5 ms·

I wonder if OP could have changed his CC number to a disposable CC instead of paying out 11 months to cancel? You can also buy prepaid debit cards at supermark

I wonder if OP could have changed his CC number to a disposable CC instead of paying out 11 months to cancel? You can also buy prepaid debit cards at supermarkets, post offices, etc (at least in Australia) which allow you to do the same thing.

pfranz 6y ago
The rub with all of these services is that your account is burned in addition to your credit card. You can walk away from the remaining 11 months of Lightroom as long as you don't need to continue using Premiere for a project or rely on them for any other ongoing service like downloading stock photos you purchased through them (I think I remember seeing that service?) Similarly, doing this to a Steam account or iTunes account cuts off your access to all your previously "purchased" content.
- rangibaby 6y ago
  A reminder that you never have to worry about ANY of this bullshit if you pirate the software
  - nsomaru 6y ago
    Except the peace of mind and running arbitrary code part
    - quantummkv 6y ago
      I don't know about software, but pirated games are generally more secure, stable and performant with less spyware than the official games with all the DRM.
      - nsomaru 6y ago
        Citation needed. I guess you’re probably right but companies are way more accountable than random internet person who modified the dll/binary to work without copy protection.
        morsch 6y ago
        Now you have customer support to complain to when they lose your photos.
        quantummkv 6y ago
        https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/12/evidence-continues-to-mount-about-how-bad-denuvo-is-for-pc-gaming-performance/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/12/evidence-continues-to... https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/crackers-say-denuvo-drm-caused-slowdown-on-rime/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/crackers-say-denuvo-d... That's the point. Companies have proved themselves not accountable to their customers.
        hosteur 6y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_roo...
        owl57 6y ago
        What's "accountable"? Any old releaser on a big tracker has way better track record of not screwing users than the average corporation.
        xmprt 6y ago
        I remember hearing about at least one game that was significantly more performant when pirated (I think it was by Ubisoft). They had so much code for DRM and network tracking that it was faster to just stop that code from executing by hacking the game.
        fuzxi 6y ago
        This happened with Monster Hunter World's Iceborne expansion. It updated the included version of Denuvo and added many, many threads that constantly scanned the game executable for modifications as an anti-cheat mechanic. A modder distributed a tool to bypass the anti-cheat and restore performance the same day the expansion released. It took over two weeks for Capcom to get the game playable again, and many more before they improved performance back to roughly pre-update levels. For reference, I'd been using Steam Proton to play the base game on Linux and was getting 60fps at nearly max settings. After the update, I got 1. One frame per second. I saw a number of similar reports from native Windows players.
      - laumars 6y ago
        There are other options out there that don’t include DRM but also don’t advocate piracy. For example GOG.com
        lecarore 6y ago
        I tend to buy (indie, Linux) games on gog/humble bundle/itch.io, or on the official developer website. When I have to use steam it really pains me, their client, drm, marketing forced accounts, pricing policy .. are a pita.
      - powersnail 6y ago
        Haven't played video games for some time, but at least when I was still pirating, malware and spyware was pretty common. Bugs and incompatibilities caused by pirating were also not unheard of. Playing pirated game is putting trust into the hands of some anonymous hackers. And that begs the question, what do they gain from giving out the game for free? They could be doing it just for fun, for coolness, or out of altruism. And that's true for probably many case. But to say none of them wanted to earn expedient money would not persuade me.
        syshum 6y ago
        >>malware and spyware was pretty common. Malware and Spyware is pretty common with purchased games, of course they call it "DRM" but it has the same goal and purpose
    - wruza 6y ago
      It's true only if you find torrents "in the wild". You can lurk/participate in an established torrent forum which gives you user reports, discussions, seeder score and a community mindset instead of a c00l w4r3z download mindset in general. Idk of english or international ones, but only because I never looked for one. TPB and KAT are not good examples, cause these look(-ed) like boards rather than forums, although I never had any issues with using them either. In addition to gp's point: After settling my income I began buying software (games mostly) on steam/etc to support studios I like, but it is still much easier to torrent it afterwards and to not deal with bs that stores represent. I never realized before how much hassle it is to own a legal version of everything. You pay your money and they don't even bother of your convenience or digital rights, only theirs. Recently I bought starcrart remastered (without torrenting) and that battle.net downloads over 200mb over my adsl line every flipping time I try to run it. As a result, I just watch falcon pal match reviews at youtube and never run it. Blizzard deserved that money for sure, but man isn't that stupid.
