• Alien Nathan Edward
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    5 months ago

    Piracy is really easy to compete against. Ask GabeN. Steam has singlehandedly taken me out of the piracy game because they have what I want, it’s super easy to get and if it’s not reasonably priced today I’ll wishlist it until it goes on sale (and it will). If it sucks, or my hardware can’t run it, I just dm someone and I get my money back. I know they can disappear shit from my library like any online store but they haven’t abused that privilege with me yet and that makes me confident they won’t.

    With Netflix, there’s a small chance that they actually have what I want. If they do, it’s gonna disappear soon. Prices only ever go up, not down, and that series you love is gonna be cancelled as soon as it stops driving new subscriptions. To watch everything I want I can spend a hundred dollars a month on a rotating set of accounts on several streaming services or I can go LOOK for the MOVIE 2 stream for free without even messing with a DOT TOrrent file.

    Piracy is easy to prevent if you provide a better service than the pirates. What he meant was that it’s hard to get people to pay you to shit in their mouths when someone else is giving out sandwiches.

    • @FabledAepitaph@lemmy.world
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      275 months ago

      Yep, Steam is my “video game piracy canary”. The day I lose access to my games on Steam will be the last day I ever buy any video game, and probably any non-physical piece of media for the rest of my life.

      • @Transtronaut
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        5 months ago

        Mostly the same for me. I’d still be open to it if it’s convenient, DRM-free, and easy to back up somewhere, but far less likely to put effort into finding out.

    • @histic@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      225 months ago

      in fact for the games that have been removed I actually still have full access, like rocket League still in my library just not purchasable anymore

        • @Carlo@lemmy.ca
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          65 months ago

          It’s because Epic bought the Rocket League devs, Psyonix, in 2019. In 2020, they pulled it from Steam, to drive traffic to the Epic store. And yes, it’s also free to play now, but you still can’t get it on Steam, unless you bought it there before they pulled it. If you did, it still works fine on Steam today.

    • @mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works
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      155 months ago

      until it goes on sale (and it will)

      Except Factorio. It has never and will never go on sale, and they were able to use that policy to get money back that they lost from G2A.

      That being said, Factorio is worth the price tag

    • @unreasonabro@lemmy.world
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      115 months ago

      when gaben dies the enshittification of steam will happen in short order. don’t put all your eggs in one basket

      • @Kedly@lemm.ee
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        75 months ago

        If that happens well then Piracy still exists. None of the other baskets aside from GOG are worth putting eggs in