Tired of this abusive business model that big companies use on games.
I see a game on Steam with some decent price
I click on it
Dozens of DLCs, “Gold”, “Deluxe” “Enhanced” version to enjoy the full game
Then you decide to pay for this shit anyway
But then the game is behind a launcher, that needs online connection and account even if it’s full single-player
The game sometimes are just a port from an old console with almost full price, a game that you’ve paid for before
The game needs a hell amount of updates do become playable
And so much more…
Steam did an excellent job keeping me away from piracy, they provide too much good feature, discounts and etc… But not even Steam can make miracles against those abusive practices.
I must say RDR1 port was the last drop to me, It’s game I played back on PS3 on my teenager time, I wanted to have some good memories and play it again, guess what, a full AAA price on a port, it’s not even a remaster.
I’ve been avoiding EA and Ubisoft games for years, but still buying from big companies on Steam. Now I just give up, there’s no more hope for AAA games, only mercenary companies are left: EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar, Activision, 2K, Bungie etc…
EA: Games with a hell amount of DLCs, the same FIFA every single year at full price, launcher required, they don’t even try to hide anymore
Ubisoft: Same thing as EA, lots of DLCs, missed some game content from an old Prince of Persia because they shut an old launcher integrated to the game.
Rockstar: Launchers everywhere, charging a full price for the same game multiple times (GTA V).
Activision: You pay a full price and it still comes with a hell amount of micro-transactions, killed COD.
2K: Out of nowhere decided to add a launcher to every old game they had (Bioshock and others I think) saying it was “QoL” update, now they decided to remove it, too late. The new Borderlands 4 terribly optimized, here we go with some dozens of updates again.
Bungie: The live service model, removed a lot of old paid contents from Destiny, the game will eventually die.
I’ll still pay for small companies games, because I can, but those big ones, honestly, I don’t give a shit anymore, they could be erased from existence together with all their games, I really don’t care. Some smaller companies I’ve had a good experience and I think it’s worth paying for: Ghost Ship Games, No More Robots, Hello Games, Techland, Frictional Games, Annapurna Interactive.
Some companies are in a limbo to me, I’m not entirely sure about it: Capcom, Bethesda, Warner, Square Enix.
So, that’s it, I just downloaded Spider Man Remastered and RDR from FitGirl, it worked seamless, I didn’t have a single issue. I could even add as non-Steam game and use Steam input (thanks Steam), I’ll probably use some script to move to savegames data to the cloud, and let the packed games on an external HDD (finally, I’ll own my games).
Another thing that’s hard to ditch to me is achievement tracker, I know we have AchievementWatcher but it doesn’t work too well on pirated games. It’s something I’ll need to get used, not a big deal tbh.
I’ll probably use the money I’d spend on AAA games to explore some indie games. And AAA games are now always pirate.
Obs.: The companies I’ve mentioned here are from my own experience, this isn’t meant to be an Wikipedia of good/bad companies, I know there are more decent and bad companies out there.
I don’t know if its the age or perhaps I unconciously became sick of the practices OP describes, but the games I genuinelly enjoy playing the most nowadays are mainly AA or Indie. And ofc, I don’t mind paying full price for them.
A non-exhaustive list of those I loved:
Outer Wilds (became my favourite game of all times)
I love Factorio for how few bugs are in it, and for how much the devs care. They even hired modders, and those modders kept making mods while making the game.
I’ve played a few games in your list and loved every one of them. I should probably try the rest.
Rockstar: Abandoning and cancelling GTA V (single player) expansions and purely focused on milking online for pay2win. I’m not hyped for 6.
EDIT: The worst part - declaring war against modding community because it affected their online sales (since people enjoyed playing modded singleplayer). It backfired, badly, but they still went for it.
I don’t try to criticize people for pirating games. They’re expensive and a lot are greedy.
What I do tell people though is support good games.
