If someone would make a gog/bandcamp for TV and movies, I’d use it. But the only way to view either is through DRM-encumbered physical media or rent-like payments (e.g. streaming and DRM-encumbered “purchases”). I don’t want my files like that, thanks very much.
So I actually pay for far more music and games than I do TV shows and movies. Funny how that goes.
You wouldn’t steal a car.
I would if the manufacturer had the right to come take it from me at anytime without any compensation.
Piracy is a responsible, meaningful response to ongoing investor-driven enshittification. Investors are hell bent on reverse robin hooding the economy and they’ll keep at it until it’s no longer profitable to do so…
if buying something does not give ownership then piracy is not stealing
And they want us to feel bad for pirating media
deleted by creator
Never feel bad about stealing back what was stolen from you.
deleted by creator
While I agree for the most part, pricing is absolutely an issue too (an ever increasing one). I and so many others in a similar situation have a lot of time but not a lot of money, it doesn’t matter if a game has 2000+ hours of playtime, we just can’t afford $70+ as a once time purchase.
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.
I think a thing this highlights is a moral line. With piracy now being easier and ubiquitous, and a clear alternative to orgs monopolizing and ignoring their user base. I think the one thing they are overlooking is the moment someone does it once. The moment they install something like stremio and realise how effortless it is the org has lost a user. Not even because of cost, but because they have taken advantage of the user…so its fair game to take advantage back.
I used to eat MacDonald’s…usually took the kids say fortnightly, and one day i just didn’t because it got crap and expensive. One you step over the line and they lose you, they lose you.
I used to pirate, don’t anymore.
- 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.
- I got a good-paying job, and felt the satisfaction of buying a good game on sale with my own money.
- 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.
The thing about piracy is that it’s not a binary choice. Personally, I think there are times that it is unethical. But if you already paid for it, and then publisher takes away your right to consume it, then I have no ethical qualms with pirating that media. If the publisher puts an account-linking requirement or requires any sort of internet connection to play, or some sort of invasive DRM that impacts your ability to play or enjoy that media, or removes or paywalls features, etc., I have no problem with pirating that media. If the publisher no longer makes it available for purchase, whether at all, or simply in your region, I have no problem with pirating that media.
Yeah, I have no issues with that as a solution to wholly broken purchases. I think those are incredibly rare though, even among digital games.
I do think a lot of Denuvo’s opponents tend to exaggerate its effects on the game’s playability, when the findings regarding cracked copies have leaned different directions in performance depending on testing method. Most people can play Denuvo games no problem, even offline.
Online requirements I certainly sympathize more with if it’s a game you like. I enjoy Hitman WoA, and wish other people would try it, but a fair few avoided it for the online requirement. I hope for legislation that ensures, someday when IOI is packing up its last employee and shutting off servers, they can also hand out the keys to an offline mode. But legislation like that (eg, SKG) doesn’t come about from pirating. It takes effort and vocalization.
I do think a lot of Denuvo’s opponents tend to exaggerate its effects on the game’s playability
They don’t. There are in-depth analyses confirming it’s effects published all over the web.
Most people can play Denuvo games no problem, even offline
I tried to play one last week (someone in my family purchased it) and it did not work offline. Very big problem, and not acceptable.
if it’s a game you like
Doesn’t matter if you like it or not, it’s never acceptable.
someday when IOI is packing up its last employee and shutting off servers, they can also hand out the keys to an offline mode
LOL sure they can, but they usually don’t. There are decade-old games at this point with Denuvo still active .
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.
It’s not only one user - people are talking and one guy finding out and learning about piracy can totally bring his friends to piracy, too. There is no downside to letting your friends stream from your jellyfin or to send that cracked copy to the guy from your soccer club
I remember when Sony joked at Xbox’s expense for disallowing secondhand games… they’ve basically done the same here. Fuck Sony.
Nah Sonys is significantly worse. Microsoft was going to have digital trade-in/re-selling and loaning.
Don’t know why you’re quoting Gabe in this instance, Valve is selling the same “licenses” Sony is, revokable at the whims of the publisher.
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.
Yeah for all the shit steam gets, I bought that now de-listed Deadpool game like, however many years ago when it first came out (it was okay thanks for asking) and recently started a family sharing thing with my partner on steam, who was surprised to see that not only did I own it, but she could play it through steam’s family share. Are they perfect? Hell no, but is Gabe right about this? Hell yes.
I’ve got a few like that too. Apparently The Last Remnant got a remaster which for some reason didn’t get a PC release. despite the original being on PC. That sucked, but whatever. Then they removed the original from Steam.
Fuck you, Square.
I bought a game and similarly forgot about it for years, and when I finally got around to playing it there was no discussion board. Come to find out the game was completely delisted, felt like I was in a ghost town, but it was still functional!
