I wouldn't say its easier, but its definitely worth buying stuff when you get services like this. And I also enjoy achievement hunting, so there's that.
It's easier now, since there are very few seeds, so downloads take many hours, and direct links are often removed. On Steam, you have a direct download button without complications.
Steam's download speeds are amazing if you have gigabit internet. I reinstalled a 30GB game last weekend. The game was ready to play in less than 7 minutes.
Yes, I know that. I have 300 megabits and I also download quickly, but only with direct links. With torrents, you depend on other seeders being connected for the download to be fast. If you have 50 or more megabits, the download is very fast, but currently there are few seeders, usually less than 5, so even if you have 10 gigabits, the download will be slow. In fact, there were a couple of games I couldn't download because there weren't any seeders.
Especially now that there are very few torrent seeds, so downloads take hours. And direct links are constantly being taken down, so piracy is slower than ever.
I dunno if it's just us old Steam-head's ages (I assume anyone with Steam opinions is 20s-30s at least), but as I get old I do get a weird tingle from "ooh I'm 'supporting the dev' and getting a game for $1.99!". Some reason makes me feel better than just downloading a torrent for another random FPS game I've played a million of.
As we get older and into real life pirating actually becomes quite an annoyance compared to the convenience of steam. Steam does almost everything right. Before I started earning I torrented to check out a game. Now I can buy it on steam and refund it in 2 hours. Specially the bigger games because it takes me about an hour to download a massive 100-120gb game.
I think another factor is that the risk-reward ratio for pirating has changed over time.
It used to be that viruses would just nuke your OS or otherwise be generally annoying. Worst case, reformat, reinstall and you've learnt a lesson.
Nowadays a Cryptolocker will irreversibly nuke all your files. Or it'll be a silent data-miner that steals private data/logins, passing on things like your bank account and online logins like email/etc. The blast radius is so much larger that I would simply not buy something rather than pirate it now with extremely few exceptions.
as we get older we also tend to start building some wealth and the risk of catching a virus or keylogger becomes a much bigger problem.
there are many ways we can be scammed or attacked just by doing day to day things. its best to not add other avenues especially those that may already be in legal gray areas.
That's exactly how humble bundle started and what got me hooked into Steam.
Back in 2010 (I think) a few indie developers got together and created a pay-what-you-want bundle of 6 indie games. With the money going directly to the developers (and a charity if you wanted) and games coming with a steam key, and DRM free versions to download.
I remember that I was 19 or 20 at the time and it felt amazing to pay 15€ of my hard earned money to pay directly to the developers and get some nice even if lesser known games.
At the time I didn't have a steam account yet ( I was pirating all my games or getting them physically for birthdays and such) And it felt so good to be able to get games while feeling that the money was going to the guys who made the game.
Fast-forward 10 years of humble bundles and steam sales, and having my own money to spend on stuff and by 2020 I had over 600 games on Steam ( half of it "junk" from bundles, but, at least half is stuff I wanted).
Now in 2025 my Steam library is at over 900 and I'm being far more selective of what I buy while I work through my backlog. And I'm having the time of my life playing games.
EXACTLY i never pirate games because the service im provided by buying it on steam is worth what i pay . i do pirate shows and movies because it service i get for free is almost always the same or better than what i would be paying for
Streaming services have been proven to stream at low bitrates to save bandwidth, 4k at low bitrate is much worse than 1080p at high bitrate and that goes for all resolutions. Meanwhile when you pirate it's almost always a high bitrate encoded video. So really, streaming services don't offer anything over piracy anymore, on top of that there are ads too.
Steam and spotify got the right idea.
With spotify you get everything for a low price, lossless quality at your fingertips and steam is just a stellar platform with no downsides. It's baffling how every other service follows the enshitiffication rule
Because line must go up. They don't think about the long term only the short term gains. Steam has a legal monopoly pretty much if they just keep doing what they have been doing and not fuck it up. Having years of trustworthy service of simply not screwing your customers over will go a long way into ensuring you have people wanting to do business with you for decades to come.
I wouldn’t put Spotify in the same category as Steam at all. Spotify moved far too late on lossless audio, especially compared to alternatives like Tidal. They pay musicians so poorly, and their API restrictions have effectively killed many indie and third-party apps. Steam actively supports and grows its ecosystem, while Spotify is locking things down.
I also feel like shows and movies are not worth what they cost. I mean, a game? I could play it for hours, hundreds of hours, even thousands. I know you can watch a movie over and over again, but it's the exact same thing every time. I could pay a subscription service, but I don't own anything at that point. I know it costs millions, if not hundreds of millions to produce a movie, but I still don't see the value of paying upwards of 20-30 dollars for something I'll watch twice or three times max. Going to the cinema is my only cash stream into the movie industry, but that's an experience with friends. It's weird because I don't pirate songs, I actually like to buy CDs and download FLACS, and I used to collect older movies but I'd always buy them used for like a couple bucks for 3 at a time. It's all just funny because I feel like pirating movies and shows is so much more acceptable than games. Okay, word vomit over lol.
It's funny that the only thing I pirate consistently is movies and shows as the service I get from Kodi + premium debrid provider is way better than buying a sub from Amazon/Netflix/Apple etc (full centralised library, ad free, cheaper). I pay for Spotify for music as everything is in one platform and it's convenient to stream what I want to listen to and buy my games on Steam/GOG. The only games I seem to pirate are ones that run shitter on official launchers that I would have to pay for than the pirate copy (EA/Ubisoft games).
Gabe was right all those years ago when he stated that piracy for the most part is a service problem - there are some exceptions to this but for the most part and my own personal experience I agree with him. Try a pirate copy of a game to see if I like it and then purchase it if I do. Avoid buying EA and Ubisoft games altogether.
with stremio and realdebrid services the service you get just outshines any streaming service there is. The only downside is the difficulty of getting the foreign language content
A damn shame. That's why I look at GOG games first now before Steam. That way I know I can keep my games forever and can't get the game pulled out of my library.
Which all these streaming services prove to be the case in the recent years.
There is countless of numbers of them with the exclusive content being spread through all of them.
This just makes people pirate stuff, if the platform they sre subscribed on doesn't include the specific movie/serie.
EA and Epic tried something like this with their proprietary game launchers but luckily failed.
Yup, I hadn't torrented anything in 10+ years, and I recently set up a home server torrent box cause I can't be added to pay for 5 different streaming services for one show each.
Still haven't even looked at game torrents though.
Stopped pirating games. Movies, shows and music however…
It got really annoying with music. I have a huge playlist that I throw everything into and just shuffle through it. Sometimes I think "hey, I haven't listened to that one song in a while" so I go looking for it and mystery solved - it's just not available anymore.
They can't take it off my NAS over some licensing dispute, Jellyfin has plugins for lyrics (with time stamps too) and some of these passion project music player apps are really good and most of all fast, because they're not just a website in a wrapper but actual apps.