  - Iolaum 6y ago
    You don't have to worry about that BS if you use free software alternatives either. Plus you get to contribute to an alternative ecosystem that is also a lawful and moral alternative (Because piracy is both illegal and immoral in many circles.)
    - kwanbix 6y ago
      How do you contribute by using free software? You contribute if you give something, mainly coding or money.
      - biztos 6y ago
        You contribute to its popularity. People want their software to be used.
      - est31 6y ago
        You already contribute by growing the community. Software benefits from network effects. E.g. a large hurdle for Libreoffice adoption is the fact that many documents are in the MS proprietary formats. Messengers like Signal or Telegram are in the same boat. As the community grows, the chance increases for someone to contribute by coding or money, or hiring the lead devs for support contracts. It doesn't have to be you, but if you (and others) hadn't used the software before them, that person might not have used it in the first place. Yes, you can increase your value to the project thousandfold with more direct contributions like coding, bugfixes, donations, community work, etc, but already being part of the community is of help.
        berdario 6y ago
        Those effects are vastly overstated. https://lwn.net/Articles/825602/ https://lwn.net/Articles/825602/ If you participate in the community, you can be a boon or you can also be a drag (if you just use the software in the privacy of your home, report problems and ask questions, without every giving back in any way, not even by answering other folks' questions). If you want your open source developers to eat, they need cold hard cash. From the lwn link above: > Words fail me to express how beyond-utterly-broken the existing TDF / desktop model is for the ecosystem around selling Desktop LibreOffice. > Collabora - despite C'bra still putting a lot of work into LibreOffice Desktop, having an outstanding support capability, doing lots of marketing, being the largest code contributor to LibreOffice, and having lots of existing happy customers / references for desktop LibreOffice, ... etc. etc. > We have not had -one- -single- -new- Collabora Office customer since 2018 - zero. (for context: the former LibreOffice development team of SUSE joined Collabora in 2013, so they're not a scrappy new startup completely disjointed from Libreoffice)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- philliphaydon 6y ago
  Are there any subscriptions on Steam to do this to? I thought temp credit cards were meant to solve passing your real cc details to a merchant for 1 off transactions or when things like adobe do sketchy stuff. If you're buying games on steam it shouldn't matter if you use a temp credit card or not.
  - Reelin 6y ago
    > or when things like adobe do sketchy stuff If a company does something sketchy and you cancel or reverse the charges, you generally lose everything on the account - not just the thing you're disputing. Adobe is similar to Steam in that a single account is likely to have a variety of different products associated with it. If you somehow end up in a dispute involving Steam and reverse a charge, Valve will (IIRC) close out your entire account.
    - bleepblorp 6y ago
      The core question to ask here is why the payment card networks allow merchants to circumvent the chargeback process by stealing subscription goods in retaliation for disputing fraudulent charges. The card industry imposes a lot of regulation on merchants in the name of security (e.g. PCI) and customer experience (e.g. not allowing merchants to demand secondary ID for in-person transactions). Retaliation fraud by subscription merchants is something the card industry could stop and the industry should not be let off the hook for allowing this practice. Neither, for that matter, should governments be given a free pass. Consumer dispute resolution processes exist for a reason (in no small part to reduce the load on the legal system) and circumventing them should not be tolerated.
  - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
    I think the situation is before steam had refunds people would try to make a chargeback and have their whole account locked.
    - philliphaydon 6y ago
      Ah ok that makes sense.
- blub 6y ago
  I don't see how this is legal. This is probably Steam & Apple being assholes... or hopefully just a misunderstanding.
lostlogin 6y ago
My card allows me to switch off online purchases. Not very helpful but possibly prevents the complete killing of an otherwise functional card. It would be good if cards had a white or black list option.
mcyukon 6y ago
Not likely, I tried that route about 2 years ago... they started calling and leaving threatening messages every day until I paid up. Not sure what would have happened if I kept ignoring them.

