paladin181: As Gabe Newell said: Piracy is a service issue, not a price issue
That was about piracy in Russia and China.
Otherwise there would be no Steam DRM.
OR you could at least filter according to usage of Steam DRM, which you can't, despite Steam knowing which games use Steam DRM, and which don't. Why is that?
Valve doesn't even care when publishers remove content, that happened w/ the older GTA games on Steam.
Valve COULD have stopped shit like this, made it illegal, but they simply don't give a shit.
Valve COULD also keep on supporting older platforms, like Windows XP, but they also don't.
That's also why they call customers "subscribers" in their Terms of Service. Because Steam as a whole is gaming as a service. You don't really own anything.
And you need to do where ever they go.
They stop Windows 7 support (will surely happen this year)? Now you "upgrade" to Windows 10.
If you don't, there go your games.
Why is it even that they stop support? Officially because of the web browser they embedded into their DRM client.
Wtf? Why would any developer embed a fucking web browser into their DRM client? They could easily use an existing installed web browser in their client (this is called "in place programming"), or at least create 2 clients, one without a web browser that continues to run on older OS and let's you download, install and run your games.
Embedding a web browser is a really stupid idea in the first place, especially when it's even a 3rd party web browser.
Heck, take the Steam Deck. Same problem. At some point they will stop supporting it, and there go your games.
There even IS a digital marketplace, but not for selling your games, only for selling digital nonsense like trading cards, and of course Valve gets a cut on everything.
They also don't give a shit about games not working.
They forced you to "upgrade" to Windows 10 and games you purchased don't work anymore? Tough luck, wait for a patch.
Or take their "game sharing" bullshit. One would think: great, sharing games, sounds good.
But in reality you share your account. And when you play any game at all, everyone else is kicked out of any other game from your account, which makes the whole feature pointless.
Let's compare that to how it works with physical games. I give a game to a friend and it works. And I can play other games without problems too. So Steam fails at that as well. And Steam destroyed physical PC games for the most part.
Meanwhile GOG tests the games they sell and I'm glad they do.
GOG is actually a better store than piracy. No DRM, just like pirated games. Trusted source, better than piracy. You download games to your hard drive and you can back them up, so even if GOG would go down, your games would still be there. You also don't need internet to play your games.