So yeah - service problem. I had no issue paying 10 bucks a month. Even 11. But raise the prices and I reconsider if it's still worth it putting up with the crappy apps and disappearing songs. Raise the price even more and I'll stop even reconsidering it.
This sentence is to take in a context where Gabe said right before that you can't play such a game without a $2300 computer, meaning that money was never the issue to begin with.
Yes but not only that. Netflix, as well as other streaming services suffered a lot of enshitification with raising prices, worse recommending algorithms, password sharing and address crackdown, worse search functions, advertisements, heavy show cancellations and probably some more stuff I cant remember.
Game publishers tried this. Epic tried this. Eventually they all cracked and even established publishers with their own distribution platforms like EA, ActiBlizz & Ubisoft caved and released their games on Steam.
How did Netflix fail so miserably where Steam succeeded?
With purchase based platforms (like steam) you want to go to the ones that are the most visible, as that increases your chances of actually making money. Exclusivity deals and better rates can persuade some, but only if they already believe they're big enough to not need the greater visibility Steam provides.
With subscription based services, however, it's a lot harder to set a standard platform. First of all, there's (for most platforms) no purchasing a show, so whatever deal you strike with a platform is what you're getting, and exclusivity deals are already an extremely common practice in the industry. Add to that that many of the large entertainment companies in America are able to create a decent-ish platform in a small amount of time and then restrict their shows to being only on their platform, and it's a lot harder to create a streaming service that is outright better than another's.
Others try to push their launchers, just as others pushed streaming services against Netflix. The launcher competitors are nowhere as successful as steam.
Netflix going public forcing ever growing sales forces them to expand into: their own content, increasing prices, being more aggressive to the consumer (caring is no longer password sharing, etc) and they all have.
I can't say what will be better long term. Gabe easily has as much money as he would've if he sold out to go public. Eventually someone else will take the helm, by purchasing or inheriting. If purchased then new owners might demand growth too which would just go back to enshitification.
Maybe the sliver of hope is that a private company can stay private and stay "good" to the consumers if owners stay content with their income streams.
Other studios don't make netflix search option fucking garbage when they don't have the show/movie.
Instead of just telling me I can't watch it anymore after watching the first few seasons I've to check if i spelled the name correctly or if it is maybe a bit further down the list of shows/movies that aren't even related to my search but still show up.
While I do agree with that also, netflix are also to blame.
They were cheap, streamed in HD, had a good library.
They added ads, added a premium to stream in HD, raised prices repeatedly, sell your data, cut back the library. They clearly dont respect their customers who are being triple dipped financially.
they hide behind "we have to raise prices because of market conditions and the economy". This is the same company that has $87.2 BILLION (with a B), in available finance to buy warnerbrothers.
so, they disrespect their customers by giving a shittier service over time, charging more, claiming they "have" to raise prices. while sitting on (at least) $88 BILLION dollars in cash.
anyone who gives this company money doesn't respect themselves and I'll die on this hill.
it's the industry's fault for not allowing a monopoly to continue
Having everything spread across so many services kind of sucks but I'd rather have this than the alternative, where netflix has no competition making them free to price gouge even further. I support any games company trying to compete with Steam for the same reason, even if they aren't as good. What if whoever takes charge of Valve after Gaben turns the platform to shit because customers don't have any other choices?
This. Nintendo would still make some additional bucks if they'd just port older games to steam or sell a Nintendo branded emulator or something. Pokémon, Super Metroid or Mario 64 would sell like crazy.
For real! I would gladly rebuy the emulated versions if it meant I actually can catch and transfer Pokémon to the new games w/o needing with the original hardware or one of the emulator machines with the parts to do trades
When I was a kid I had literally no money for anything, and thats alright we tried our hardest. Spending 10 bucks on trading card was a gift for christmas/bdays and thats perfectly okay, I am entirely grateful for them too.
If I want to play th games that came out in my childhood that I missed, it means I am paying 200~ bucks for a console because the resale market is wild. Then I am paying 200 bucks just for the game because there is no other way to play it legit
I make more money now than anyone in my family ever has. I will still not be extorted 400 bucks to play something that should have been a day 1 port to any modern console/pc.
I still have my original nintendo ds lite which I got for 6th bday, but ngl now when I'm almost 23 I'm thinking to maybe get r4 card and play it again so that I can experience some ds games which I never had and played cuz I had only a couple of original games and at that time they were expensive asf. Sometimes I would even borrow the game/card from some other kids and play it for a couple of days and then give back to them just to try some different games.
Nowadays you can't even find some of those games for older nintendo consoles or you can (like on ebay), but you'll have to pay way more than they were originally priced.
Damn! Thats some true hate in your veins. May I ask why?
For anyone wondering I never played either cities skylines so question comes from outsiders perspective - especially since I heard constantly good things about the games.
Cities 1 was more or less a true simulation game. Going to to preface with I haven't played Cities 2, but from what my googling has uncovered, they lost the simulation. Trash disappears, shops hire people from thin air, under the gimmick that you can outsource from nearby towns. Things like that.
I've always been buying the base game, then piracy for all the DLCs and what not, because fuck the practice of selling a game in pieces like that, but still developers gotta get paid for something.
It's even stupider. I own Hoi4 and almost all it's DLCs, same for stellaris and CK3. I just want to play an older version with older mods and it's was slightly easier to pirate than to litterally downgrade and remod the version I own.
Of course I do have Eu4 with all it's DLCs despite never having payed for it, but that's neither here nor there.
And most of your money goes to artists you don't even listen to. Look up how Spotify pays out the money - it's modern white collar crime.
You'd think that your money goes to the artists you listen to. No. They sum all money of all subscribers in one big pile, and then divide that money between every single song streamed, not matter which artist, and then pay out. That at least some of your money goes to artists you don't even listen to. And if you are a normal regular listener, with normal listening habits, the artists you listen to maybe get a dollar.
if a dollar of my subscription was not spent on the song i listened to but instead pooled up to be divided amongst all the songs listened to by everybody, wouldnt that still be the same outcome? because my logic is thinking that everybody elses dollar who listens to the popular music is also being pooled together and some cut of that is flowing back to the song i listened to.
unless there are more details to that statement that im not seeing here
if a dollar of my subscription was not spent on the song i listened to but instead pooled up to be divided amongst all the songs listened to by everybody, wouldnt that still be the same outcome?
No, sadly not. A quick overview. Lets assume there are two Spotify customers, me and you. We provide Spotify with 10 dollars of money, $5 each of us. You listen to 10 streams. I listen to 90 streams. You listen to two artists, 5 streams each, I listen to only one.