pfranz 6y ago

The rub with all of these services is that your account is burned in addition to your credit card. You can walk away from the remaining 11 months of Lightroom as long as you don't need to continue using Premiere for a project or rely on them for any other ongoing service like downloading stock photos you purchased through them (I think I remember seeing that service?) Similarly, doing this to a Steam account or iTunes account cuts off your access to all your previously "purchased" content.

rangibaby 6y ago
A reminder that you never have to worry about ANY of this bullshit if you pirate the software
- nsomaru 6y ago
  Except the peace of mind and running arbitrary code part
  - quantummkv 6y ago
    I don't know about software, but pirated games are generally more secure, stable and performant with less spyware than the official games with all the DRM.
    - nsomaru 6y ago
      Citation needed. I guess you’re probably right but companies are way more accountable than random internet person who modified the dll/binary to work without copy protection.
      - morsch 6y ago
        Now you have customer support to complain to when they lose your photos.
      - quantummkv 6y ago
        https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/12/evidence-continues-to-mount-about-how-bad-denuvo-is-for-pc-gaming-performance/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/12/evidence-continues-to... https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/crackers-say-denuvo-drm-caused-slowdown-on-rime/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/crackers-say-denuvo-d... That's the point. Companies have proved themselves not accountable to their customers.
      - hosteur 6y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_roo...
      - owl57 6y ago
        What's "accountable"? Any old releaser on a big tracker has way better track record of not screwing users than the average corporation.
      - xmprt 6y ago
        I remember hearing about at least one game that was significantly more performant when pirated (I think it was by Ubisoft). They had so much code for DRM and network tracking that it was faster to just stop that code from executing by hacking the game.
        fuzxi 6y ago
        This happened with Monster Hunter World's Iceborne expansion. It updated the included version of Denuvo and added many, many threads that constantly scanned the game executable for modifications as an anti-cheat mechanic. A modder distributed a tool to bypass the anti-cheat and restore performance the same day the expansion released. It took over two weeks for Capcom to get the game playable again, and many more before they improved performance back to roughly pre-update levels. For reference, I'd been using Steam Proton to play the base game on Linux and was getting 60fps at nearly max settings. After the update, I got 1. One frame per second. I saw a number of similar reports from native Windows players.
    - laumars 6y ago
      There are other options out there that don’t include DRM but also don’t advocate piracy. For example GOG.com
      - lecarore 6y ago
        I tend to buy (indie, Linux) games on gog/humble bundle/itch.io, or on the official developer website. When I have to use steam it really pains me, their client, drm, marketing forced accounts, pricing policy .. are a pita.
    - powersnail 6y ago
      Haven't played video games for some time, but at least when I was still pirating, malware and spyware was pretty common. Bugs and incompatibilities caused by pirating were also not unheard of. Playing pirated game is putting trust into the hands of some anonymous hackers. And that begs the question, what do they gain from giving out the game for free? They could be doing it just for fun, for coolness, or out of altruism. And that's true for probably many case. But to say none of them wanted to earn expedient money would not persuade me.
      - syshum 6y ago
        >>malware and spyware was pretty common. Malware and Spyware is pretty common with purchased games, of course they call it "DRM" but it has the same goal and purpose
  - wruza 6y ago
    It's true only if you find torrents "in the wild". You can lurk/participate in an established torrent forum which gives you user reports, discussions, seeder score and a community mindset instead of a c00l w4r3z download mindset in general. Idk of english or international ones, but only because I never looked for one. TPB and KAT are not good examples, cause these look(-ed) like boards rather than forums, although I never had any issues with using them either. In addition to gp's point: After settling my income I began buying software (games mostly) on steam/etc to support studios I like, but it is still much easier to torrent it afterwards and to not deal with bs that stores represent. I never realized before how much hassle it is to own a legal version of everything. You pay your money and they don't even bother of your convenience or digital rights, only theirs. Recently I bought starcrart remastered (without torrenting) and that battle.net downloads over 200mb over my adsl line every flipping time I try to run it. As a result, I just watch falcon pal match reviews at youtube and never run it. Blizzard deserved that money for sure, but man isn't that stupid.
