I can pirate games easily, but I buy them on Steam because it's more convenient. If it's too expensive for me, I just never play it (or wait for a deal). I can't be bothered dealing with the installers and the potential viruses and the hassle.

I’m fabulously wealthy and still mostly pirate things just because I can’t be bothered dealing with online credit card payments.

Half the time I try to sign up for any of these services I get blocked for fraud because I’m in one country, my billing address in another and my bank in a third. Oh, and when something does work, it only works for a while until they lock the whole account with a bunch of paid content on it.

That is my experience with Adidas.com.

I've not had issues with Steam, though my Steam journey was early into online purchasing adventures

Which services exactly do that? Because Steam or GOG for sure don't.

Steam has done that to me many times.

>because it's more convenient

Yes, now imagine if we just removed the barrier to piracy completely. An easy to use client just like Steam, except all the games are free cracked copies.

There is no way thats not going to drop sales.

What has been proven many times is that people overwhelmingly choose the least effort/risk option.

A free Steam full of certified pirates games with official games updates would obviously drop sales but this is moot as it will never exist.

Isn't that exactly what companies use as justification for DMCA and DRM protection?

Without those, you'd have sites full of pirated game downloads easily found through search engines. DMCA takedowns force those sites into shady corners of the internet, making them harder to find and riskier for the average user. And (effective) DRM makes users have to wait for a crack which may take weeks or months.

The result is that it's easier for the average person to just log into Steam/Epic/PSN/eShop and spend $60 to play immediately.

The point is that legal threats keep any centralized platforms that might do vetting small. That probably accounts for the vast majority of the effect. Beyond that the old fashioned "DRM" of a CD key is generally going to be more than sufficient to prevent "acts of convenience".

I'm sure there are exceptions but the usual claims take the observation about a minor speed bump and add a bunch of made up BS to justify consumer hostile practices.

Notice that there's nothing stopping a centralized darknet platform that vettes torrents from popping up. But as far as I know no one feels like bothering. That should give you some idea just how low the bar is here.

> you'd have sites full of pirated game downloads easily found through search engines.

That's literally the situation today. It is that easy. People still mostly don't pirate games though.

The reason why publishers like DRM is because it allows them to turn anything into a subscription-lite service plus tracking and advertising.

> just log into Steam/Epic/PSN/eShop and spend $60 to play immediately

You spend $60 on games? I just add them to my wish list at launch and buy them when they're 30, 20...

I have more unplayed games than time anyway.

It will never happen precisely because of anti piracy measures

You really can't though, not if the games have an online component or you want the game to be patched/updated as frequently as it would be on steam.

Almost all games these days are basically like a work in progress, so if you pirate them then the game doesn't stay up to date.

Pirating games is just really inconvenient compared to tv/movies/music.

> Almost all games these days are basically like a work in progress, so if you pirate them then the game doesn't stay up to date.

Which, as a mod author and consumer, isn't always a bad thing. More than once, I had to drop just enjoying a game, to patch my published mods because some update that is automatically pushed out, and people have to accept in order to even boot a single-player game. Why? I don't know, but it's really annoying sometimes.

Besides, nowadays cracking groups release smaller patches too, so while you might not get the update the same hour it was published on Steam, usually within a week or two the same group that uploaded the original release, has released another patch.

If someone pirates 100 60$ games it does not mean that had piracy been impossible they would have spent 6000$ on those games

They might spend $600 on 10 of those games, though. It's not all-or-nothing.

They might still spend $600 on 10 more games though. Or spend it on a subset of the games they pirated because they want to support the developer. Who knows.

If somebody spends $60 on a game but doesn't play it should they get automatic refund?

If the deal is providing entertainment for a price then why the publisher feels entitled to keeping the money if the entertainment didn't happen?

That's the basis of most of the Steam's business.

thieves lie to protect their self-image. i pirated because free games let me spend my money on stuff i couldn't steal like food at the mall.

i don't pirate anymore because i have a job now.

Copyright infringement is not stealing, and it's not a given that a sale would have happened at all - even if the llicit copy was unavailable.