If you end up playing a pirated game you really enjoy, you should try to support it if you can, even if it’s from one of the bigger publishers. It’s basically our only way to truly tell a publisher that we like something and to keep making it.
Not counting un reasonably priced re-releases though. I totally get that (looking at you Nintendo for Galaxy 1+2)
I tried CP2077 (post fixes) and No Man’s Sky pirated. Within 3 days I bought the retail versions because I loved them. Played a LOT of shitty pirated games since, usually no more than 2-3 hours. Steam wouldn’t refund me for that amount of time, so I figured this was fair.
I’m planning on yo-ho’ing CP2077, but no way an I paying even if I enjoy it. CDPR has fucked me over enough with The Witcher trilogy that they owe me a free game to make up for the time and money wasted.
After that, I might be willing to give them money again for something else, but I’m not paying for Cyberpunk
There’s so much competition in gaming right now, and good AAA games are so few and far between, that I don’t see a need for piracy. For every $90 piece of garbage there are ten $20 diamonds (don’t forget Devolver in your list of good small companies). I don’t ever buy dlc/deluxe/etc editions unless the company/game has earned it (almost never).
I will admit, Rockstar creates some high quality experiences, but their monetization practices are down there with the worst of them.
I can’t justify not pirating, I just think for me the motivation isn’t strong enough right now. Too many affordable good games to choose from.
I am not going to discuss the ethics of piracy because I genuinely don’t give a fuck (also the vast majority of people don’t know the difference between ethics and morality and insist whatever they do is Good so it is even less productive than slamming my hand in a cabinet).
But if your goal is to actually not support those companies? Don’t play the games. Because “Wow, Spider-Man is fucking awesome” is still going to encourage others to buy it. Even if you say “Wow, I am so glad I pirated it because Spider-Man is fucking awesome” is going to encourage people who don’t know how/don’t care to pirate things to buy it (and people are going to think you are an obnoxious edgelord).
And yeah, I’ll parrot others: If you think games are in a bad place (from a monetization and content perspective… not from a funding and censorship one) then that just tells me that you don’t actually care enough to follow indie devs.
Steam is fine, for the most part, but steam is also DRM. Personally I opt to buy games on GoG, because whatever releases there, you can download the installer and play offline, anywhere, anytime, and due to the platform requirements it strips a lot of the extra nonsense of requiring accounts and launchers and such.
The one downside is some publishers/developers don’t have the latest version on there or release on there later as definitive builds, but it’s better than having to deal with all that nonsense to begin with.
Also, I’m more confident that old games will work out of the box from gog than Steam. Unfortunately, as a Linux user, out of the box proton supports on Steam is just too convenient. I can’t think of many gog games that natively run on Linux.
Through Heroic, while there are some exceptions, you get nearly the same out of the box compatibility. And if you don’t get that compatibility and don’t have the patience to troubleshoot, the refund system for GOG is very generous. I just tried The Alters today, which I knew had issues with Proton outside of Steam Deck, and I got it working just before running out of patience and refunding the game.
I don’t have to troubleshoot anything most of the time, and I’ve bought dozens of games through GOG of late, for what it’s worth. And in the case of The Alters, the Steam version has many of the same problems. Just letting you know it’s an option, anyway. You can even route some of your GOG purchase to go toward development of Heroic by buying through the Heroic client, so that it makes sure it only gets better and so that GOG knows how much of their revenue they’re giving up to people who want this sort of functionality.
I’ve been gaming on Linux for over a year now, and most of my games library was on GoG, though I also have a number of games on Steam.
Using Lutris for GoG games, in my experience the rate of “just runs out of the box” games (via Wine) is pretty much the same as for Steam (via Proton), both being somewhere around 9 in 10.
The Steam App basically wrapps the whole Proton, VKDX and so on with automated configuration, including game-specific configuration scripts, and that’s the same as launchers like Lutris and Heroic doing just with Wine instead of Proton, but if you’re trying to use those tools directly without such a launcher its like trying to run Steam games without Steam and just doing all the Proton/VKDX configuration (both general and game-specific) and launching yourself - the old way of running games in Linux from a decade ago which was a complete total PITA.