Meaning from your $5, the artists you listened to only receive $1. $4 of your dollars go to my artist, which you may have never known or ever heard of. Also, it might be a pushed music star from the labels that co-own Spotify, meaning they essentially direct money into their own way. Money that they took from you, knowing that you believe that it goes to your artists. That's why I said modern white collar robbery.
It's absolutely fucked up, and I can certainly believe everyone when they say: "That can't be true." But it is. It's pretty clear laid out by Spotify themselves. They never lied about it.
For some reason, essentially the whole press made the error to talk about Spotify in terms of average payout per stream. With the example above, it's absolutely clear, that the average payout will hide the issue, and still be correctly calculated, and nobody lied.
ok that fills in the gaps and makes more sense now.
i never listened to spotify so i never really cared or bothered to look into how their model works, but obviously like most everything else in our lives its scummy.
The sad reality: Essentially every big music streaming service on this planet with a big library and a lot of popular artists has the very same system. The labels won't allow their music on your platform if you don't adopt that system. That is what the CEO of Deezer claimed a few years ago.
Funny because Rimworld is the first game I bought on steam and the reason I started to use Steam. I have no choice but to buy it after playing the pirated version for 2 months straight
For me, it wasn't steam exactly, but it was the environment that steam enables and created where games are often supported and are easily patched for years after release. Piracy used to mean that you got the 1.0 of a game cracked and that was it. Any updates required a new crack, and if the game wasn't popular enough, it wouldn't get one. Steam enables devs to easily and frequently update their games, so paying the price for them ends up getting you the best version of the game.
Obligatory, Valve is still a company, not our friends. But Steam definitely made me over the years slowly stop pirating games. Add every game that sounds remotely interesting, when it comes down to $5 or I'm bored might even go up to $20 to get a game. Everything works seamlessly, even peripheral support built in for a lot of things on Mac and Linux, which is pretty nuts, usually a pain even in 2025/6 to get some things working correctly on Unix systems. I feel less need to go hunt down hacks, I have more than enough to keep me busy forever, but keep an eye for when something interesting is like 98% off to add to the library, furthering the eternity of games I own (and yeah I know even with Steam's decent policies we still don't "own" shit).
The important difference is that Valve is employee owned, and not beholden to the same kind of demands a public company has in regards to shareholders. The entire thing is primarily built on Gaben's vision, and fortunately for the rest of us his vision is a good one.
I'd describe it as a private not "employee owned" which has a different connotation usually.
Gabe decides what's going on. While other people may be given stock that they can cash out at certain intervals, employees are not in a position of voting power.
I agree that yes they're still a company, the only difference to seemingly every other company these days is that they haven't forgotten yet that sabotaging your image, product, workers and consumers for the sake of shareholder and stock prices isn't worth it just to maybe squeeze out another million on top of the billions you're already making.
Honestly kinda started with that to remind myself more than anyone. I'm obsessed with Valve/Steam, and honestly my use is pretty vanilla, so I can't see ever having any real issues with them. But it is something that people bring up, which I don't think is a bad thing to keep in mind to a certain extent.
Remember when Valve tried to make paid mods a thing and it took a ton of backlash to get them to change course, the biggest one being that modders are not beholden to consumers like companies are and so have no responsibility to fix broken updates? That was 10 years ago and they now just realized that it's a problem on their free service
Is this something developers have to opt in for? I haven’t been paying too much attention but I remember the Fallout 4 community had to go to external softwares to downgrade their version around when the Fallout London mod released
You use the Steam console to download a specific version from their depot. External software exists to simplify this process, but as far as I'm aware it's not able to be turned off. The issue is that since Steam enforces updates in order to boot something if you're online, you'd have to copy the files so that Steam updating the game automatically or on next launch doesn't overwrite them in the default directory with the version you just got away from.
This feature is completely useless without the ability to change game version. They mention the 'beta' system but barely any game uses that, and if they do it's usually just the main + dev branches. Yes, there are ways to downgrade the games but it's not something you can easily do from within the Steam app and definitely not something the average user is gonna deal with. What is the use for tracking mod versions when the game is gonna be on the latest version in 99% of cases? (Other than maybe auto disabling mods that would break the game when it updates). Maybe I'm missing something, but it looks like a feature that is dead on arrival unless they force developers to add proper versioning to their games.
Yeah the core problem is that the developer still needs to be the one to opt in, rather than the user.
It’s been possible for a while now to switch to old beta builds (again assuming the devs opted for that), but you still don’t have access to the full version history without stuff like steamcmd, and even with steamcmd your work still gets undone with automatic updates.
Yeah I'm kinda confused that everyone keeps reporting "OMG, players can stay on an older, stable version if they want!" .. when the notes in no way say that whatsoever. They don't mention it at ALL
Unless they let us do that, as you say.. all this does is let workshop mods mark which versions their mods currently or DID work on. And they might just still break after anyway
Same, tbh. I remember pirating "Counter-Strike No Steam", but then I decided to buy it, bought Orange Box and started my long journey to over 2500 titles on my account.
Yeah that's great Pirat Nation is a fucking fascist and i don't want to see him reposted on r/steam do not normalise these ghouls and jackals with no empathy.
The whole reason STEAM, or VaLve in this example, is not worried about piracy is because Gabe said 20 years ago (video can be found on YouTube) that the reason why piracy is an issue is because service to the gamer was non existent for localized games, therefore to get translated games ypu sometimes had to pirate the game.
Service the gamer, the gamer pays. Disservice and the dev pays.
the other day i came across a post in the epic games sub, it was that drake meme where he was rejecting steams 90% discount and take epic games free games, if i remember correctly, the post was "yeah no thanks steam" or some mockery, yet everyone in the comments was like "im just here for the free game dude i dont care" not even agreeing or opposing lol, a whole community just there so they can get a notification when a free game drops lol
and then there is me a few years back (not even doing that nowadays anymore): Getting the game for free on Epic, testing it and if its good, getting it full price or on sale on Steam.
Steam actually cares about its customers and is willing to do anything to show that they care unlike other launchers that just say “he’s 10% off a shitty triple A game that we can’t sell@
How exactly does that work? I’m just curious cause doesn’t Steam force you to download the latest update when you launch a game that has an update available? Won’t it break the mod or did Valve do something different about game updates being forced?
I mean if it's the subtle , or understated reason then you would not post about it, so It' does not mean anything , it's just something you add to the sentence for no real reason ?
1 time I got so salty at DayZ standalone that I deleted it from my library. Then the wife out of the blue wanted to play it over a year later.
So I messaged them asking if I could have it back, after explaining I was super salty from losing my stuff to glitchy zombies and wanted to try it with the new patches. And they reinstated it into my library within like 2 days.
