They could have easily crammed the Steam Deck full of stuff to make it hard to use for piracy - locking down everything, making it usable only to play games you legitimately own, force you to go through who knows what hoops in order to play games on it. That’s what Nintendo or Apple or most other companies do.
But they didn’t, because they realized they didn’t have to. It’s 100% possible to put pirated games on the Steam Deck - in fact, it’s as easy as it could reasonably be. You copy it over, you wire it up to Steam, if it’s a non-Linux game you set it up with Proton or whatever else you want to use to run it, bam. You can now run it in Steam just as easily as a normal Steam game (usually.) If you want something similar to cloud saves you can even set up SyncThing for that.
But all of that is a lot of work, and after all that you still don’t have automatic updates, and some games won’t run this way for one reason or another even though they’ll run if you own them (usually, I assume, because of Steam Deck specific tweaks or install stuff that are only used when you’re running them on the Deck via the normal method.) Some of this you can work around but it’s even more hoops.
Whereas if you own a game it’s just push a button and play. They made legitimately owning a game more convenient than piracy, and they did it without relying on DRM or anything that restricts or annoys legitimate users at all - even if a game has a DRM-free GOG version, owning it on Steam will still make it easier to play on the Steam Deck.
The steam deck is how you prevent piracy. If you look at the huge influx of streaming services, you’ll see an example of how you encourage piracy. I recently dropped three of my services in favor of one pirate site that has almost everything. They even offer a subscription tier and I’ve considered it. I’m willing to pay for good content. What I’m not willing to do is pay dozens of middlemen across multiple companies to rip off the people who actually make my favorite shows and then memory hole the shows a few months after they premiere.
memory hole
sick turn of phrase, i’m stealing that
Please read 1984. That’s where this term comes from. You’re living through a combination of it and Brave New World.
Amazon TVs seem like they used 1984 as a reference.
But yeah somewhere between 1984 and BNW sounds right. The government and the megacorporations are not opposed but in fact the very same party. Instead of mood-numbing or happy drugs, it’s sugar and antidepressants. Instead of government watching you it’s corporations selling every part of your identity down to your menstruation cycle. You are kept in line with debt rather than force, which is honestly worse because you put the shackles on yourself, and you do it because the alternative is worse.
Your own special hell.
at least we get bumblepuppies and soma (tiktok and marijuana)
With respect to social media, I think Fahrenheit 451 might have nailed that best. Everyone involved in a neverending orgy of ego and drama over dumb shit, most of which isn’t real anyway.
Did anyone predict the agrostophobia?
Recently got a switch. Digital games are same price as physical, locked to my account/switch and saves don’t move easily between devices. Steam deck, I can play on any hardware that can support it TV, PC laptop games cloud save for free. I can play online games for free. I know that games I buy today will be available in 10 years on my next PC. I only buy carts for the switch cause they give me more flexibility still not even the same as steam.
I think steam in general is a proof that its a service issue
It’s funny. I’m dirt poor and I really want to play The Last of Us again. I could easily download it and get it going through piracy. Heck, it’s crossed my mind a time or two.
But you know what I’m doing? I’m waiting for it to go on sale and I’ll grab it then if the time is right. If not I’ll wait until it is.
I have plenty to do until then.
It’s definitely a service issue. I haven’t pirated a single game on Steam Deck.
Valve is one of those companies that I genuinely believe makes a strong argument for ethical capitalism being possible. Sure, they have some shitty things, but overall they do treat developers and customers reasonably well, they provide hardware and software that is easy to use and non-abusive (not filled with spyware and data harvesters, doesn’t use advertising, is well maintained, etc.). If we could obliterate all of the other major conglomerates and replace them with people/companies that understand that you don’t have to be a massive pile of shit to make money the world would be better off.
since the alternative is being kicked out at 18 without anywhere to go or money.
More like socialism. Valve is privately owmed company that is run like half-company half-coop.
This.
Their strength comes from having zero management and all projects are born and lead by the devs themselves. As close to communism as you could get in a capitalistic world. It does come with some problems but they’re totally manageable - like having a strictly homogeneous workforce (which, one could argue, isn’t a bad thing)
Valve argued in court that you do not own any title in your library and that they are a subscription based service. That’s not very ethical.
You never owned any software, even before valve. All you ever purchased was a license key that could be revoked at any time.
That isn’t a problem made by valve, it existed far before the whole company was even founded. The underlying issue is the way digital mediums are licensed and the corresponding copyright laws.
Its really just because Gabe is the dude.
It would devolve of he died.
I’m not convinced that Valve will go down the tubes when Gabe shuffles off this moral coil (praise gaben may he live a thousand years). It would require a strong company culture that believes as he does that piracy is a service issue and is thus willing to adhere to his vision in his absence, but that can happen in a privately held company if there’s a strong succession plan in place.
Now, if Gabe dies and Valve goes public, then it’s pretty much over. Platform monetization, proft-taking and short-term thinking would enshittify Steam in short order.
Valve is not publicly owned, I don’t think you can equate commerce to Capitalism.
Commerce conducted in a capitalist economy is inherently capitalist. Being publicly traded is not strictly required, though it might be the most common form of corporate structure under capitalism. Individuals, partnerships, privately-held and publicly-traded companies can all own capital. Valve’s assets are not owned by a government, its business decisions are made privately and it operates in a free market. Those three factors are pretty much the definition of capitalism.
I just hope that steam stays good. it’s great now, but I fear for the future with everything behind steam DRM
Let’s just hope for Gabe to live a long life still. Valve is a private company and not nearly as much in danger for enshittification as a public company would be.
I buy most of my games on steam simply because it makes running them on Linux so damn easy, and I remember the bad old days when it was hell!
It’s interesting you mention Apple because while I have every expectation that you’re correct at the moment, the iPod absolutely benefited from piracy. iTunes allowed you to add your own songs to your library to sync with the device, and iTunes could also be argued to have been on a similar model to Steam because you’d pay to ‘own’ the songs and there was no subscription giving you access to songs.
Then they started to remove songs you own, and songs from your hard drive that iTunes had nothing to do with it… Fucking apple cultists. You really never see any fault in your chosen god?
Also they contribute loads to the Linux ecosystem so im happy to support them as I see it as a win/win . The sales are great too I spend like 50 ducats a year and get like 9 or 10 great games for that.
This was already proven at the height of Netflix, before streaming service hell.