Why bother with ethics or morality? I’ve been pirating what I can half of my life now, just because I’m a poor and stingy bastard. Let people with finished mortgages and nice cars pay those companies.
Yes, that’s true, poor people just want to have some fun, but society try to make it wrong, you need to follow all the guidelines of morality. But nobody talk about rich people destroying the world, spending on luxuries, exploring workers, and doing this kind of crap with the gaming industry.
Sometimes day to day life sucks, we need to escape into games we like and look past all the privacy and annoying bullshit. But when nearly all games are this way, easy to step back and go “wait a minute…”
When (not if) enshittification takes over, I’ll pirate their shit.
There are only 3 developers I will preorder from whenever I find the game they are releasing interesting. Erin “Concerned Ape” (Stardew Valley); Bob the Bot (Survivalist); and Terry Cavanagh, the creator of VVVVVV.
They keep their games updated, they are pretty chill people, and they keep players informed during development.
For now, they are the only ones who have earned my trust.
For everything else, it’s full patientgamer mode for me. Wait until the whole game is released with a single price tag, 90% discount, no online requirements outside of multiplayer, and community fixes.
I haven’t bought a full price AAA game in at least 20 years for this reason.
The last few years though things are getting really bad and I have begun investing heavily into retro game disks for my PC as well as on my OG Wii and PS1, 2 and 3 games for my PS3 phat.
I’m getting some great games for l from $1 - $12 that i can play anytime, no connection required.
My old consoles are showing their age, and I’m pretty sure my ps2 bit the dust. I’m trying to get my foot in the door on emulating, but linux has been more difficult to navigate than windows.
I mean, I do use linux exclusively. I just struggle with the emulation. I had a ps2 emulator going after mine crashed, but then it randomly started running like dogshit one day out of the blue, and nothing I tried could get its framerates up.
Since you mentioned publishers that haven’t been greedy, I’ll throw a few more out there that I think are worthy of support. They don’t need launchers, that don’t need accounts, they don’t have predatory subscriptions. They just make great games.
Supergiant Games: Transistor, Hades, Hades II
Larian Studios: Divinity Original Sin, DOS II, Baldur’s Gate 3
Playstack: Balatro
Otherwise, I’m totally with you. The account-walling of the Internet as a whole has pissed me off royally and I see no reason to give those bastards what they want.
Supergiant Games took a payout to make Hades a times exclusive for EGS. They still have some anti-consumer practices, even if you personally don’t think it’s as bad.
If something isn’t respecting your values, I’m of the opinion that you make a stronger statement by not even pirating those games. If you’re spending time playing them, you’re also not spending time and money playing some game that was meticulously made to respect your values. You’re fine playing indie games, but you’d play more of them if you gave up playing these AAA games that you decided to pirate. You talk to your friends and on forums about the games you play, which will at some point convince someone else to buy and play them, too. If you want them to hurt, so that they change, don’t even give them the time of day.
That’s right, it’s exactly what I think, you are one way or another helping a game to be known. The same strategy people talked about why Microsoft don’t shut every Office cracker, they want normal people to use it and get used to it, so companies will use it too, eventually, and they can audit some IT companies, charge a hell amount of money if they use pirated software.
I agree with everything, but I’ll still pirate AAA games, just for the experience. I classify publishers/developers companies like this:
Companies it doesn’t even worth playing to avoid indirect marketing: Ubisoft, EA
Companies that at least it worth pirating: Activistion, Rockstar, etc…
Let’s be honest, the games are good, probably made by some people who love what they were doing, but then it was put behind a shitty business model, because developers are just trying to make a living while executives trying to harvest all the money.
I think as the time goes, developers will start making their choices better, leave predatory companies, start or join indie companies, and I, at the same time, will migrate to a more indie focused gaming.