For me it’s playing PC games anywhere in my house via steam game streaming to AppleTV devices. Even multiplayer games with multiple Xbox controllers works perfectly. BG3 is so nice free my couch.
sometimes I don't mind paying full price or cl9se to full price for some games or even DLC packages, because I either really loved the previous game so I felt the need to play the new one, or also loved a game and the found it had a DLC so I bought it, and this happened alot.
discounts are such a good way to make the player discover new grounds that will otherwise be forgotten, let alone buying games I already have on other platforms, that will never happen without a discount.
The reason I don’t pirate games is that I don’t want a sophisticated virus to end up on my pc thanks to a hacker group who skilled enough to crack modern games.
Wait does that mean we can finally stop letting steam force our games to be updated?
Because that feature was removed over 10-15 years ago and you could not start a game if a update was pushed only when the developer having a beta branch active.
If its a developer choice again then that does not fix the real problem
I do use piracy but as a sort of demo like you used to get, i play the game a few hours and if i like it ill buy it on steam(yes ik the 2 hour refund but i cba)
HOWEVER I highly doubt this means you are going to be able to target any update you want, highly likely that the Dev is still 100% in charge of whether you can stay on an old update. So no, you are probably not going to get a version of fallout 4 that you can rollback updates on in the steam ui.
Tbh I don't even like steam for being the best game distribution platform. I like it as the best video game themed social media. Making it super easy to play with friends. To see what your friends are playing. To have unspoken competitions over who has the rarest achievements. Steam might be my least detested social media platform.
Workshop mods are so goated. No need to download sketchy mod loaders, no need to (most of the time) worry about mod compatibility, super easy to unsubscribe, and so easily cross platform, works on mac(if game is supported) works flawlessly on linux. There really is no equal to workshop mods. I’ve played so many hundreds of hours and terabytes of custom bo3 zombies maps because of workshop support.
I really did stop pirating because of Steam as well... top notch service and I found it way less of a pain in the ass to just buy legit games... the thing that I'm not a huge fan of is the fact that even though steam games are paid for we don't technically OWN them anymore... kinda makes me miss physical media.
Same Steam sales turned me from torrent hunter to wishlist goblin. Nothing beats snagging a game for the price of lunch.
Also same. So much easier than torrenting imo
Plus the syncing feature so I can still download it anywhere
Couple it with a steamdeck and I have all my saves ready to download on the cloud anywhere I go
thats another life saver ive found. i dont know how many games i would have quit because of not being able to sync accross devices
I use my rog but yeah its amazing
i love the free cloud saves
I wouldn't say its easier, but its definitely worth buying stuff when you get services like this. And I also enjoy achievement hunting, so there's that.
It's easier now, since there are very few seeds, so downloads take many hours, and direct links are often removed. On Steam, you have a direct download button without complications.
Steam's download speeds are amazing if you have gigabit internet. I reinstalled a 30GB game last weekend. The game was ready to play in less than 7 minutes.
Yes, I know that. I have 300 megabits and I also download quickly, but only with direct links. With torrents, you depend on other seeders being connected for the download to be fast. If you have 50 or more megabits, the download is very fast, but currently there are few seeders, usually less than 5, so even if you have 10 gigabits, the download will be slow. In fact, there were a couple of games I couldn't download because there weren't any seeders.
Lol i had this issue and hated all the horrible server speeds or not enough peers, but there are ways to avoid torrents entirely
Especially now that there are very few torrent seeds, so downloads take hours. And direct links are constantly being taken down, so piracy is slower than ever.
I love wishlisting games and then never actually buying them until one day I do and then I don't play them for months if ever
I dunno if it's just us old Steam-head's ages (I assume anyone with Steam opinions is 20s-30s at least), but as I get old I do get a weird tingle from "ooh I'm 'supporting the dev' and getting a game for $1.99!". Some reason makes me feel better than just downloading a torrent for another random FPS game I've played a million of.
As we get older and into real life pirating actually becomes quite an annoyance compared to the convenience of steam. Steam does almost everything right. Before I started earning I torrented to check out a game. Now I can buy it on steam and refund it in 2 hours. Specially the bigger games because it takes me about an hour to download a massive 100-120gb game.
I think another factor is that the risk-reward ratio for pirating has changed over time.
It used to be that viruses would just nuke your OS or otherwise be generally annoying. Worst case, reformat, reinstall and you've learnt a lesson.
Nowadays a Cryptolocker will irreversibly nuke all your files. Or it'll be a silent data-miner that steals private data/logins, passing on things like your bank account and online logins like email/etc. The blast radius is so much larger that I would simply not buy something rather than pirate it now with extremely few exceptions.
as we get older we also tend to start building some wealth and the risk of catching a virus or keylogger becomes a much bigger problem.
there are many ways we can be scammed or attacked just by doing day to day things. its best to not add other avenues especially those that may already be in legal gray areas.
right?!
I don't hoard games, I'm a patron of the arts!
That's exactly how humble bundle started and what got me hooked into Steam.
Back in 2010 (I think) a few indie developers got together and created a pay-what-you-want bundle of 6 indie games. With the money going directly to the developers (and a charity if you wanted) and games coming with a steam key, and DRM free versions to download.
I remember that I was 19 or 20 at the time and it felt amazing to pay 15€ of my hard earned money to pay directly to the developers and get some nice even if lesser known games.
At the time I didn't have a steam account yet ( I was pirating all my games or getting them physically for birthdays and such) And it felt so good to be able to get games while feeling that the money was going to the guys who made the game.
Fast-forward 10 years of humble bundles and steam sales, and having my own money to spend on stuff and by 2020 I had over 600 games on Steam ( half of it "junk" from bundles, but, at least half is stuff I wanted).
Now in 2025 my Steam library is at over 900 and I'm being far more selective of what I buy while I work through my backlog. And I'm having the time of my life playing games.
The Steam model is genius.
I haven’t pirated a game in 15-20 years and I own something like 1500 Steam games.
You have lunch for $1? Where?
And on the other hand you have nintendo, im playing most games 30fps sub 1080p on switch 2, its 2026.
"Piracy is almost always a service problem, not a pricing problem." - GabeN
EXACTLY i never pirate games because the service im provided by buying it on steam is worth what i pay . i do pirate shows and movies because it service i get for free is almost always the same or better than what i would be paying for
i love paying for games now because i enjoy them, steam sales are also a big part when i cant afford a 60$ game
Also steam having perks for buying games like game showcases and achievements are a nice incentive to buy games.
i got to lvl 25 during the seasonal sale using the points i used from my steamdeck purchase :)
Streaming services have been proven to stream at low bitrates to save bandwidth, 4k at low bitrate is much worse than 1080p at high bitrate and that goes for all resolutions. Meanwhile when you pirate it's almost always a high bitrate encoded video. So really, streaming services don't offer anything over piracy anymore, on top of that there are ads too.
Steam and spotify got the right idea.
