if buying isn't owning then pirating isn't stealing
This is why piracy.
Agreed.
As a kid, I only purchased games. Eventually, the manual gets lost/eaten and you can no longer answer the DRM questions like "what is the third word of the fourth paragraph on page six of the manual?"
At that point, the only way to play the game you bought is to crack it. Starting of with a crack saves time.
These days I just buy games off gog and itch. The game of those two sites are incredibly easy to pirate, which eliminates the need to pirate.
No. Piracy is why this is.
[dupe]
Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41809193
Yes sadly when steam enshittifies, probably when gabe retires or it is sold, will be a painful betrayal and the end of buying games for a lot of people i think.
Worse margins, shittier deals, old breaking deals, dozens or thousands of games disappearing from collections forever, privacy busting data collection, "new features" that will allow malware, more porn games. What a cash cow for someone, and a gut wrenching inevitability for most.
It factually like that before too, now it is just made clear during payment. That is a change for the better. Legally you have the same rights, you lost nothing. However, steam is not pretending anymore you have more rights then you actually do.
This is also true when you “buy” music from Apple.
iTunes Store music downloads are purchases (no DRM except watermark/metadata.) Not encrypted, drag-and-drop copy, easy transcode, etc. Sadly stuck at 256kbps AAC since 2007 even though the iTunes/Music app has always supported lossless.
Apple Music (subscription only) downloads are rentals, controlled by DRM that refuses to play or stream them unless you have an active subscription.
Steve Jobs was wrong: people are OK not owning music as long as they can easily stream it.
Wasn't this always obvious?
They’re literally just adding some extra text in the checkout flow to make it more clear to consumers. It’s just been a license for decades
Yeah, we used to have all kinds of software validation tools. Most common was the serial you typed in, or the questions that asked for example, the third word on page 5 of the manual.
My favourite though, were those paper wheels where you had to align two different symbols. Then you'd look through the cutout window to get the code. Felt like some sorta secret agent or safe cracker doing that!
If you lost any of those, you potentially lost access to use the software. My takeaway is, people just aren't comfortable with a sense of impermanence. I don't have any reason to think Steam will do anything upsetting in the foreseeable future, but that small possibility makes people anxious.
See also: Kindle books; streaming shows/movies