You can do the same with deadpool on Xbox and PlayStation. It’s delisted there, but if you bought it you can re-download whenever you want.
For now. After the stunts Sony pulled I wouldn’t trust them at all. Imagine if Steam silently removed even some tools or soundtracks you purchased but never listened to? Instantly all the trust is completely gone. Even if a game is never deleted, it feels like a threat, because it is
Sony let you re-download de-listed games.
Their refund system is unacceptable though.
until they don’t
why would you trust Sony with anything?
I don’t trust Sony, I’m just stating the facts.
the entire point is Sony can’t be trusted to keep any of this in the future given their current behavior
the facts of their current policies mean nothing
But Sony didn’t break any trust here, did they? They’ve never said they will keep releasing physical discs forever.
They’ve done nothing to think anything would change in regards to digital games.
they just removed digital purchases from owners machines, then made games digital only
be stupid on your own time
As far as I know, Sony has the same history for games. Valve does not sell movies and TV.
Valve technically sell at least one movie
I suppose that’s technically true
I have games on steam that are not sold anymore and are supported by valve, I can download them, I can discuss with people about thrm, they work flawlessly, but they are not sold anymore.
I can also share ALL of my games with a lot of people as in friends and family, forever!
Not the same.
Not the same
Exactly right, it’s not. You’re talking about delisted games, not removed games.
I guess you are right, but still, you can’t have that on other platforms and my second point stands strong.
Can’t have what on other platforms? What second point?
I can also share ALL of my games with a lot of people as in friends and family, forever!
Why would you think you couldn’t share your Sony games with friends and family?
Because I know 2 people with Sony consoles and about 100 with steam accounts.
forever!
* as long as Valve allows that
valve (actually the devs) does not put DRM restrictions into most games. most of them don’t work without steam because the developer coded it with the expectation that steam will always be there, and that can be fixed with the goldberg steam emulator.
most games you can just download from ypur library, prepare it for goldberg, and it will work without steam
I have this mentality too so it’s really weird for me to see so many people just blindly praise Valve. Corporations have great track records until they don’t. Don’t get too comfortable.
Of course, and as long as they exist. They are after all a digital platform, nothing that can be done about that. Still.
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.
even when publishers remove games, I still have access to my files.
Your personal experience here is not relevant. Everyone lost access to their files when Valve allowed Sony to pull Concord from Steam.
Or when Valve pulled Total War Arena, The Day Before, The Culling 2, etc.
Sony is remotely deleting stuff
Sony is not deleting anything. They’re just revoking your access to it.
You can still download the client side files for those games after de-listing.
And it’s not Valve that chose to pull down those games. It would be quite the power play for Valve to be able to tell other companies their games are no longer able to be sold.
Sony is deleting purchased movies from people’s libraries. It’s the same as when Ubisoft deleted the Crew from people’s libraries, so they are no longer even able to download the client files after delisting.
Delisting and deleting are not the same thing.
We are not discussing delisting. We’re discussing games that were removed completely.
And it’s not Valve that chose to pull down those games
And it’s not Sony that chose to pull down these movies.
Delisting and deleting are not the same thing.
That’s exactly right.
If you know there’s a difference then why are you saying customers who bought those games no longer have access to the files? You should know that’s not true if you know how delisting works on Steam.
I don’t know if it’s Sony’s choice or not but I know your statement about how it was Valve who chose to delist those games was incorrect.
So you’re conflating delisted Steam games with items being permanently removed from libraries on purpose?
I’m not conflating anything, you are. I was discussing games permanently removed. If Concord is still accessible then I stand corrected on that account. What about the other games I listed?
I don’t know if it’s Sony’s choice or not
Sony does not control the licenses for these media. They have no choice to make.
I know your statement about how it was Valve who chose to delist those games was incorrect.
It would be, had I made that statement.
Pointing out that Sony (apparently) making Concord unable to be downloaded again is not at all like how Valve lets delisted games usually still be downloaded by people who owned those games is the opposite of conflation. Conflation is when you say Valve is just like Sony when it comes to delisted games in that they both don’t let you download the game files again even though that’s false for one of those companies.
Do you not realize what you said with these lines?
Everyone lost access to their files when Valve allowed Sony to pull Concord from Steam.
Or when Valve pulled Total War Arena, The Day Before, The Culling 2, etc.
Did you think you named the actual publishers for those games this whole time and didn’t realize you put it all at the feet of Valve? Did you not remember that you said Valve has the power to allow a publisher to delist their games or not?
Do you own concord on steam? Check again you can probably download the client anyway. I don’t have it, but I remember for a brief time people were playing with community servers after it got taken down.
because Sony is clearly absolute garbage…
name something valve has done that’s horrendously stupid and anti consumer…
Pioneering lootboxes through TF2.
