceport and Blue Gate - and if one spawns in your match, you’ll likely see it by the blue laser beam that it casts into the sky while “surveying”.

Surveyors are quite well-armoured and will very speedily run away from you once it notices you, but if you can take one down then make sure you loot all its parts for a chance of obtaining certain unusual Blueprints.

Blueprints obtained from quests

One way in which you can get Blueprints is by completing certain quests for the vendors in Speranza. Some quests will reward you with a specific item Blueprint upon completion, so as long as you work through all the quests in Arc Raiders, you are guaranteed those Blueprints.

Here is the full list of all Blueprints you can get from quest rewards:

• Trigger Nade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Sparks Fly”.
• Lure Grenade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Greasing Her Palms”.
• Burletta Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Industrial Espionage”.
• Hullcracker Blueprint (and Launcher Ammo Blueprint): Rewarded after completing “The Major’s Footlocker”.

Alas, that’s only 4 Blueprints out of a total of 75 to unlock, so for the vast majority you will need to find them yourself during a raid. If you’re intent on farming Blueprints, then it’s best to equip yourself with cheap gear in case you lose it, but don’t use a free loadout because then you won’t get a safe pocket to stash any new Blueprint you find. No pain in Arc Raiders is sharper than failing to extract with a new Blueprint you’ve been after for a dozen hours already.

One of the best ways to get Blueprints is by hitting three stars on all five Trials every week. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints obtained from Trials

One of the very best ways to get Blueprints is as rewards for completing Trials in Arc Raiders. Trials are unlocked from Level 15 onwards, and allow you to earn rewards by focusing on certain tasks over the course of several raids. For example, one Trial might task you with dealing damage to Hornets, while another might challenge you to loot Supply Drops.

Trials refresh on a weekly basis, with a new week bringing five new Trials. Each Trial can offer up to three rewards after passing certain score milestones, and it’s possible to receive very high level loot from these reward crates - including Blueprints. So if you want to unlock as many Blueprints as possible, you should make a point of completing as many Trials as possible each week.

Best Blueprint farming locations

The very best way to get Blueprints is to frequent specific areas of the maps which combine high-tier loot pools with the right types of containers to search. Here are my recommendations for where to find Blueprints on every map, so you can always keep the search going for new crafting recipes to unlock.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Dam Battlegrounds

The best places to farm Blueprints on Dam Battlegrounds are the Control Tower, Power Generation Complex, Ruby Residence, and Pale Apartments . The first two regions, despite only being marked on the map as mid-tier loot, contain a phenomenal number of containers to loot. The Control Tower can also contain a couple of high-tier Security Lockers - though of course, you’ll need to have unlocked the Security Breach skill at the end of the Survival tree.

There’s also a lot of reporting amongst the playerbase that the Residential areas in the top-left of the map - Pale Apartments and Ruby Residence - give you a comparatively strong chance of finding Blueprints. Considering their size, there’s a high density of containers to loot in both locations, and they also have the benefit of being fairly out of the way. So you’re more likely to have all the containers to yourself.

Buried City

The best Blueprint farming locations on Buried City are the Santa Maria Houses, Grandioso Apartments, Town Hall, and the various buildings of the New District . Grandioso Apartments has a lower number of containers than the rest, but a high chance of spawning weapon cases - which have good Blueprint drop rates. The others are high-tier loot areas, with plenty of lootable containers - including Security Lockers.

Spaceport

The best places to find Blueprints on Spaceport are the Arrival and Departure Buildings, as well as Control Tower A6 and the Launch Towers . All these areas are labelled as high-value loot regions, and many of them are also very handily connected to one another by the Spaceport wall, which you can use to quickly run from one area to the next. At the tops of most of these buildings you’ll find at least one Security Locker, so this is an excellent farming route for players looking to find Blueprints.

The downside to looting Blueprints on Spaceport is that all these areas are hotly contested, particularly in Duos and Squads. You’ll need to be very focused and fast in order to complete the full farming route.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blue Gate

Blue Gate tends to have a good chance of dropping Blueprints, potentially because it generally has a high number of containers which can hold lots of items; so there’s a higher chance of a Blueprint spawning in each container. In my experience, the best Blueprint farming spots on Blue Gate are Pilgrim’s Peak, Raider’s Refuge, the Ancient Fort, and the Underground Complex beneath the Warehouse .

All of these areas contain a wealth of containers to loot. Raider’s Refuge has less to loot, but the majority of the containers in and around the Refuge are raider containers, which have a high chance of containing Blueprints - particularly during major events.

Stella Montis

On the whole, Stella Montis seems to have a very low drop rate for Blueprints (though a high chance of dropping other high-tier loot). If you do want to try farming Blueprints on this map, the best places to find Blueprints in Stella Montis are Medical Research, Assembly Workshop, and the Business Center . These areas have the highest density of containers to loot on the map.

In addition to this, the Western Tunnel has a few different Security Lockers to loot, so while there’s very little to loot elsewhere in this area of the map, it’s worth hitting those Security Lockers if you spawn there at the start of a match.

That wraps up this primer on how to get all the Blueprints in Arc Raiders as quickly as possible. With the Expedition system constantly resetting a large number of players’ Blueprints, it’s more important than ever to have the most up-to-date information on where to find all these Blueprints.

While you’re here, be sure to check out our Arc Raiders best guns tier list , as well as our primers on the best skills to unlock and all the different Field Depot locations on every map.

ARC Raiders

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

Rock Paper Shotgun is better when you sign in

Sign in and join us on our journey to discover strange and compelling PC games.