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

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.

I wouldn't add pirated games to steam. I think I heard they can ban your account for that. But yeah agree, don't support bs practices.

The hell does "piracy against big companies" even mean?

Man, pirate what you can't afford if you must, just... you know, be honest about it. I'm always annoyed by people doing the thing they wanted to do anyway and presenting it as activism. That's not how that works.

For the record, while I think there's plenty to be critical about in modern gaming, "DLC", "game has a launcher" and "game is ported from other platforms" are not that. "A game I played on the PS3 was too expensive when I wanted to rebuy it" is somebody giving you bad value up front, not some ideological stance you're taking.

For the record, I also didn't buy it because I also didn't think their launch price was right. In fairness, it has since been on sale for 30 bucks multiple times, which is a lot more reasonable.

And again, I'm not saying don't pirate it. Do what you want. Just don't be weird about it.

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.

Last game I ever bought was minecraft, back in 2012(?) for $15. Played it non-stop for a decade before the community imploded. Got my money's worth. Haven't bought a game since. No point unless they have a similarly active multiplayer community. It's a pirate's life for me.

@CodenameDarlen@lemmy.world 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:​

Too many investors coming off cheap, obvious ripoff games for a mobile telephone.

The trump family of asshole con-men just bought EA. Everything from now until they're sold off for scrap is not only completely worthless, is actively hostile to users.

It's a sign that the cons and grifting has 100% fully come to Computer games. Many have exploited them before, but not like this.

Bit busy so can’t make a long comment. Just wanted to say, welcome to the ‘dark’ side. I highly recommend to check the instance I’m on for everything you need (Megathread). It tells you where to look, which safety measures to take etc.

I wanted to purchase Metaphor Refantzio because the game seems good and then figured out they blatantly said “you don’t own Metaphor even if you purchase it”. Thus decided to pirate it (it isn’t cracked but it is playable).

Man ea and Ubisoft games suck so bad I don't even bother pirating them. I'm not even being facetious, the last ea game I played was the dead space remake which was passable but also totally skippable, and I borrowed a friends ea account to do that, getting bored half way through and stopping. Had he not offered I'd not have played it at all. I think the last ea game I paid and played through was mass effect 2.

Same thing with Ubisoft. I briefly had gamepass and played AC Odyssey for three hours before losing interest, same with their terrible Greek botw wannabe.

Neither company has released anything I've even been interested in since that, years and years ago.

That said I still buy rockstar games, the amount of money, effort, and attention to detail that went into Red Dead 2 is simply breath taking, but by the same token i bought it for twenty bucks after pirating it to make sure i liked it and it ran well.

Other than that I'm on the same page as you. Also I'm not criticizing you, just pointing out a slight difference in opinion. I pirate two dozen games a month

RDR is €50 full price and includes all dlcs, €30 atm in autumn sale. AAA games are priced between 60-90 these days. What do you mean it's full AAA priced