[kelnos]

> I've not pirated games since I was a teenager, because Steam is such a good service, and I'm happy to pay for games.

I'm happy to pay for games too, but I've stopped buying from Steam unless they're not available elsewhere. GOG has been my go-to, as they only sell games without DRM.

If Valve someday goes belly-up, or just decides to stop running their license servers, all those games we've bought on Steam are just gone, absent (illegal, in the US, anyway) third-party tools to strip the DRM. I believe some versions of Stream DRM can be removed, but not all.

I just don't see the need to reward a company that treats me like a criminal when I can get the same games from a company that respects me and my purchase.

(Bonus: Steam-the-software even allows you to add non-Steam games to the app, which makes it easy to run non-native games I've bought from GOG under Proton, for example.)

[f1refly]

The key point for me with valve is their ongoing efforts to make software they license to me easier for me to use. This is completely opposed to the rest of the media industry, who are working exclusively to make my experience worse. Thanks to valves efforts I can now easily run many games that would've been windows only a few years ago.

[zirgs]

Valve also currently sells the best handheld console on the market.