[syzygyhack]

That's not the only difference, it's not even the most significant difference. The difference is you don't own anything on Steam. Just like you don't own anything digital you buy on Amazon. If they want to revoke your ability to access content you paid for, they can and do.

In principle (not always in practice), crypto protects you from that.

[Herbstluft]

> Just like you don't own anything digital

True. But blockchain tech changes absolutely nothing about that in the realm of games and media, having a flag in a decentralized database does not protect me from a (game) server owner banning me, a drm system choosing to ignore said flag, or shutting down the whole game and refusing distribution. In these situation only piracy would help, and we don't need snakeoil for that.

In the end there will be a centralized entity with the power to deny my access.

Neither do cryptocurrencies change anything about this in the realms of finance as long as their complete existence builds on top of banks and exchanges, which it very much does.

Cryptocurrencies are not an alternative, they are an addon at best.

[syzygyhack]

It's not a magic wand. It facilitates new decentralized systems, it doesn't somehow fix the old ones.

You're assuming a world where digital content is administrated and supported by a centralized organization. If they stop respecting the license, it becomes worthless, no one can argue otherwise and no one is trying to.

A world where digital content is administrated by anyone (including by the user themselves) and interops with other services (games, social apps, or otherwise) does not see the assets suffer or lose value when one such service shuts its doors. They can just be taken elsewhere. One game goes down, a fork goes up, etc.

Blockchain does absolutely nothing to fix what's broken with today's systems, it provides the infrastructure for the alternative.

[_aavaa_]

All of that is beside the point since the discussion is about the old system. We are talking about closed-source games being sold through Steam.

[ignaloidas]

> The difference is you don't own anything on Steam.

Doesn't matter, because people still trade CSGO skins that they technically don't own for thousands with each other. As long as one account has something limited that can be transferred to another account, they own it. Even if the ownership is shaky as hell and dependent on corporate overlords.