You follow your own moral compass. My feelings are, if I was short on money, I’ve got a backlog and a stream of games being thrown at me for free (legally) such that I’d never have to pirate and never be bored. I’m willing to pay more for a good product, and I so thoroughly enjoyed Borderlands 1-3 that I bought the deluxe edition of 4 that was a no-go for you; they’re one of the few AAA devs keeping LAN alive, and that is worth me throwing me money at them to tell them they’re doing it right, on top of just making a very fun game. The companies whose games you’re pirating are the ones that need the attention the least, but every game you could be instead funneling time and money into benefits so much more from each individual sale. Plus, the reason we’ve got so much anti-consumer bullshit in games now is because piracy was a boogeyman for the industry for a long time, so I’d rather not give them any additional data points to make things even worse when we’ve already got an entire era of video game history that disappears when their servers go offline. That’s how I see it anyway.
The times I don’t feel gross about pirating, personally, are when the pirated version is supposedly the better version of the game (like emulating an old console game instead of playing a compromised PC port) or when the game is delisted and no longer available through ordinary channels, like Battlefield 2. You do what feels right to you. Pirating Nintendo games is an option to me, but they bother me as a consumer in all sorts of ways, and I instead spend that time and money on games like The Thaumaturge rather than playing through Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo will be just fine without my sale. The team behind The Thaumaturge may or may not have made enough money to make a second game. If Nintendo was a less shitty company, I’d be buying and playing Metroid Prime 4. Maybe I’ll end up discovering and enjoying something else during that time that needs my dollar more instead.
I’ve a dual boot with Linux + Windows, my games are isolated on Windows where I’m not logged in anything important. I can just encrypt my Linux partition for a possible vulnerability. But I really think that it’s hard to happen, at least it never happened to me, I’ve pirated before a few times.
Also it’s allowed to pirate on my country, it’s just not allowed to redistribute it, so I don’t need a VPN.
Just download from trusted sources and it’s fine. At this point I’d rather to trust the community providing pirated games than big companies harvesting my data.
I didn’t have a good experience with Linux, I tried twice, I’ve a laptop wit hybrid GPU AMD + NVIDIA, and NVIDIA is painful on Linux. I loose a lot of performance playing on Linux, tried Fedora last time, OpenSUSE before that.
@[email protected] and plus, most of the time, when you’re buying indie games from steam, they’re drm-free, so you can play them offline, run them without steam running in the background.
honestly, I have no more hope in the AAA games, since it will be the same game over and over again with different skins or slight UI tweaks. there’s nothing much Steam can do at this point, because it’s the business model of these companies in the end. It’s time to give back all the money wasted on these AAA games to indie titles now, it’s well deserved…:bilibili_dianzan:
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I don’t know if its the age or perhaps I unconciously became sick of the practices OP describes, but the games I genuinelly enjoy playing the most nowadays are mainly AA or Indie. And ofc, I don’t mind paying full price for them.
A non-exhaustive list of those I loved:
I love Factorio for how few bugs are in it, and for how much the devs care. They even hired modders, and those modders kept making mods while making the game.
I’ve played a few games in your list and loved every one of them. I should probably try the rest.
Rockstar: Abandoning and cancelling GTA V (single player) expansions and purely focused on milking online for pay2win. I’m not hyped for 6.
EDIT: The worst part - declaring war against modding community because it affected their online sales (since people enjoyed playing modded singleplayer). It backfired, badly, but they still went for it.
I don’t try to criticize people for pirating games. They’re expensive and a lot are greedy.
What I do tell people though is support good games.
If you end up playing a pirated game you really enjoy, you should try to support it if you can, even if it’s from one of the bigger publishers. It’s basically our only way to truly tell a publisher that we like something and to keep making it.
Not counting un reasonably priced re-releases though. I totally get that (looking at you Nintendo for Galaxy 1+2)
I tried CP2077 (post fixes) and No Man’s Sky pirated. Within 3 days I bought the retail versions because I loved them. Played a LOT of shitty pirated games since, usually no more than 2-3 hours. Steam wouldn’t refund me for that amount of time, so I figured this was fair.