With spotify you get everything for a low price, lossless quality at your fingertips and steam is just a stellar platform with no downsides. It's baffling how every other service follows the enshitiffication rule
Because line must go up. They don't think about the long term only the short term gains. Steam has a legal monopoly pretty much if they just keep doing what they have been doing and not fuck it up. Having years of trustworthy service of simply not screwing your customers over will go a long way into ensuring you have people wanting to do business with you for decades to come.
Steam being a private company with no shareholders help.
Once you sell shares your shareholders expect dividends which turns your company from a service provider into a wealth extraction machine.
I wouldn’t put Spotify in the same category as Steam at all. Spotify moved far too late on lossless audio, especially compared to alternatives like Tidal. They pay musicians so poorly, and their API restrictions have effectively killed many indie and third-party apps. Steam actively supports and grows its ecosystem, while Spotify is locking things down.
I was so annoyed when I watched Stranger Things. Especially dark areas were sometimes just a blurry mass of some pixels.
A game costs 100$ for americans making 6000$ a month.
Costs 100$ for me making 300$ a month.
Yeah it's a price issue for poor countries
I also feel like shows and movies are not worth what they cost. I mean, a game? I could play it for hours, hundreds of hours, even thousands. I know you can watch a movie over and over again, but it's the exact same thing every time. I could pay a subscription service, but I don't own anything at that point. I know it costs millions, if not hundreds of millions to produce a movie, but I still don't see the value of paying upwards of 20-30 dollars for something I'll watch twice or three times max. Going to the cinema is my only cash stream into the movie industry, but that's an experience with friends. It's weird because I don't pirate songs, I actually like to buy CDs and download FLACS, and I used to collect older movies but I'd always buy them used for like a couple bucks for 3 at a time. It's all just funny because I feel like pirating movies and shows is so much more acceptable than games. Okay, word vomit over lol.
It's funny that the only thing I pirate consistently is movies and shows as the service I get from Kodi + premium debrid provider is way better than buying a sub from Amazon/Netflix/Apple etc (full centralised library, ad free, cheaper). I pay for Spotify for music as everything is in one platform and it's convenient to stream what I want to listen to and buy my games on Steam/GOG. The only games I seem to pirate are ones that run shitter on official launchers that I would have to pay for than the pirate copy (EA/Ubisoft games).
Gabe was right all those years ago when he stated that piracy for the most part is a service problem - there are some exceptions to this but for the most part and my own personal experience I agree with him. Try a pirate copy of a game to see if I like it and then purchase it if I do. Avoid buying EA and Ubisoft games altogether.
with stremio and realdebrid services the service you get just outshines any streaming service there is. The only downside is the difficulty of getting the foreign language content
tbh for me its a lot also the risk, shows and movies aren't executable files, games are so malware is a bigger risk
I love that netflix literally proved that, then they all decided to launch their own service with exclusives and everyone went back to pirateing.
It's not worth it until they start including offline installers like GOG does. It's funny because Steam Deck owners would benefit a ton from it too.
i doubt steam will ever add that (and i fully admit its because they don't have to and wouldn't profit from it )
A damn shame. That's why I look at GOG games first now before Steam. That way I know I can keep my games forever and can't get the game pulled out of my library.
Which all these streaming services prove to be the case in the recent years. There is countless of numbers of them with the exclusive content being spread through all of them.
This just makes people pirate stuff, if the platform they sre subscribed on doesn't include the specific movie/serie.
EA and Epic tried something like this with their proprietary game launchers but luckily failed.
Yup, I hadn't torrented anything in 10+ years, and I recently set up a home server torrent box cause I can't be added to pay for 5 different streaming services for one show each.
Still haven't even looked at game torrents though.
There is only one game that get's pirated in this house. The Sims 4 with all the expansions for the gf.
Last time I checked I had over 80TB upload on that............................
Stopped pirating games. Movies, shows and music however…
It got really annoying with music. I have a huge playlist that I throw everything into and just shuffle through it. Sometimes I think "hey, I haven't listened to that one song in a while" so I go looking for it and mystery solved - it's just not available anymore.
They can't take it off my NAS over some licensing dispute, Jellyfin has plugins for lyrics (with time stamps too) and some of these passion project music player apps are really good and most of all fast, because they're not just a website in a wrapper but actual apps.
So yeah - service problem. I had no issue paying 10 bucks a month. Even 11. But raise the prices and I reconsider if it's still worth it putting up with the crappy apps and disappearing songs. Raise the price even more and I'll stop even reconsidering it.
Me with streaming:
Me: Hey, I want to watch this, which of you has it?
Site1: ME ME ME ME
Me: Okay, take my money.
Site1: Content unavailable in your region.
Tell that to canadians paying 110$ for games
I'll tell myself just so I make sure I'm informed
This sentence is to take in a context where Gabe said right before that you can't play such a game without a $2300 computer, meaning that money was never the issue to begin with.
Doesn’t steam not let you choose what version of the game you play
Developers can let you choose specific versions though the game properties, if they want.
You can also manually download older game files through the console if you're so inclined. There's no GUI for it, but it's not very difficult.
That is what happens when the people who run a company actually use the products/ play games
Steam is the reason i stopped pirating games.
Netflix was the reason i stopped pirating movies,
Netflix is the reason i am once again pirating movies.
Steam is the reason im still not pirating games.
Less netflix problem, more problem of pther studios trying to cut a pie and introduce dozens of streaming services after them
Yes but not only that. Netflix, as well as other streaming services suffered a lot of enshitification with raising prices, worse recommending algorithms, password sharing and address crackdown, worse search functions, advertisements, heavy show cancellations and probably some more stuff I cant remember.
Game publishers tried this. Epic tried this. Eventually they all cracked and even established publishers with their own distribution platforms like EA, ActiBlizz & Ubisoft caved and released their games on Steam.
How did Netflix fail so miserably where Steam succeeded?
Purchase vs Subscription
With purchase based platforms (like steam) you want to go to the ones that are the most visible, as that increases your chances of actually making money. Exclusivity deals and better rates can persuade some, but only if they already believe they're big enough to not need the greater visibility Steam provides.
With subscription based services, however, it's a lot harder to set a standard platform. First of all, there's (for most platforms) no purchasing a show, so whatever deal you strike with a platform is what you're getting, and exclusivity deals are already an extremely common practice in the industry. Add to that that many of the large entertainment companies in America are able to create a decent-ish platform in a small amount of time and then restrict their shows to being only on their platform, and it's a lot harder to create a streaming service that is outright better than another's.
Others try to push their launchers, just as others pushed streaming services against Netflix. The launcher competitors are nowhere as successful as steam.
Netflix going public forcing ever growing sales forces them to expand into: their own content, increasing prices, being more aggressive to the consumer (caring is no longer password sharing, etc) and they all have.
I can't say what will be better long term. Gabe easily has as much money as he would've if he sold out to go public. Eventually someone else will take the helm, by purchasing or inheriting. If purchased then new owners might demand growth too which would just go back to enshitification.
