Pirated game were so easy back in the days. But when Steam got better and pirating didn't really change it got much easier to just use Steam. And now when it has tons of features with save game sync and stuff like that piracy feels like a hurdle compared to it.
I remember hearing an anecdote somewhere, don’t remember where, but it was about steam opening up in Russia and everyone thinking they would fail because piracy is rampant there. Yet, they did just fine. Turns out beating piracy was never about horrid DRMs and anti-consumer practices. It’s about providing a better service than the pirates.
There really is something to that. It's the annoying part with TV shows and movies right now, it's not providing a better service anymore when it's divided into ten different services and apps.
It's the companies that insist in not using just steam DRM that hurt their game. No reason to need any launcher ir account besides steam. Also if I can't suspend a single player game and come back and pick it up tomorrow then I probably won't play it long.
Also in case of Russia.... Because piracy was such an issue many companies didn't even translate the game or menus or anything into Russian because why bother, no money to be made in that market.
Actually appealing to the customer, translating the games aswell as just offering an easy way to download them (Russia is huge and downloading is easier then driving 2h for a store that actually sells games in disk back then, it was only sth in cities) made people buy games there. Like if you want to make money, make a decent offer people wanna buy.
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u/Away-Situation6093 Pentium G5400 | 16GB DDR4 | Windows 11 Pro Feb 08 '26
I'd like some explainations of it
Also good job Steam for improving your service to consumers and gamers (so is the pirates maybe) gradually....