Haaaaaaaaaaaaank
God I love CP
Uhhh… I hope you mean Cyber punk
I’m planning on yo-ho’ing CP2077, but no way an I paying even if I enjoy it. CDPR has fucked me over enough with The Witcher trilogy that they owe me a free game to make up for the time and money wasted.
After that, I might be willing to give them money again for something else, but I’m not paying for Cyberpunk
That is what I have done mostly. Pirates the witcher 3, euro truck sim and others and ended up buying most on sale because they are just great games.
There’s so much competition in gaming right now, and good AAA games are so few and far between, that I don’t see a need for piracy. For every $90 piece of garbage there are ten $20 diamonds (don’t forget Devolver in your list of good small companies). I don’t ever buy dlc/deluxe/etc editions unless the company/game has earned it (almost never).
I will admit, Rockstar creates some high quality experiences, but their monetization practices are down there with the worst of them.
I can’t justify not pirating, I just think for me the motivation isn’t strong enough right now. Too many affordable good games to choose from.
At this point, I will just make my own. It’s a lifegoal after all…
Do it! Godot is there waiting for you with open arms.
After my last experience with Godoth, I’d rather learn C sharp
I am not going to discuss the ethics of piracy because I genuinely don’t give a fuck (also the vast majority of people don’t know the difference between ethics and morality and insist whatever they do is Good so it is even less productive than slamming my hand in a cabinet).
But if your goal is to actually not support those companies? Don’t play the games. Because “Wow, Spider-Man is fucking awesome” is still going to encourage others to buy it. Even if you say “Wow, I am so glad I pirated it because Spider-Man is fucking awesome” is going to encourage people who don’t know how/don’t care to pirate things to buy it (and people are going to think you are an obnoxious edgelord).
And yeah, I’ll parrot others: If you think games are in a bad place (from a monetization and content perspective… not from a funding and censorship one) then that just tells me that you don’t actually care enough to follow indie devs.
100% agree, if you don’t want to support something, then do not engage with it at all. Simple as that.
Steam is fine, for the most part, but steam is also DRM. Personally I opt to buy games on GoG, because whatever releases there, you can download the installer and play offline, anywhere, anytime, and due to the platform requirements it strips a lot of the extra nonsense of requiring accounts and launchers and such.
The one downside is some publishers/developers don’t have the latest version on there or release on there later as definitive builds, but it’s better than having to deal with all that nonsense to begin with.
Steam is also American, so I’m using GoG more now.
Also, I’m more confident that old games will work out of the box from gog than Steam. Unfortunately, as a Linux user, out of the box proton supports on Steam is just too convenient. I can’t think of many gog games that natively run on Linux.
Through Heroic, while there are some exceptions, you get nearly the same out of the box compatibility. And if you don’t get that compatibility and don’t have the patience to troubleshoot, the refund system for GOG is very generous. I just tried The Alters today, which I knew had issues with Proton outside of Steam Deck, and I got it working just before running out of patience and refunding the game.
Sometimes half the fun is troubleshooting, to the point where you had your fun fixing something and don’t feel like playing the game anymore.
I don’t have to troubleshoot anything most of the time, and I’ve bought dozens of games through GOG of late, for what it’s worth. And in the case of The Alters, the Steam version has many of the same problems. Just letting you know it’s an option, anyway. You can even route some of your GOG purchase to go toward development of Heroic by buying through the Heroic client, so that it makes sure it only gets better and so that GOG knows how much of their revenue they’re giving up to people who want this sort of functionality.
I’ve been gaming on Linux for over a year now, and most of my games library was on GoG, though I also have a number of games on Steam.
Using Lutris for GoG games, in my experience the rate of “just runs out of the box” games (via Wine) is pretty much the same as for Steam (via Proton), both being somewhere around 9 in 10.