- Iolaum 6y ago
  You don't have to worry about that BS if you use free software alternatives either. Plus you get to contribute to an alternative ecosystem that is also a lawful and moral alternative (Because piracy is both illegal and immoral in many circles.)
  - kwanbix 6y ago
    How do you contribute by using free software? You contribute if you give something, mainly coding or money.
    - biztos 6y ago
      You contribute to its popularity. People want their software to be used.
    - est31 6y ago
      You already contribute by growing the community. Software benefits from network effects. E.g. a large hurdle for Libreoffice adoption is the fact that many documents are in the MS proprietary formats. Messengers like Signal or Telegram are in the same boat. As the community grows, the chance increases for someone to contribute by coding or money, or hiring the lead devs for support contracts. It doesn't have to be you, but if you (and others) hadn't used the software before them, that person might not have used it in the first place. Yes, you can increase your value to the project thousandfold with more direct contributions like coding, bugfixes, donations, community work, etc, but already being part of the community is of help.
      - berdario 6y ago
        Those effects are vastly overstated. https://lwn.net/Articles/825602/ https://lwn.net/Articles/825602/ If you participate in the community, you can be a boon or you can also be a drag (if you just use the software in the privacy of your home, report problems and ask questions, without every giving back in any way, not even by answering other folks' questions). If you want your open source developers to eat, they need cold hard cash. From the lwn link above: > Words fail me to express how beyond-utterly-broken the existing TDF / desktop model is for the ecosystem around selling Desktop LibreOffice. > Collabora - despite C'bra still putting a lot of work into LibreOffice Desktop, having an outstanding support capability, doing lots of marketing, being the largest code contributor to LibreOffice, and having lots of existing happy customers / references for desktop LibreOffice, ... etc. etc. > We have not had -one- -single- -new- Collabora Office customer since 2018 - zero. (for context: the former LibreOffice development team of SUSE joined Collabora in 2013, so they're not a scrappy new startup completely disjointed from Libreoffice)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
philliphaydon 6y ago
Are there any subscriptions on Steam to do this to? I thought temp credit cards were meant to solve passing your real cc details to a merchant for 1 off transactions or when things like adobe do sketchy stuff. If you're buying games on steam it shouldn't matter if you use a temp credit card or not.
- Reelin 6y ago
  > or when things like adobe do sketchy stuff If a company does something sketchy and you cancel or reverse the charges, you generally lose everything on the account - not just the thing you're disputing. Adobe is similar to Steam in that a single account is likely to have a variety of different products associated with it. If you somehow end up in a dispute involving Steam and reverse a charge, Valve will (IIRC) close out your entire account.
  - bleepblorp 6y ago
    The core question to ask here is why the payment card networks allow merchants to circumvent the chargeback process by stealing subscription goods in retaliation for disputing fraudulent charges. The card industry imposes a lot of regulation on merchants in the name of security (e.g. PCI) and customer experience (e.g. not allowing merchants to demand secondary ID for in-person transactions). Retaliation fraud by subscription merchants is something the card industry could stop and the industry should not be let off the hook for allowing this practice. Neither, for that matter, should governments be given a free pass. Consumer dispute resolution processes exist for a reason (in no small part to reduce the load on the legal system) and circumventing them should not be tolerated.
- Polylactic_acid 6y ago
  I think the situation is before steam had refunds people would try to make a chargeback and have their whole account locked.
  - philliphaydon 6y ago
    Ah ok that makes sense.
blub 6y ago
I don't see how this is legal. This is probably Steam & Apple being assholes... or hopefully just a misunderstanding.

lostlogin 6y ago

My card allows me to switch off online purchases. Not very helpful but possibly prevents the complete killing of an otherwise functional card. It would be good if cards had a white or black list option.

mcyukon 6y ago

Not likely, I tried that route about 2 years ago... they started calling and leaving threatening messages every day until I paid up. Not sure what would have happened if I kept ignoring them.