if a popular console platform became a ‘free for all’, i don’t think its ‘protections’ would last very long under what would become a globally crowdsourced endeavour.
Comment on Time to bring back physical media on PC?
Mereo@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
No, it’s not beneficial. The difference between consoles and PCs is that PCs have an open infrastructure, which lets you back up your data to any medium or service you want.
For example, if Steam goes out of business and doesn’t release the DRMs, they will easily be cracked. You cannot say the same for consoles.
adarza@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
doublah@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
You can’t crack a required server-side download
BladeFederation@piefed.social 1 day ago
There are also multiple places to buy from. Steam is pretty dominant, but only because they’re the best option. You can buy from Sony on PlayStation, that’s it.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That’s not really true. Most recent games I’ve bought, I tried to buy off Steam. But they weren’t available anywhere else.
It also hardly even matters as no one on Steam is allowed to price below Steam. So they effectively control pricing power, like Sony; the screws just aren’t so tight yet.
ms_lane@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That’s not true at all.
BladeFederation@piefed.social 20 hours ago
I find it pretty hard to believe that you couldn’t find a major game on Epic or the Microsoft store. An indie title? Sure, a lot of those are limited to Steam, because the devs prefer it.
No idea what you’re on about with not being able to price below Steam. That is not a thing.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Yeah, it’s mostly newer indie or “AA” games I’ve been into.
On the pricing: blog.subimpact.net/…/valve-allegedly-threatened-t…
But in a nutshell, the allegations is that Steam threatens to delist games if they’re priced lower than Steam on other storefronts, similar to what Walmart or Amazon are accused of doing.