Maybe the sliver of hope is that a private company can stay private and stay "good" to the consumers if owners stay content with their income streams.
Other studios don't make netflix search option fucking garbage when they don't have the show/movie.
Instead of just telling me I can't watch it anymore after watching the first few seasons I've to check if i spelled the name correctly or if it is maybe a bit further down the list of shows/movies that aren't even related to my search but still show up.
No, Netflix's video compression is now catastrophic. I'm so annoyed; dark scenes in particular look terrible.
Netflix does have a decent amount of exclusives that just aren't available on netflix, or only has half of it.
While I do agree with that also, netflix are also to blame.
They were cheap, streamed in HD, had a good library. They added ads, added a premium to stream in HD, raised prices repeatedly, sell your data, cut back the library. They clearly dont respect their customers who are being triple dipped financially.
they hide behind "we have to raise prices because of market conditions and the economy". This is the same company that has $87.2 BILLION (with a B), in available finance to buy warnerbrothers.
so, they disrespect their customers by giving a shittier service over time, charging more, claiming they "have" to raise prices. while sitting on (at least) $88 BILLION dollars in cash.
anyone who gives this company money doesn't respect themselves and I'll die on this hill.
If buying isn't owning. Piracy isn't stealing.
Having everything spread across so many services kind of sucks but I'd rather have this than the alternative, where netflix has no competition making them free to price gouge even further. I support any games company trying to compete with Steam for the same reason, even if they aren't as good. What if whoever takes charge of Valve after Gaben turns the platform to shit because customers don't have any other choices?
Netflix, HBO, Disney etc. are the reason I use Plex lol
Only games I pirate are 3ds ds, gba, and gb and other dead consoles. If steam has them tho, ill just buy them.
I would add the Sims 4 and all of their DLC to that list too
I haven't been keeping track, but last I looked (2024 at some point) it was like €500 for everything. Just.. what.
If you wanted to buy all DLCs for the sims it would cost you $1,567.93. I'm not joking.
That's just gross, lol.
Though I've seen worse with Train Simulator at like €10,000 or something for everything.
It's just a live service game stuck on a traditional DLC format
This. Nintendo would still make some additional bucks if they'd just port older games to steam or sell a Nintendo branded emulator or something. Pokémon, Super Metroid or Mario 64 would sell like crazy.
I mean exactly, I would literally pay for an original game boy and gen 1-3 Pokémon games if they re released them now.
For real! I would gladly rebuy the emulated versions if it meant I actually can catch and transfer Pokémon to the new games w/o needing with the original hardware or one of the emulator machines with the parts to do trades
Huge pokemon guy, like incredibly huge.
When I was a kid I had literally no money for anything, and thats alright we tried our hardest. Spending 10 bucks on trading card was a gift for christmas/bdays and thats perfectly okay, I am entirely grateful for them too.
If I want to play th games that came out in my childhood that I missed, it means I am paying 200~ bucks for a console because the resale market is wild. Then I am paying 200 bucks just for the game because there is no other way to play it legit
I make more money now than anyone in my family ever has. I will still not be extorted 400 bucks to play something that should have been a day 1 port to any modern console/pc.
I still have my original nintendo ds lite which I got for 6th bday, but ngl now when I'm almost 23 I'm thinking to maybe get r4 card and play it again so that I can experience some ds games which I never had and played cuz I had only a couple of original games and at that time they were expensive asf. Sometimes I would even borrow the game/card from some other kids and play it for a couple of days and then give back to them just to try some different games.
Nowadays you can't even find some of those games for older nintendo consoles or you can (like on ebay), but you'll have to pay way more than they were originally priced.
R4 cards can be kinda hit or miss. I got an ez flash parallel for 25 usd, and its very nice.
This is amazing. I've genuinely been pirating multiple paradox games for this exact problem.
Pirating Paradox games is still okay, because Paradox.
i was okay with it before cities skylines 2, and i am still okay with it after cities skylines 2.
i hate cities skylines 2.
It's been in my wishlist since before release, I'm still waiting for it to get good or dirt cheap
It's pretty good now! The Beta Asset Editors finally out so now we're going to get tons more buildings!
Damn! Thats some true hate in your veins. May I ask why?
For anyone wondering I never played either cities skylines so question comes from outsiders perspective - especially since I heard constantly good things about the games.
Cities 1 was more or less a true simulation game. Going to to preface with I haven't played Cities 2, but from what my googling has uncovered, they lost the simulation. Trash disappears, shops hire people from thin air, under the gimmick that you can outsource from nearby towns. Things like that.
I've always been buying the base game, then piracy for all the DLCs and what not, because fuck the practice of selling a game in pieces like that, but still developers gotta get paid for something.
It's even stupider. I own Hoi4 and almost all it's DLCs, same for stellaris and CK3. I just want to play an older version with older mods and it's was slightly easier to pirate than to litterally downgrade and remod the version I own.
Of course I do have Eu4 with all it's DLCs despite never having payed for it, but that's neither here nor there.
? you could already lock their games to specific versions
Not the mods, and I frequently enjoy switching between versions. It sounds insane but i found it easier to have different versions of the game.
Pirating paradox games is how half the community started playing their games in the first place. Source: me
I have bought the games and own all DLCs for CK3 and half for Victoria 3. Also bought Europa Universalis 5, don't judge me prematurely
https://preview.redd.it/hogw04k458cg1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8ed4160f4c78a957518864afd90bab078d7db0e5
Jesus Christ that’s Gabin Bourne
Damn fromsoftware is really running out of game ideas
What no Bloodborne PC Port does to a studio
Let me know how it is after you're past the Armored Core gap
Gabe must be a Jags fan
I have to agree games are the only thing I dont pirate these days
You wouldn’t download a car!?!?
i read that as carl.
I would download both a car and a carl.
Definitely would. CAD files please, I'm making it myself.
You can't tell me what to do!
You pirate music ?
No ads, download what I want, download unofficial covers
You can use a modified client to avoid ads and get access to "premium" features (normal features that the company decided to make premium)
Have you seen the state of Spotify these days? Price increase, Ai music, taking you off your playlist and into a ‘suggested music’ one
And most of your money goes to artists you don't even listen to. Look up how Spotify pays out the money - it's modern white collar crime.
You'd think that your money goes to the artists you listen to. No. They sum all money of all subscribers in one big pile, and then divide that money between every single song streamed, not matter which artist, and then pay out. That at least some of your money goes to artists you don't even listen to. And if you are a normal regular listener, with normal listening habits, the artists you listen to maybe get a dollar.
