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To quote Gabe Newell: > "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a
by scrlk 3y ago
To quote Gabe Newell:
> "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."
- baka367 3y agoI agree with Gabe here. I basically stopped pirating games once I could add something that I like to my collection during steam sale for a nice discount instead of waiting for days for whatever service to ship it. I can also return it if I end up not lilinkg it, not like with a physical copy.
- trey-jones 3y agoYes, but price is definitely a part of the service. This one is easy for me: Disney jacks prices by 80%, people decide not to pay for it.
- al_borland 3y agoPrice is part of it, and paying customers should never have a worse experience than those getting something for free. With DRM, activation severs that can be shut down, exclusivity deals, and fragmentation of marketplaces… paying customers often get a worse experience.
- nicolaslem 3y agoI wish Valve used their weight to cut down on the DRM, online activation and micro-transaction bullshit.
- sensanaty 3y agoSteam's DRM is optional (edit: by this I mean it's a checkbox that the devs can tick if they want Steam DRM for their game) and extremely lightweight to be fair, and it's been cracked for 2 decades at this point as well. MTX and Always-Online BS is also down to the individual games, nothing Steam can do about it realistically.
- me_me_me 3y agoNot many mention it, but it was valve who invented loot boxes and keys (TF2) and season passes (DotA2) they have item market place. They had original steam drm that people railed against at the begining. Valve and Gabe are not the second coming people make them to be. They are the least shitty maybe, but man... the bar is really low at this stage.
- greycol 3y agoI'd just like a DRM filter on steam. You can filter out free to play and DLC so they never appear on the store page. It would be great if you could also filter out DRM (even by type if they're feeling motivated). Then i'd bet if they gave the publisher statistics on how many people never see their game because it contains denuvo or a 3rd party launcher you'd see meanigful change, and if not then at least the store is nicer for the steam customers who care about it.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y agoThis is nitpicking, but: Disney plus doesn't allow casting to my pc to my tv with desktop mirroring. This is DRM crap. I was using that to watch the same movie my children were watching while I was doing some work and I couldn't.
- Veuxdo 3y agoMany others didn't. Steam games are widely pirated.
- azzentys 3y agoThis is true. I think I stopped pirating games - as soon as I could afford Steam games. Only rarely pirate games to "try" them out - then buy it on Steam. It also helps that they've gotten easy to run on Linux.
- animuchan 3y agoThis is true, but a pirated game may still lead to a sale eventually, so they're not exclusive categories. (Even better, there are games that I wouldn't buy on Steam, had I not have prior experience with them.)
- Moldoteck 3y agoimo it's still true bc of drm and vanishing content. Take AC 2. I'm not sure but afaik they turned off their servers or are about to do so and as result the pirated game will give you all the content, compared to og deluxe version that will not be able to get the content from the server. Games are pirated anyways regardless of drm, but drm will affect fps and the content can be vanished once servers are turned off, so you basically still get an inferior service compared to pirates, maybe less inferior compared to the past, but still inferior.
- benhurmarcel 3y agoThey’re widely pirated by people who can’t afford them.
- Aaargh20318 3y agoThere are also some weird decisions made by content owners. For example: Star Trek Strange New Worlds is available in my country on SkyShowtime, but only in 1080p SDR. This is a relatively new streaming service that only launched last year, yet they do not support 4k or HDR. The same series is available through 'alternative sources' in 4k HDR. I have no idea why they would not offer it in 4k, it's not a licensing issue since both ST:SNW and SkyShowtime are owned by Paramount. It's mind boggling why they would sabotage their own service like that.
- otikik 3y agoI know people who programmed an app for controlling this kind of thing- licensing agreements for video content on streaming platforms. The “period” entity was a huge monster with many fields. Resolution amongst them. > why they would not offer it in 4k That’s because the other license was either too pricey, or simply unavailable (another platform might have purchased exclusivity for that show in 4k in your area)
- Aaargh20318 3y agoIt’s their own show, and there is no other platform that offers it.
- ghosty141 3y agoExactly. I often pay extra for a game just so I can get it through steam. Spotify is another good example.
- BLKNSLVR 3y agoWell, I'd stop paying for Netflix well before I'd stop paying for Spotify because Spotify has much closer to the "everything"of that particular form of entertainment than Netflix does, and new albums and songs are relatively instantly available on the service. For whatever reason, the ability to arrange music licensing to allow for an aggregator of everything is much easier than for movie and TV show licensing.
