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.

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[–] sunflower_name@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Yeah, valve is pretty much one of the least companies, that let you own your games, not rent for a couple of years for $100

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[–] KpntAutismus@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

that's why i use spotify, almost all songs i want, great UI, the discovery algorithm is rad, and sharing a playlist for the communal work speaker is easy.

[–] HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago

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.

Doing the absolute bare minimum to not be consumer hostile does not warrant praise. Just because Nintendo or Apple are worse doesn't mean Valve is heroic for not doing things they really shouldn't have the right to do anyway.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com -1 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Are we getting astroturfed already?

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[–] InterSynth@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Yeah, precisely because piracy is a service issue, Turkey and Argentina are going to turn to piracy again, after Valve fucked them over.

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[–] DingoBilly@lemmy.world -3 points 2 years ago

I disagree. You don't seem to understand piracy at all.

If you're going to pirate games, you'll find a way. I have spent hours sometimes figuring out how to do so, and it's almost part of the fun.

The only reason I'd look at buying a Steam deck in future is to play pirated games. If I absolutely love a game and developer then sure, I'd buy it if I have the cash but otherwise you may as well pirate it.

The only reason I don't pirate games IS because of locked down hardware like Playstation Etc. Otherwise, I have pretty much never bought a game on PC.

[–] dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com -3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Your argument that the Steam deck is emblematic of Gabe's statement of piracy being a service issue, is somehow reinforced by telling us all of the artificial hoops you have to jump through to pirate on the Steam Deck? That's just DRM with extra steps.

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