Well, while Valve had a hand in making that model popular, more so through CSGO, it was really “pioneered” and blown up by EA with FIFA Ultimate Team. Loot box mechanics existed before that even though, I know Maple Story had some.
You’re moving the goal posts. But they are notorious for supporting a multi-billion dollar gambling industry they benefit from.
Not offering refunds till the ACCC sued them.
Fighting the classification of lootboxes as gambling. Sony is absolute garbage, but Valve isn’t perfect.
also gabe didn’t invite me to the christening of his superyacht. nor did he invite most of y’all i’m sure. the offensiveness of this
smalllarge oversight cannot be measured.
Oh the irony:
…Yes I could open it in my browser to avoid this (and the ads)
He isn’t wrong. The last game I pirated was Escape from Butcher Bay, because it wasn’t on steam.
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.
Same. With a dockerized *arr stack and NZB360 I don’t have to worry about where something is streaming, what platform currently nas the license, what login I need, blah blah. Just search, add, it’s ready to watch jellyfin->kodi rpi->tv. No streaming tracking for recommendation algorithms or to sell info to data brokers.
On one hand, I also don’t have to worry about finding the disc, or getting it at a store (if they have it). There is an experience to that kind of search that is lost, but damn the convenience of this setup is nice.
I would pay a decent amount of money—even the $150-250 cable TV used to cost for that hosted by someone else. Though, only if it was ad-free and tracking free.
I realize that’s not how capitalism works, and can never without he internet as it currently is set up.
A few years ago I bought Star Wars squadrons in steam. It hasn’t worked in years (I never made it through the single player story.) I never understood why. It was not my antivirus, it was not my VPN. It wasn’t even my OS. I used Windows 11 briefly (I originally had it on windows 10) and it still didn’t work. I am on Linux mint and it doesn’t boot up.
Now recently I bought RoboCop Rogue city on steam. I originally had it pirated, but on Linux mint it had a hard time booting up. I thought buying it would fix that.
Nope. It did not. Now I spent 40$ on a digital paperweight.
If we pay for something. We have a reasonable expectation for it to work.
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.
Well is my face red. I found a compatiablity thingie on steam for Robocop: Rogue City and… it works now! Damn. I might see if I can finally get Star Wars Squadrons to work…
Fuck yea bud, I’m glad it worked.
To add on to this, sometimes it’s better to switch from the linux runtime to proton. Most of the time when I have problems with a game running, it turns out they tried to support linux but for some reason the compatibility isn’t there like it is with proton. At least I assume it’s compatibility because they had to have tested it on some systems at least.
The ps5 debacle is a bigger problem, alongside the Stop Killing Games Initiative.
Edit: SKG is a good thing*
I hate to say it. But the general sentiment will lead to crackdowns on VPNs because they are the only thing between us and corperations for ownership.
Legislatures are already trying to stop us from having privacy, but the corporate lobby tied to the privacy lobby is a deadly situation.
I am lucky enough to have my media where i want it to be, but i am so nervous now that the general public is getting involved - i have a number of friends who would never have asked about this kind of stuff buying hardware.
Im not really sure where that leaves us.
But fucking god damnit. Im sad that it has gotten us here.
Well, you can also give up video games. Fuck those companies.
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.
Then they turn around and offer a subscription service for you to stream ROMs from their own software/hardware… you can’t make this shit up.
And yet, people still download free ROMS. The ported games that aren’t available unless you pay extra is such a scam. Better off a wired 360 controller and Vimms Lair or a mayflash and a wii u pro controller.
I don’t get it. Steam doesn’t sell disks, right? The popular meme is that everyone is shooting themselves in the foot while Valve is doing nothing and winning. But now Sony is just saying they will do what Valve does. Why is everyone so pissed about it? Suddenly everyone loves disks?
In a sense you’re correct but in reality it’s slightly different because Valve has competition with other digital storefronts as well as the rare physical PC release. Even though Sony are also the ones manufacturing PlayStation discs, they were sold by third parties, and even had the used market for their digital storefront to compete with, keeping prices and sales comparatively in check. If you can only get PlayStation games from a single place, price fixing is going to be easy because customers have nowhere else to go.
Makes sense, thanks.
I would be curious how that will work with anti-trust legislation. At least currently, there’s an argument that Sony does not prevent people from buying games from other sources, or other publishers from publishing physical games for their consoles.
That’s no longer the case if they switch to a purely digital model, since they become the sole source of all the games on PlayStation, and have unilateral authority over them. The only place you can get a game on a digital model is Sony.
Since the iPhone was released, Apple was the only place you could buy Apps from. The same has been true of a lot of niche appstore-driven devices, like VR headsets. It’ll be hard to argue that a game console, a device to run software, must produce that software on discs, and must sell those discs to other retailers.