- trey-jones 3y agoYep, super easy, just pay the content creators in beans and peanuts.
- ghaff 3y agoMusic licensing is pretty much centralized and standardized for historical reasons. So streaming music services pretty much have "everything" (reasonably mainstream) and are essentially commodities aside from device support, UIs, playlists, etc.
- midasuni 3y agoThe problem I have with Spotify is the money I pay doesn’t go to the artists I potentially to. If I pay £15 a month and listen to 15 different artists 50 times each I would expect each artist to get £1 minus costs, so say 50p. But they don’t, they instead get a fraction of that.
- willsmith72 3y agoIt's true for sports for me. F1, sure I'll pay for great service every weekend and historical race replays. NBA, no way am I paying more to get some of the games I want to watch most blacked out (not to mention the insane amount of ads).
- hoosieree 3y agoPaid streamed content should do something like mobile virtual network operators, so people can pay for what they use. Currently only piracy provides this service, and paid content services are choosing legislation over competition. The established players really should be working on this, because it's only a matter of time before some pirate service turns legit and eats all their lunches.
- sensanaty 3y agoYep, GabeN has always been right on the ball with this. I stopped pirating games altogether and have like 900 games on Steam at this point. I still pirate music, shows, movies and software quite liberally, mostly because trying to find what content is on which platform is a massive hassle. Jellyfin + sonarr/radarr makes it completely painless plus I actually own the files and they can never be retroactively removed, so why on earth would I go with the alternative? I still pay for stuff on Bandcamp, but that's not because it's easier but because I want to support the artists I enjoy more directly.
- ghaff 3y agoSomeone I know argued a number of years back that Napster was about convenience not price. I disagreed at the time. And I still think that's too blunt a statement for the population as a whole. But the popularity of streaming music services in particular does suggest there's definitely a lot of truth to it for many people at the right price point.
- me_me_me 3y agowhen you are young you have a lot of time and not a lot of money. Naturally attracted to piracy. When you are an adult you have more money then time. Naturally attracted to just buy it as its the easiest. You might never be able to root out piracy amongst the young people and if you do they will not pay since they cannot afford it. But doing so will make your service less convenient for everyone. So you gained no extra profit but made service worse for everyone else. But now adults who would be happy to pay are inconvenienced by all the shit you throw at them, to the point they might go back to piracy as more convenient option.
- ghaff 3y agoPeople with more time than money vs. people with more money than time applies in a lot of contexts. You even see it in a company context--why pay someone for this service when you could just do it yourself? I know I could do it in a day. (Well, it's a distraction that we don't need and, if we can offload it that makes sense for us to do.)
- pierat 3y agoI pirate BECAUSE of my rights. I used to buy loads of legit content. VHS macrovision degraded quality for "anti-piracy purposes". Basically it flashed contrast and automatic gain would fuck up. Then it was DVD. This was probably the best format cause it was easy to rip. Again, ripping is illegal cause DMCA (Note: breaking DMCA is worse a crime than copyright infringement). Its yet another case where property rights are superseded by some bullshit intellectual right. These media fucks couldnt be happy to just sell content... they wanted to sell it again and again and again. Then HD-DVD came out for a short while. Supported by MS and Xbox. I didnt buy it, and the format died. No big loss since everything that Im aware of was also published on Bluray. And Bluray. It's a cracked format. Discs and players demand internet connection. Bunch of anti-purchaser crap. There's rippers for this stuff too. And now, it's streaming streaming streaming. You never get any discs, and you never retain ownership of any shows. There is no more "loan buddy the DVD". You now have to provide the login, which is of course linked to your CC number. And because of "streaming", when you leave, you take nothing with you. ------- Whereas piracy, I download it once, and I have it. It'll work on any device. I can back it up. I can put it on a media server. I can copy it to a friend (sharing is caring, right?). Nothing is fighting me tooth and nail each step. So, even if I have enough money for as much music and videos as I want, why in the hell would I pay piles-o-money for garbage service, garbage quality media, abusive handling of customer, and little to nothing to show for money paid? Nah, I'll stick with piracy. I get treated better in that avenue all around.