Yup, if you present me a side-by-side of the free one and the paid one when the free one is better even disregarding costs, I’m pirating 100% of the time.
“Oh, you’ll only have access to this as long as our servers remain online or as long as we keep renewing the license.”
“Sorry, your device needs to phone home to use this.”
“Don’t you love ads in your paid product?”
“You’ll need to juggle several different services if you want what you can otherwise get for free on a central hub.”
“Yes, you can only use this on one or two devices at a time thanks to DRM.”
“Fuck you, you’ll need an account with us to use this even though you bought it without that account somewhere else.”
“This thing’s only ongoing cost on our end is version updates you totally need and want, so it’ll be an indefinite subscription (which we’ll make a pain in the ass to cancel).”
“This game runs noticeably worse because of the shitty DRM we shoehorned in.”
“You’re saying you don’t like being spied on for ad targeting?”
“You can only get this bundled with a bunch of other bullshit you don’t want and would never pay for individually.”
“Our UI that you’re forced to interact with to use this is fucking garbage.”
“We don’t sell this anymore; ask Scalper4478 on eBay.”
“We use the money that you pay us to lobby against your rights as a consumer.”
“We somehow lack QoL features that the free version has.”
I have a game my ex me for my Xbox I think it was rainbow six I’ve never played because I couldn’t get through the obnoxious sign up process to play a goddamned game that I owned.
You’ll need to juggle several different services if you want what you can otherwise get for free on a central hub.
This one, while common, I kind of take issue with. You’re basically complaining that there is no one, all-consuming media oligarchy that owns EVERY show/movie, and distributes it on their singular massively overpriced service (and yes, with that market stranglehold, they would massively overprice it)
Shouldn’t the principle of competition mean there are multiple services, each trying to present better content? People reasonably contend with only being subscribed to a few they care about - I don’t know who is assuming they should get access to all media, all the time, without paying truckloads of money.
I will grant that for games, no service beats Steam, but I will absolutely buy games from other platforms like Itch and GOG in the spirit of competition when their prices or better or the dev has avoided Steam for reasons of adult content censorship.
Yup, if you present me a side-by-side of the free one and the paid one when the free one is better even disregarding costs, I’m pirating 100% of the time.
I have a game my ex me for my Xbox I think it was rainbow six I’ve never played because I couldn’t get through the obnoxious sign up process to play a goddamned game that I owned.
This one, while common, I kind of take issue with. You’re basically complaining that there is no one, all-consuming media oligarchy that owns EVERY show/movie, and distributes it on their singular massively overpriced service (and yes, with that market stranglehold, they would massively overprice it)
Shouldn’t the principle of competition mean there are multiple services, each trying to present better content? People reasonably contend with only being subscribed to a few they care about - I don’t know who is assuming they should get access to all media, all the time, without paying truckloads of money.
I will grant that for games, no service beats Steam, but I will absolutely buy games from other platforms like Itch and GOG in the spirit of competition when their prices or better or the dev has avoided Steam for reasons of adult content censorship.