this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
119 points (96.9% liked)
Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
54698 readers
376 users here now
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
Rules • Full Version
1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy
2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote
3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs
4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others
Loot, Pillage, & Plunder
📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):
💰 Please help cover server costs.
 |
 |
|---|---|
| Ko-fi | Liberapay |
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'd disagree when it comes to games. Owning a game on Steam is more valuable than having it on a disk:
You get updates automatically without having to think about it at all.
You get cloud sharing, making it easily to share things across different platforms.
You can play it easily on the Steam deck.
You always have access to it anywhere you have an internet connection, and are unlikely to lose or damage it.
All of these things can be accomplished with enough dedication by a pirate (except cloud sharing, but you can use SyncThing to accomplish something very similar)... but it's a lot more time and effort, enough that buying a game on sale is often worthwhile just from a practical standpoint.
I think that Gabe Newell's statement that "piracy is a service issue" is correct. Steam partially discourages piracy by simply offering a better experience.
Like, yes, in theory, Steam could go out of business tomorrow but in practice the chances of that are much lower than me dropping my disks and breaking them, or losing them, or scratching them, or any of the other risks that come with physical ownership.