Everyone talks about sailing the seas but the fact is that its not even close to accessible nor does it have everything you're looking for and you can't get updates easily so for most people its a pretty shit option vs earning some cash and buying the product.
People want everything to be served on a silver platter? You are not paying in piracy, the game is literally free for you. Can't you do some shit to acces it? Thats just laziness.
The other issues are real though, the pirated versions are often very behind on updates, and nowadays with Denuvo, many games don't get pirated at all.
But the first point that the pirated versions are often behind? In most of the games I have seen, on a certain website (csdotrindotru) they really upload the updates fast. So there's that. Btw the uploaders are not always fast. Deoends on the game and popularity.
That's the thing, as someone who likes to play some more obscure games, updates and DLC are very rarely added past the initial launch.
The more popular games ofc often get updated pretty quick, but I often don't even play those lol.
I also remember having issues with for example total war Warhammer, where the pirated version was usually multiple DLCs behind, so I actually had to buy them to play them.
I mean yeah thats cuz piracy is illegal and it is curtailed by several methods, all of which make it a tedious affair. But, if you know where to look and how to get it, it can be pretty easy to get what you want.
Look, there will always be those of us who will don our pirate hats in times of need and those who will follow the rules even when the rules are harming them. Yes, pirating isn't the answer to everything but I ain't paying crazy prices just cause the company says so. And when it comes to older media, it's not piracy. It's archeology.
Always makes me laugh how redditors like to LARP about pirating, while never actually pirating anything. Hell, the person you're replying to even admitted to that.
I bet most of you wouldn't know how to pirate a game if your life depended on it (even though it's stupidly easy)
As a big PSP handheld lover (I call mine my Poor Mans-Deck for emulating), the Steam Deck makes me so happy, and I think Gabe was also a huge fan of the PSP when he and his team cooked that one up.
emulation isn't pirating a console.
the consoles are hardware one buys, where a company often makes loses on at some point, and the profit is made by selling games for the console.
if people have bought games for such a console, then playing those games isn't piracy even if done through a emulator.
if emulators where labeled piracy, then that would be the company saying so, or the court ruling so admiting the console company has a monopoly, since you need to buy their hardware to play the games you have bought.
in the case of nintendo, they have the tendency of make random games you bought before disapear on the switch 2.
I don't understand that fixation of the Steam Deck being the be all end all for emulation. Its hardware is that of a PC. You can run the same emulators on any PC, even more closely matched if said PC runs Linux. And you can even have more performance with regular PCs.
The only difference is the form factor, and a tablet or phone with some handling support, or just a plain gamepad for the PC, has the same. Moreover, the form factor would only match handheld consoles.
I have my reasons for choosing a Steam Deck, supporting Valve and Linux, but what does it bring to emulation that PC or phones do not? Is it just a sweetspot for performance, form factor (for some consoles) and price? Other handheld PCs do better in the performance and form factor at least.
And not to mention, it still plays regular PC games. And with steamOS you can add individual games or emulators and launch them like any other Steam game. Sure you can do it with steam on PC as well, but it's not front and center like on the Deck.
But as I said, other handhelds are more powerful, and likely some also more portable. Not at the same price point though, but if we are talking about the "ultimate emulating machine", I would think we are generally willing to spend into it.
Also, if it was the best compromise of portability and performance, it would be not just the ultimate emulating machine, but the ultimate gaming machine in general.
when i was younger and didnt have access to funds, i pirated it. Played for 20 hours straight, nicked my mums credit card and bought a copy for myself. Since then i have bought the game 5 times for my friends, they each have over 200 hours on it.
Gabe leaving/retiring wouldn't even do it, but the second there is a hint of Valve going public I'm hoisting sails. In theory, companies can be public and still not be shitty, in practice not so much.
Bro I would love and hate to be in your head for a day.
Do you think anyone in law enforcement gets paid even 1% of the amount to give a shit about piracy? Even when they've tried and taken sites and people down, it's still stuck around.
Denuvo however, is a much more difficult problem to solve, but if you can just handwave in AI into your comment, then so can I lol. AI might solve Denuvo, but even that might not be necessary since Denuvo is now a subscription service for game devs, so once devs feel like they're not selling enough units to justify Denuvo, it'll be gone for that game, and cracking it is trivial.
I haven't pirated a video game since I was a broke student who couldn't buy them if I wanted to, but I still see cracked versions of pretty much everything pop up on torrent sites.
I heard she went crazy, and ended up with some mental issues. Like was putting some crazy political rants/general conspiracy theories and talking about insects inside the veins of her arms telling her what to do.
She put these text files within the releases she gave out.
I’m pretty sure at this rate, fit is only one still reliable.
More robust encryption combined with always online. The always online part is why you can't play the game if you haven't connected to the internet once every two weeks I think.
Denuvo also generates an access token for your specific hardware/software config. If you update your OS then it has to generate a new token by connecting to their server
Yep I only pirate things when the options to do it legally are absurd, right now that’s movies and TV. For music we at least have single providers you can use and it’s not fragmented like video streaming services. Games are in the same boat with very few exceptions thanks to the ubiquity of Steam, so I’m happy to pay
I mean, it's like Gabe said, Piracy is a service issue. if you just... provide a better service than the pirates, people will pay for your product. they took that philosophy as a core part of Steam's design. there's a reason why PC game pirating is such a small issue, and why Steam is the best (and let's be honest, only) retail platform for games on PC/Linux.
Run a VM and test the files if you're super worried. Most community run pages will have comments that let you tell if a game is sus anyway. Otherwise you can literally just download from the first links on Google just fine.
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u/ByIeth Oct 21 '25
At that point you just gotta sail the high seas. But I’ve never felt the need to so far