The Steam App basically wrapps the whole Proton, VKDX and so on with automated configuration, including game-specific configuration scripts, and that’s the same as launchers like Lutris and Heroic doing just with Wine instead of Proton, but if you’re trying to use those tools directly without such a launcher its like trying to run Steam games without Steam and just doing all the Proton/VKDX configuration (both general and game-specific) and launching yourself - the old way of running games in Linux from a decade ago which was a complete total PITA.
Why bother with ethics or morality? I’ve been pirating what I can half of my life now, just because I’m a poor and stingy bastard. Let people with finished mortgages and nice cars pay those companies.
Yes, that’s true, poor people just want to have some fun, but society try to make it wrong, you need to follow all the guidelines of morality. But nobody talk about rich people destroying the world, spending on luxuries, exploring workers, and doing this kind of crap with the gaming industry.
This was me 20 years ago.
Congrats on finally seeing the light, but what took you so long?
Sometimes day to day life sucks, we need to escape into games we like and look past all the privacy and annoying bullshit. But when nearly all games are this way, easy to step back and go “wait a minute…”
When (not if) enshittification takes over, I’ll pirate their shit.
There are only 3 developers I will preorder from whenever I find the game they are releasing interesting. Erin “Concerned Ape” (Stardew Valley); Bob the Bot (Survivalist); and Terry Cavanagh, the creator of VVVVVV.
They keep their games updated, they are pretty chill people, and they keep players informed during development.
For now, they are the only ones who have earned my trust.
For everything else, it’s full patientgamer mode for me. Wait until the whole game is released with a single price tag, 90% discount, no online requirements outside of multiplayer, and community fixes.
I would also argue too have Hello games on that list too. Have been great at keeping No man’s sky up to date with new features all for free.
I haven’t bought a full price AAA game in at least 20 years for this reason.
The last few years though things are getting really bad and I have begun investing heavily into retro game disks for my PC as well as on my OG Wii and PS1, 2 and 3 games for my PS3 phat.
I’m getting some great games for l from $1 - $12 that i can play anytime, no connection required.
My old consoles are showing their age, and I’m pretty sure my ps2 bit the dust. I’m trying to get my foot in the door on emulating, but linux has been more difficult to navigate than windows.
I use Linux exclusively, stick with it, the learning curve is definitely worth it.
I mean, I do use linux exclusively. I just struggle with the emulation. I had a ps2 emulator going after mine crashed, but then it randomly started running like dogshit one day out of the blue, and nothing I tried could get its framerates up.
Me neither, I’m just saying, the prices are too high, the games I bought on Steam I always waited at least 50% discount.
But now it’s everything $0,00.
Since you mentioned publishers that haven’t been greedy, I’ll throw a few more out there that I think are worthy of support. They don’t need launchers, that don’t need accounts, they don’t have predatory subscriptions. They just make great games.
Otherwise, I’m totally with you. The account-walling of the Internet as a whole has pissed me off royally and I see no reason to give those bastards what they want.
Supergiant Games took a payout to make Hades a times exclusive for EGS. They still have some anti-consumer practices, even if you personally don’t think it’s as bad.
As much as I dislike the mechanics of Larian, I still bought their games.
I can relate. I played DOS when it had a camera locked to a 90 degree arc. XD
If something isn’t respecting your values, I’m of the opinion that you make a stronger statement by not even pirating those games. If you’re spending time playing them, you’re also not spending time and money playing some game that was meticulously made to respect your values. You’re fine playing indie games, but you’d play more of them if you gave up playing these AAA games that you decided to pirate. You talk to your friends and on forums about the games you play, which will at some point convince someone else to buy and play them, too. If you want them to hurt, so that they change, don’t even give them the time of day.
This is the best way. Give your time and money to something you believe in instead of wasting a moment on something you don’t.