It's fucking insane that so few people know this.
im not understanding the math here.
if a dollar of my subscription was not spent on the song i listened to but instead pooled up to be divided amongst all the songs listened to by everybody, wouldnt that still be the same outcome? because my logic is thinking that everybody elses dollar who listens to the popular music is also being pooled together and some cut of that is flowing back to the song i listened to.
unless there are more details to that statement that im not seeing here
No, sadly not. A quick overview. Lets assume there are two Spotify customers, me and you. We provide Spotify with 10 dollars of money, $5 each of us. You listen to 10 streams. I listen to 90 streams. You listen to two artists, 5 streams each, I listen to only one.
Meaning from your $5, the artists you listened to only receive $1. $4 of your dollars go to my artist, which you may have never known or ever heard of. Also, it might be a pushed music star from the labels that co-own Spotify, meaning they essentially direct money into their own way. Money that they took from you, knowing that you believe that it goes to your artists. That's why I said modern white collar robbery.
It's absolutely fucked up, and I can certainly believe everyone when they say: "That can't be true." But it is. It's pretty clear laid out by Spotify themselves. They never lied about it.
For some reason, essentially the whole press made the error to talk about Spotify in terms of average payout per stream. With the example above, it's absolutely clear, that the average payout will hide the issue, and still be correctly calculated, and nobody lied.
Absolutely fucked up.
I buy all my music through Bandcamp now.
ok that fills in the gaps and makes more sense now.
i never listened to spotify so i never really cared or bothered to look into how their model works, but obviously like most everything else in our lives its scummy.
The sad reality: Essentially every big music streaming service on this planet with a big library and a lot of popular artists has the very same system. The labels won't allow their music on your platform if you don't adopt that system. That is what the CEO of Deezer claimed a few years ago.
Ad free pandora and download anything I want.
yt music revanced
You don't?
Big win for RimWorld modding.
Finnaly Combat Extended will be available on Steam for any version of RimWorld....
Funny because Rimworld is the first game I bought on steam and the reason I started to use Steam. I have no choice but to buy it after playing the pirated version for 2 months straight
For me, it wasn't steam exactly, but it was the environment that steam enables and created where games are often supported and are easily patched for years after release. Piracy used to mean that you got the 1.0 of a game cracked and that was it. Any updates required a new crack, and if the game wasn't popular enough, it wouldn't get one. Steam enables devs to easily and frequently update their games, so paying the price for them ends up getting you the best version of the game.
https://preview.redd.it/mm1rckuvj8cg1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3a8815c198071c5c421edf51b14e6cc57021e2fe
Obligatory, Valve is still a company, not our friends. But Steam definitely made me over the years slowly stop pirating games. Add every game that sounds remotely interesting, when it comes down to $5 or I'm bored might even go up to $20 to get a game. Everything works seamlessly, even peripheral support built in for a lot of things on Mac and Linux, which is pretty nuts, usually a pain even in 2025/6 to get some things working correctly on Unix systems. I feel less need to go hunt down hacks, I have more than enough to keep me busy forever, but keep an eye for when something interesting is like 98% off to add to the library, furthering the eternity of games I own (and yeah I know even with Steam's decent policies we still don't "own" shit).
The important difference is that Valve is employee owned, and not beholden to the same kind of demands a public company has in regards to shareholders. The entire thing is primarily built on Gaben's vision, and fortunately for the rest of us his vision is a good one.
I'd describe it as a private not "employee owned" which has a different connotation usually.
Gabe decides what's going on. While other people may be given stock that they can cash out at certain intervals, employees are not in a position of voting power.
I agree that yes they're still a company, the only difference to seemingly every other company these days is that they haven't forgotten yet that sabotaging your image, product, workers and consumers for the sake of shareholder and stock prices isn't worth it just to maybe squeeze out another million on top of the billions you're already making.
Honestly kinda started with that to remind myself more than anyone. I'm obsessed with Valve/Steam, and honestly my use is pretty vanilla, so I can't see ever having any real issues with them. But it is something that people bring up, which I don't think is a bad thing to keep in mind to a certain extent.
It can be both. But always be vigilant for things to change. Don't fanboy.
Remember when Valve tried to make paid mods a thing and it took a ton of backlash to get them to change course, the biggest one being that modders are not beholden to consumers like companies are and so have no responsibility to fix broken updates? That was 10 years ago and they now just realized that it's a problem on their free service
Bethesda pushed for that, that's why they still insist on paid mods.
Does that mean I can go back to before they broke all my fallout 4 mods?
Considering Fallout 4 (or any Bethesda game for that matter) doesn't have a workshop, I'd say no.
It did say “workshop mods AND games” so the possibility is there
Games were aways possible to download old versions using Steam depots.
Games that rely on old versions for speed running or mods frequently do this.
Is this something developers have to opt in for? I haven’t been paying too much attention but I remember the Fallout 4 community had to go to external softwares to downgrade their version around when the Fallout London mod released
You use the Steam console to download a specific version from their depot. External software exists to simplify this process, but as far as I'm aware it's not able to be turned off. The issue is that since Steam enforces updates in order to boot something if you're online, you'd have to copy the files so that Steam updating the game automatically or on next launch doesn't overwrite them in the default directory with the version you just got away from.
This feature is completely useless without the ability to change game version. They mention the 'beta' system but barely any game uses that, and if they do it's usually just the main + dev branches. Yes, there are ways to downgrade the games but it's not something you can easily do from within the Steam app and definitely not something the average user is gonna deal with. What is the use for tracking mod versions when the game is gonna be on the latest version in 99% of cases? (Other than maybe auto disabling mods that would break the game when it updates). Maybe I'm missing something, but it looks like a feature that is dead on arrival unless they force developers to add proper versioning to their games.
Yeah the core problem is that the developer still needs to be the one to opt in, rather than the user.
It’s been possible for a while now to switch to old beta builds (again assuming the devs opted for that), but you still don’t have access to the full version history without stuff like steamcmd, and even with steamcmd your work still gets undone with automatic updates.
Yeah I'm kinda confused that everyone keeps reporting "OMG, players can stay on an older, stable version if they want!" .. when the notes in no way say that whatsoever. They don't mention it at ALL
Unless they let us do that, as you say.. all this does is let workshop mods mark which versions their mods currently or DID work on. And they might just still break after anyway
Lowkey? How about highkey lol.
What's lowkey about it?
How is it lowkey? What is lowkey about that? Every sentence that has ever had “lowkey” in it was completely unchanged by having it there
Please learn new words, and learn how to think for yourself instead of just parroting meaningless catch phrases
That's highkey a pretty good point
Steam is not perfect, but my god, it's a miracle we have it in this day in age.
Steam is one of the few monopolies i'll be sad to see die one day when they go public or Gabe retires. Also Netflix from 2014. That was good.
Same, tbh. I remember pirating "Counter-Strike No Steam", but then I decided to buy it, bought Orange Box and started my long journey to over 2500 titles on my account.
