True.

I could maybe see an argument being made in favor of having these kinds of security measures for the first month after release to protect sales, since it’s usually the period in which most sales are secured; devs do need a sustainable income after all. But that would also necessitate ignoring the potential performance degradation resulting in a poor first experience for players, and many publishers just leave it in for the lifetime of a game, which is a disaster waiting to happen (as seen here).

Overall, I think piracy is mostly a pricing issue above all else. With AAA titles getting increasingly more expensive and being released in broken states, it’s not surprising that people don’t want to spend $70 on a game that they might end up hating and opt to “demo” the game first. Refund policies can help alleviate the issue, but are hardly a silver bullet, with games inserting tons of fluff at the beginning to ensure you exceed the playtime threshold.

Either deliver the games you promise, or price them according to what’s actually there, and I’m sure the majority of gamers would be content in paying full price. DRM only serves to increase friction for the honest people paying for your games.

I switched to NixOS full-time after dual-booting Void for some time, and I couldn’t be happier to get away from Microsoft’s bullshit.

My only gripe is that I do a lot of audio production, and virtually none of the big names in the audio plugin space make Linux builds, despite the most common framework (JUCE) having Linux support out of the box.

Yabridge & WINE do a decent job of filling the gap, but using iLok protected plugins can be a bitch and a half, and unfortunately iLok is everywhere… Oh how I long for audio developers to start taking Linux seriously.