That’s right, it’s exactly what I think, you are one way or another helping a game to be known. The same strategy people talked about why Microsoft don’t shut every Office cracker, they want normal people to use it and get used to it, so companies will use it too, eventually, and they can audit some IT companies, charge a hell amount of money if they use pirated software.
I agree with everything, but I’ll still pirate AAA games, just for the experience. I classify publishers/developers companies like this:
Let’s be honest, the games are good, probably made by some people who love what they were doing, but then it was put behind a shitty business model, because developers are just trying to make a living while executives trying to harvest all the money.
I think as the time goes, developers will start making their choices better, leave predatory companies, start or join indie companies, and I, at the same time, will migrate to a more indie focused gaming.
You follow your own moral compass. My feelings are, if I was short on money, I’ve got a backlog and a stream of games being thrown at me for free (legally) such that I’d never have to pirate and never be bored. I’m willing to pay more for a good product, and I so thoroughly enjoyed Borderlands 1-3 that I bought the deluxe edition of 4 that was a no-go for you; they’re one of the few AAA devs keeping LAN alive, and that is worth me throwing me money at them to tell them they’re doing it right, on top of just making a very fun game. The companies whose games you’re pirating are the ones that need the attention the least, but every game you could be instead funneling time and money into benefits so much more from each individual sale. Plus, the reason we’ve got so much anti-consumer bullshit in games now is because piracy was a boogeyman for the industry for a long time, so I’d rather not give them any additional data points to make things even worse when we’ve already got an entire era of video game history that disappears when their servers go offline. That’s how I see it anyway.
The times I don’t feel gross about pirating, personally, are when the pirated version is supposedly the better version of the game (like emulating an old console game instead of playing a compromised PC port) or when the game is delisted and no longer available through ordinary channels, like Battlefield 2. You do what feels right to you. Pirating Nintendo games is an option to me, but they bother me as a consumer in all sorts of ways, and I instead spend that time and money on games like The Thaumaturge rather than playing through Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo will be just fine without my sale. The team behind The Thaumaturge may or may not have made enough money to make a second game. If Nintendo was a less shitty company, I’d be buying and playing Metroid Prime 4. Maybe I’ll end up discovering and enjoying something else during that time that needs my dollar more instead.
I am not going to be the one to try to stop you but you need to keep in mind that games/sw piracy comes with great risks.
You need to execute anti cheat / drm / copyrighted stuff and this is always a big door open to malware.
Be cautious out there, it is not a pleasant walk
At this point I trust Fitgirl repacks more than some official publishers.
I’ve a dual boot with Linux + Windows, my games are isolated on Windows where I’m not logged in anything important. I can just encrypt my Linux partition for a possible vulnerability. But I really think that it’s hard to happen, at least it never happened to me, I’ve pirated before a few times.
Also it’s allowed to pirate on my country, it’s just not allowed to redistribute it, so I don’t need a VPN.
Just download from trusted sources and it’s fine. At this point I’d rather to trust the community providing pirated games than big companies harvesting my data.
Why not just use Linux to game?
I didn’t have a good experience with Linux, I tried twice, I’ve a laptop wit hybrid GPU AMD + NVIDIA, and NVIDIA is painful on Linux. I loose a lot of performance playing on Linux, tried Fedora last time, OpenSUSE before that.
I might try again eventually.
Try arch
Well, it would not be the first time that an anti cheat is having a Trojan and a Keylogger to add a computer into a botnet.
Let’s be honest here, nobody is interested in yiur specific data but your hw…
@[email protected] and plus, most of the time, when you’re buying indie games from steam, they’re drm-free, so you can play them offline, run them without steam running in the background.
honestly, I have no more hope in the AAA games, since it will be the same game over and over again with different skins or slight UI tweaks. there’s nothing much Steam can do at this point, because it’s the business model of these companies in the end. It’s time to give back all the money wasted on these AAA games to indie titles now, it’s well deserved…:bilibili_dianzan:
Better to go to GPLv3 games.
Because they are most scared that people don’t even want to pirate their shit.