For me cost of living went up but cost of games down. I mostly play indie games now since i find big AAA games not that interesting with one maybe two exceptions per year.
Depends on what games you play. I play lots of studio games and don’t play a lot of indies. Now I just pirate. To paraphrase a wise man “this may or may not technically be legal… But 105aud for a new video game is a straight up crime”
Yeah, it sucks. A major reason that I abandoned Nintendo’s Switch 2, and returned to PC after playing in Switch for some years. I used to pay 30-50€ for AAA, but they wanted people to jump to 70-80€.
You make it sound like drm didn’t exist before steam or like steam isn’t a form of drm itself. Old drm was more basic and far less nefarious, like entering a cd key or codes in your manual. This later escalated to online activated cd keys. At the very least, these forms of drm didn’t run all the time like steam did- I remember steam getting huge pushback (from myself included) because it ran like absolute dogshit. Later forms of drm got worse with checks in the discs that collected data on your pc (securom, anyone?). Steam did a lot of good things but it did not erase drm- it merely created another form of it (I.e. You no longer own your games, you are buying licenses they can revoke at any time)
Netflix only went the way it did because they were liscensing shows and movies from other publishers/studios who could have, and finally did, take their shit back and start their own subscription service.
It’s not just Netflix that sucks now; it’s the whole of legit streaming video services becoming what cable was that got Netflix popular to begin with.
This is unlikely to happen with Steam, given that competitors are already trying to do what they can similarly and it has yet to actually do anything.
I mean that although the good shows got removed by the other competitors and streaming got downhill with that, they increased prices, put ads, removed account sharing and their only focus is profit.
Edit: also they removed shows by themselves to countries that the particular shows were not that popular just to save money. That started before the rise of other streaming platforms.
Yeah streaming has an assumption of an exclusivity deal whereas in gaming it’s unpopular and financially not worthwhile (though subscriptions would rapidly change that).
If Netflix and HBO and everyone else all were equally able to buy content and no service was the primary sponsor of content you’d get services competing on price, quality, and selection rather than each of them aiming to always have something worth the subscription price coming out.
Steam kinda killed gaming piracy for many. Hope they won’t go the Netflix way in the future.
They did for me, then my cost of living went up along with the cost of games. Now I’ll only buy games that I intend to play multiplayer
For me cost of living went up but cost of games down. I mostly play indie games now since i find big AAA games not that interesting with one maybe two exceptions per year.
Depends on what games you play. I play lots of studio games and don’t play a lot of indies. Now I just pirate. To paraphrase a wise man “this may or may not technically be legal… But 105aud for a new video game is a straight up crime”
Yeah, it sucks. A major reason that I abandoned Nintendo’s Switch 2, and returned to PC after playing in Switch for some years. I used to pay 30-50€ for AAA, but they wanted people to jump to 70-80€.
i kinda agree:
but its still possible to pirate some Steam games without the Steam Client,
and some still require it.
it’s crazy how you offer people convenience and they willingly pay for it. I remember steam killing piracy before DRM or anything like that existing
You make it sound like drm didn’t exist before steam or like steam isn’t a form of drm itself. Old drm was more basic and far less nefarious, like entering a cd key or codes in your manual. This later escalated to online activated cd keys. At the very least, these forms of drm didn’t run all the time like steam did- I remember steam getting huge pushback (from myself included) because it ran like absolute dogshit. Later forms of drm got worse with checks in the discs that collected data on your pc (securom, anyone?). Steam did a lot of good things but it did not erase drm- it merely created another form of it (I.e. You no longer own your games, you are buying licenses they can revoke at any time)
I remember CD keys but that’s about it
I’m curious what you mean by this.
Netflix only went the way it did because they were liscensing shows and movies from other publishers/studios who could have, and finally did, take their shit back and start their own subscription service.
It’s not just Netflix that sucks now; it’s the whole of legit streaming video services becoming what cable was that got Netflix popular to begin with.
This is unlikely to happen with Steam, given that competitors are already trying to do what they can similarly and it has yet to actually do anything.
I mean that although the good shows got removed by the other competitors and streaming got downhill with that, they increased prices, put ads, removed account sharing and their only focus is profit.
Edit: also they removed shows by themselves to countries that the particular shows were not that popular just to save money. That started before the rise of other streaming platforms.
Yeah streaming has an assumption of an exclusivity deal whereas in gaming it’s unpopular and financially not worthwhile (though subscriptions would rapidly change that).
If Netflix and HBO and everyone else all were equally able to buy content and no service was the primary sponsor of content you’d get services competing on price, quality, and selection rather than each of them aiming to always have something worth the subscription price coming out.