> They don't because too many people pirate games to make that a viable business.
So, how does it work for Valve to sell games which are also available at GOG without DRM? If too many people are pirating, why would anyone buy the Steam version?
That's actually honestly a really good point. Things are changing. In real dollar terms games are getting cheaper and the size of the market has grown so I don't know if maybe a DRM free store will soon support premium games.
I can't think of a game available on GoG that sells on Steam for > $20. I am sure one exists, but in general these are older, cheaper games.
You could also point to games that the Epic store gives away that are sold on Steam. That's an even better example. You are right that people don't just pay for games because they can't get them for free, they are also willing to pay to get them in a convenient format even when another format is free.
My question is, does that really support the model for most premium games? Nobody likes DRM, the game industry didn't used to have it.
> I can't think of a game available on GoG that sells on Steam for > $20.
It is easy to check such claims. This shows what kind of games are in gog since 2024 at >$20 (it may change the currency depending on your country though).
Far from complete but also a few big titles are there. Granted this is the price in gog but most of the times ime it is the same price as in steam, or around the same.
> Nobody likes DRM, the game industry didn't used to have it.
Aren't DRMs a pretty old thing at this time? I remember the days when DRM was basically about having to use the cd to launch the game as the game would check for that, even if everything needed to run the game was in the hard drive. People would use cracks or virtual drives even if they actually bought the game to avoid doing that. At least now DRMs are far less obstructive to someone who owns the game.
> I can't think of a game available on GoG that sells on Steam for > $20. I am sure one exists, but in general these are older, cheaper games.
Fair point but I think there are quite a few of those: Baldur's Gate 3 comes to mind. Expedition 33, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II even Cyberpunk, but it's true that nowadays Cyberpunk is a ~20$ title.
But not sure these were on GoG day 1. Or they added them after ~1 year after they got most of their sales on Steam and already the piracy of the games started.
But that's basically what we do. We learn about Lincoln, Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, MLK, etc for what good they did.
Then someone eventually figures out they did or said some wrongthink by today's standards and tell us those people should be hated because they messed up.
But the kicker is we never once learned about nor celebrated said wrongthink. We celebrated the best in people... and I think that should continue.
But to give you another example (from the article): Try migrating Google Workspace to an EU solution. Actually impossible. I tried it myself, and gave up. The closest you’ll get is Proton, which isn’t EU to begin with and doesn’t even have half of the features Google Workspace offers.
Well proton isn't Eu but its switzerland and I think that proton is going to move some of their servers to germany after switzerland had this questionable decision which feared privacy services (including proton)
Proton recently got proton sheets/proton docs
Personally one of the largest issues I have with proton is the lack of extensibility. Like google has app scripts and similar api's but proton's lack of api's have frustrated me so much that I have built an api over scraping/using a puppeteer instance over it but its still in very finnicky state
Well, I am not sure about the newer BTP-based stuff, but the main ABAP-based core of an SAP S/4HANA system certainly does not need those capabilities, as it is still basically the same running in on premise systems. The priority of a couple of BTP apps might be quite low, if they are not starting from scratch.
In some countries, where people receive conditioned social security benefits, just sending the money via bank account will have disadvantages (at worst the next sum from social security is lowered 1:1 by the money received and they try to keep it that way). So, if you do not meet the gift receiver in person and do not trust the postal service with cash, a gift card can be a solution.
> If enough of these horror stories are publicized, people will learn to never buy/redeem Apple gift cards because of the real possibility of account bans.
If you are trying to be a bad person you could weaponize that approach. You do not like person x, send them some Apple gift cards... :o
> You do not like person x, send them some Apple gift cards... :o
99.999% chance they happily redeem them and go about their lives.
These stories, while frustrating, are clearly edge cases. Yes I know you can find more if you search social media, but I don’t think a lot of these HN commenters realize the volume of gift cards Apple sells and redeems without problem every day.
Maybe that hypothetical, bad person needs to find out what is triggering the account locking, first. Many small sums per gift card? A sum over a certain threshold? The point is, in reality it will not be up to pure chance.
In this case buy the gift card from some shady retailer with a one-time-use virtual card, and give this shady code to your friend. Or buy a physical card from aliexpress, the cheapest one with bad reviews.
Well CAFE standards say don't bother making small vehicles. And manufacturers say oh darn, we have to make the vehicles with lots of profits? Well sorry small truck buyers, we're out.
/s
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