They tell you to just pay again because most people will. Most people will just roll over and put up with their shit.

Not that I care about Minecraft, but it’s been out like 15 years and it hasn’t come down in price. What are they still paying for with its sales? It’s straight profit at this point. They could comp the guy a key and they would lose absolutely nothing and only gain goodwill, but they know people are hooked on it and will just pay again. Or at least enough people will just pay again to cover the few who won’t.

If your x86-64 machine still runs well, dump Windows and put Linux on it. If it’s starting to show its age, consider the Mac mini. $500 gets you a lot of power. If you do buy another machine capable of running Windows, don’t buy a pre-built one that comes with a Windows license. Either build, or find a seller that doesn’t include the OS or doesn’t include a Windows license. Hell, even consider a used business workstation. They’ll take the volume license for Windows off of it (it probably wasn’t capable of running Windows 11) and you can put Linux on that. If you’re intimidated by Linux, Mac is super easy, but the truth is… so is Linux. Start with Ubuntu, it’s dead simple, and if you really like the way Windows looks and feels, start with something running KDE. I recommend Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE instead of GNOME) but Linux Mint is pretty popular too, and that uses KDE by default. And KDE is more than “the Windows-like frontend.” It’s actually a lot nicer than that.