Never feel bad about stealing back what was stolen from you.

Convenience is a huge factor, Valve has clearly gotten that.

I still pirate a lot of media, even though I pay for streaming simply because my own "service" isn't as crap. Many people will happily pay for good service, not for the constant enshittification they throw at us.

I used to pirate, don't anymore.

1. I was young, it was convenient, and satisfying. Eventually, I relented to the idea that I was doing it more for personal reward than for any kind of "fuck the establishment" message.
2. I got a good-paying job, and felt the satisfaction of buying a good game on sale with my own money.
3. I still maintain, as do most people, that tons of publishers are scummy and anti-consumer, but I also built more positivity towards developers that don't exhibit such behaviors.

Even if Steam were to somehow go down for a month, by now I've learned about other storefronts and methods of purchase that provide a place to move to. There's a devoted centrism to the way people consume most media franchises that basically guarantees they can flip prices to infinity, control purchases, and never suffer consequences, and piracy absolutely feeds into that; helping them to paint themselves as victims to policymakers while they rake it in.

I was traveling across the us without a car about a year ago. Long story. Was stranded, pulling a long night til the next bus instead of sleeping rough. Only place to get fluids nearby was a McDonalds.

It was painfully expensive, and genuinely felt like I was being fucked with and screwed over when I ordered. I just wanted a cup full of caffeinated sugar-water and someplace warm to sit. It sucked so fucking much. It was fucking unpleasant. Eventually I hydrated, pissed, and just left to wait outside for the last few hours.

I looked through food. I couldn't justify paying those prices for that shit. It genuinely didn't seem like food prices. I couldn't. The next day I found a more reasonably priced 7/11.

You have to double check if your external hd isn't wifi enabled these days. I made sure not to get a wifi enabled one.

Nintendo blowing up about ROMS didn't help a fuckin' thing.

I hate to be that guy but did you try changing which version of proton its using? I know for some games you gotta change it for it to boot properly.

I do agree though it should just work, but you gotta remember unlike consoles PCs are made of many different parts and not all agree with eachother. Developers can only test so many configurations.

I remember when no man's sky came out, so many people had issues while mine booted and worked properly. Thankfully steam does offer refunds.

Okay we'll fix this one by making an open source software that loads all the files into a 7zip before its runs the downloaded content. That way it has to compile everything before it runs essentially breaking it down before it gets, "repaired," in a 7zip which holds the, "files to be compiled" but can still be ran separately.

So, it would have no choice but to export everything to a 7zip.

If someone made a web extension it could be used to do it to movies you purchased on streaming sites and it would rip the movies and compile it into a digital format the, "copyright," would be broken by removing traces of copyright by coding said program to remove the encryption but also having it set to identify any company logos so it'll convert the video into loading whatever you ripped into the format you want And it would remove logo's or identifying markers from it.

I remember when street fighter 2 was released for the SNES. Our store had it at 64.99 and that's in 1990-something dollars.

Games have always been expensive, especially when hyped and already popular

But I still have an SNES and SF2 and can play it whenever I want. No chance a licensing server rejects me or a lic is flagged invalid in the future.

That's the difference. I know as long as the hardware works, I can always use that game.

Well there are games where I absolutely cannot justify paying for unless there is a sale or waiting for it to go on discount due to being super old.

However I still don't pirate them just because they are priced too high if they are steam because I know eventually I will still have easy access I just need to be patient.

Cae in point this summer sale a game that came out 2-3 years ago I finally bought because it was 50% off its original $100 price tag (CAD). Finally felt it would be worth it.

Never pirates it became I knew steam would provide easy access and an eventual sale.

Especially with wage stagnation, I think Gabe was correct a decade ago, but not so much now...

I have a PS4, there's enough games to pirate that I haven't played yet that I don't need to get a PS5 yet.

Valve have a long history of ensuring that games purchased are still downloadable for customers who purchased them even after publishers have pulled their game off the store, or of providing refunds.

Sony has done neither and that’s a core part of the problem.

Part of this is Valve’s agreements with the publishers.

Sony could easily do this but they’re poisoned by the music and movie industries.

As far as my account goes, even when publishers remove games, I still have access to my files.

This is crucial for community led projects that revive game servers, like The Crew, Hawken or Blacklight Retribution.

Sony is remotely deleting stuff (or more accurately, threatening to do so)

Just to clarify: I still prefer buying on GOG but the catalog there is slimmer. Steam so far has been more aligned with their users' rights.

The fact that a company loses a license to something in a game disallows them to keep selling them, not stealing them back from their customers.

because Sony is clearly absolute garbage...

name something valve has done that's horrendously stupid and anti consumer...

We used to pay full price for something to have it forever. Now we're trained to pay full price to "pay for access."

We've been trained to pay more for less guaranteed. :(