As someone who almost entirely emulates their games with the occasional pirated PC game, I’ve now spent about $150 on Steam games in the first month I’ve had my Deck. I can only imagine the bank they’re making off of people who are already used to buying their games. I’m officially ensnared. I haven’t been this excited about gaming since the original Xbox came out 21 years ago.
Yeah. I think Steam has so many features that it has greatly reduced pirating overall for many people I know. I used to pirate a lot of games over a decade ago. But now, I just like having all my games in a library. Achievements. Cloud saves. Game streaming. Game sharing is insane. I have a buddy who buys a lot of games at release so I just download from his library and play. There are a lot of places you can find games for cheap.
Just speaking for myself, but pirating is more trouble than it’s worth. Games are getting larger in size. Download speeds vary based on source. With Steam, I can download a full size AAA game in an hour or two. Need to find cracks. You have to worry about viruses. You need way more storage space. I mean if I’m low on storage for Steam, I can just uninstall a few games and redownload it later if I ever want to replay them.