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Re:Trent Reznor says YouTube is “built on the backs of free,... by overcast on Wednesday June 15, 2016 @03:49PM (#11911652)
Yeh sure, you know why FreeSteam doesn't exist? Because people don't work for free. The required infrastructure, developers, and legal fees are just insurmountable. What are you going to do, have donations, like...paying for games? Steam is already doing things nearly perfectly, and people don't seem to care.
Re:Trent Reznor says YouTube is “built on the backs of free,... by milesokeefe on Wednesday June 15, 2016 @03:59PM (#11911719)
I think the parent is implying it would be pirated content. Like Popcorn Time for games.
Re:Trent Reznor says YouTube is “built on the backs of free,... by overcast on Wednesday June 15, 2016 @04:02PM (#11911738)
Fully aware of what they were implying. Infrastructure, developers, etc, still needs to exist. Who would be managing that monstrosity of a repository, all of the auto-updating patches, bandwidth, lawyers, and foreign governments to keep the content creators at bay. Never mind the interface to all of it. No one. Steam is far too valuable to even bother ripping off.
Re:Trent Reznor says YouTube is “built on the backs of free,... by milesokeefe on Thursday June 16, 2016 @04:02PM (#11918494)
I would imagine the same type of people that are maintaining Popcorn Time and the type of people cracking/seeding games currently.

The backend would be bittorrent, so it wouldn't require bandwidth. If all of the contributors would be sufficiently anonymous, lawyers and governments wouldn't matter either.

So it would just be an interface connected to a repository of curated torrents. Not trivial but not nearly as hard as you're making it out to be. I think the only reason it doesn't exist is that videogame pirates are largely content with their current system. That or no one capable of implementing it has had this idea.

Re:Trent Reznor says YouTube is “built on the backs of free,... by johnchristopher on Wednesday June 15, 2016 @05:01PM (#11912111)
Well... there used to be some kind of `FreeSteam`. But keeping it up-to-date was indeed a hassle for both the `maintainers` and `users`. Not worth the time once you get a paycheck or enter college.