I'm sure Skyrim will find a way to fuck it up.
How do I stay on an older stable version of Magicka?
And all those other companies introducing their own clients convince people to pirate their games in return.
The clients with like 1 or 2 games are the funniest lol
Yeah that's great Pirat Nation is a fucking fascist and i don't want to see him reposted on r/steam do not normalise these ghouls and jackals with no empathy.
He's also a transphobe, yeah. I wish people would stop posting him.
Do you people know what low-key means? Do you just use words because they're popular?
It just means "really" or "seriously", right?
Once Nintendo figures out a PC store or sells their catalog on steam it'll be complete.
Fucking finally, took long enough. Now do this for all games! Should be up to me if i want to update or not
I would kill if I could freeze Beat Saber... I am so tired of that shit.
Steam is also the reason I stopped pirating games.
In my case it was generally because I had lost the physical disk rather than not wanting to pay in the first place.
When games started requiring an internet connection to just to run I finally started using Steam rather than insisting on a physical disk purchases.
I only pirate games you can no longer buy or if the game is overpriced for a 10+ year old game.
If Steam ever goes down, PC game developers are FUCKED. Piracy will take over immediately.
The whole reason STEAM, or VaLve in this example, is not worried about piracy is because Gabe said 20 years ago (video can be found on YouTube) that the reason why piracy is an issue is because service to the gamer was non existent for localized games, therefore to get translated games ypu sometimes had to pirate the game.
Service the gamer, the gamer pays. Disservice and the dev pays.
that is an amazing news! now lets check on our competition Epic games
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i see.. why dont we give em some time so they can sort their stuff out
"what? we have AI, NFTs and Crypto... oh and yeah, we hate Singleplayer Games. Whats not to like?" Tim Sweeney for whatever reason
the other day i came across a post in the epic games sub, it was that drake meme where he was rejecting steams 90% discount and take epic games free games, if i remember correctly, the post was "yeah no thanks steam" or some mockery, yet everyone in the comments was like "im just here for the free game dude i dont care" not even agreeing or opposing lol, a whole community just there so they can get a notification when a free game drops lol
and then there is me a few years back (not even doing that nowadays anymore): Getting the game for free on Epic, testing it and if its good, getting it full price or on sale on Steam.
Basicly used it as a worse demo system.
Good guy yacht man
Steam actually cares about its customers and is willing to do anything to show that they care unlike other launchers that just say “he’s 10% off a shitty triple A game that we can’t sell@
None of the shops set the prices for third party games.
When I got a steam deck, I thought I’d be pirating so much more. And I haven’t really simply because of the sales you can catch. It’s crazy lol
How exactly does that work? I’m just curious cause doesn’t Steam force you to download the latest update when you launch a game that has an update available? Won’t it break the mod or did Valve do something different about game updates being forced?
The ONLY reason I pirate a game today is because it's not available to buy or the copy on steam has locked features for some reason.
Only service I'll simp for
where do i turn this on for fallout 4 and skyrim
Beat saber?
What does low-key mean in this context ?
It's just padding right ?
I mean if it's the subtle , or understated reason then you would not post about it, so It' does not mean anything , it's just something you add to the sentence for no real reason ?
I love steam.
1 time I got so salty at DayZ standalone that I deleted it from my library. Then the wife out of the blue wanted to play it over a year later.
So I messaged them asking if I could have it back, after explaining I was super salty from losing my stuff to glitchy zombies and wanted to try it with the new patches. And they reinstated it into my library within like 2 days.
They are true friends of the people.
Source: https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/497183817277113900
I pirate all of my media except for video games and it's entirely because of Steam.
I still pirate games but I usually buy the game when it goes on sale and on steam it happens often. So it's like an extended demo.
Steam is the rain I don't know how to operate anymore. Try hack me is the reason I'm paranoid of pirated software
For me it’s playing PC games anywhere in my house via steam game streaming to AppleTV devices. Even multiplayer games with multiple Xbox controllers works perfectly. BG3 is so nice free my couch.
and it encourages engagement.
sometimes I don't mind paying full price or cl9se to full price for some games or even DLC packages, because I either really loved the previous game so I felt the need to play the new one, or also loved a game and the found it had a DLC so I bought it, and this happened alot.
discounts are such a good way to make the player discover new grounds that will otherwise be forgotten, let alone buying games I already have on other platforms, that will never happen without a discount.
I have a feeling that Bethesda and their Fallout 4 updates are responsible for that.
The reason I don’t pirate games is that I don’t want a sophisticated virus to end up on my pc thanks to a hacker group who skilled enough to crack modern games.
Wait does that mean we can finally stop letting steam force our games to be updated?
Because that feature was removed over 10-15 years ago and you could not start a game if a update was pushed only when the developer having a beta branch active.
If its a developer choice again then that does not fix the real problem
Wow its almost like people are willing to pay for a good quality service
I buy multiplayer games and heavily modable games on steam just because it's so much easier than faffing around with pirate builds
not for me it aint
I do use piracy but as a sort of demo like you used to get, i play the game a few hours and if i like it ill buy it on steam(yes ik the 2 hour refund but i cba)
Yeahh F**k you, Bethesda!
Ive been on Steam years and love it but fuck that I still pirate at times.
Steam does nothing: wins
Steam does something: still wins
Fallout 4 is the reason 100%
Stfu all of you
Beat Saber reviews will finally by 100% positive
HOWEVER I highly doubt this means you are going to be able to target any update you want, highly likely that the Dev is still 100% in charge of whether you can stay on an old update. So no, you are probably not going to get a version of fallout 4 that you can rollback updates on in the steam ui.
Tbh I don't even like steam for being the best game distribution platform. I like it as the best video game themed social media. Making it super easy to play with friends. To see what your friends are playing. To have unspoken competitions over who has the rarest achievements. Steam might be my least detested social media platform.
I don’t think I’d still be gaming if I had to pay the same price as console users for games, console tax is crazy
Workshop mods are so goated. No need to download sketchy mod loaders, no need to (most of the time) worry about mod compatibility, super easy to unsubscribe, and so easily cross platform, works on mac(if game is supported) works flawlessly on linux. There really is no equal to workshop mods. I’ve played so many hundreds of hours and terabytes of custom bo3 zombies maps because of workshop support.
Nexus and co are great, but still worlds behind.
Piracy is always a service issue.
This feature and things like game sales are the reason why I prefer and use steam more than other services like epic games.
I really did stop pirating because of Steam as well... top notch service and I found it way less of a pain in the ass to just buy legit games... the thing that I'm not a huge fan of is the fact that even though steam games are paid for we don't technically OWN them anymore... kinda makes me miss physical media.
I have never pirated a game. However, if Steam was the same quality of say Origin or Epic,, I may very well have
Holy shit that's huge for Terraria, so many mods that cannot be updated anymore for newer versions