In a way, this fight was going on between Epic and Apple over Fortnite back in 2020. Gamers just didn’t care because those devices didn’t have disc drives.
It’s hard to picture how competition could be formalized though. It’s a good thing Valve decided to create their own through the key system, but I can’t picture Sony doing something similar. We might lose discs no matter what happens - I am still trying to think through how we might win back ownership and control regardless. With a lot of goods, you could just claim price competition on things like games, but when so many gamers could barely afford one console to begin with, hardly anyone will afford a second to take advantage of Xbox prices or something.
There was a reason people bought consoles. One of those was physical media and the fact you actually owned your copy, could resell it and lend it out. So this has nothing to do with Valve who has almost always been digital. If you want to compare it, you’d need a hypothetical like “Valve always sold digital games but will now switch to disk only games.”
It’s why they got rid of memory cards and split screen. More people to buy their own games and systems.
It’s more than the discs. It’s about the fact that you’re not owning what you purchase and you can spend as much as you like on digital and one day, poof, it’ll be gone and so will your money. Discs aren’t able to be deleted. Even if a format goes obsolete, there’s media players like vlc that will play them.
That’s what it’s about.
Like video games
You can buy all the games you want on steam if goes away after 90 days that’s just how it is but when you buy a game for a system at a what 80$-120$ a game you expect to play it forever be able to play it when the wifi goes out, be able to play with your friends, be able to save your data but all that is online and they’re able to use that against the consumer.
They took split screen, they forced us to use internet, they took memory cards, they dissolved servers. What more can they do oh yeah make it so we don’t actually own the game.
Besides what others mentioned (Valve being kept in check, barely, and offering more service as a platform), I think Sony can’t afford to do what Valve does, because on equal footing they lose.
Sony saves you a bit of money on the hardware purchase, a small benefit if you buy a lot of games. Maybe some exclusives.
Steam lets you mod the game, play it on whatever device you want (PC now, PC you get in 10 years, Deck, Windows, Linux, likely even some Android devices in the future), and twink the settings to whatever you want, for whatever resolution, quality, or framerate you want. (Edit: also, your device doesn’t become a useless box if Valve becomes evil)
Physicals and exclusives are just about the only thing consoles have going for them, and Sony just lost one. (Oh, and they lost couch gaming too, because SteamOS is opening up)
Because they didn’t even wait a week since they showed that they can take away your purchases from you library. At least Valve to my knowledge never pulled a gane from libraries, even if the game was pulled from the store.
Ok, so it’s not as much about physical media as about Sony being shitty company. Thanks.
I’ve got Unreal Tournament 3 (and all of the UT games) on steam. Those games haven’t been available to purchase on steam for a long time now, not since the Epic games store started up.
I can still download and play those games from steam today. I can still play them with people who bought them on other storefronts.
Steam has been in the news a lot lately for “Anti-consumer” policies, like requiring their storefront games to be the same version as any other store front, forcing developers to sell DLC on Steam if that DLC is available anywhere else, forcing publisher to price their games the same on steam as they are anywhere else… And all those things are pro-consumer, I feel protected from shitty publishers because of the strong requirements Steam has to list items on their storefront.
Now, I will say that Steam, like any other digital storefront, has the opportunity to really fuck us over, and the protections from that was always the existence of physical media. Steam was built from the ground up to compete with owning physical copies of your games. Other digital storefronts have been built with the sole goal of competing with Steam. After physical media is dead, Steam will only have to compete with those other storefronts, and will only need to offer better services than the likes of Sony…who is deleting your purchases and keeping the money.
People who cared about physical games haven’t been PC gamers for 20 years. You could still care about physical games on consoles until about last week.
Valve is also good to gamers with consumer friendly pricing and their client extends the gaming experience rather than running in the background, mostly useless like the console features and the other store fronts.
I also don’t care for steam but I’m not upset about it because I just stopped playing on PC for years. The games I do play, still came out on disc. I remember that CoD MW2 was the game that broke the camels back, even though you installed it off the disc, it still wouldn’t launch without steam. (Same with HL2 but I knew that going into it and didn’t buy it)
Fuck Sony… Period.
Vote with your money and time. Don’t give them any… if you do… then can’t complain.
Sony are doing this precisely because people have already voted with their wallets. Physical sales are non-existent. Everyone is already all digital on PlayStation and Xbox.
And with hardware prices being what they are, people aren’t going to be investing in PC gaming or new systems. The time is right to gouge and limit freedom.
lol anyone dumb enough to realize this won’t be limited to pc and continues to support sony deservers the bullshit that’ll be coming
sony is going to exploit the fuck out of them
