I believe the text here is:

“Pay for our product”

“Make your product available for purchase”

Best way to get me to not pirate your game and buy it is to have a decent demo available. Against the Storm is a bizarre pitch (Rouge-lite City builder), but they had a good demo that allows unlimited play on the standard biome with a level cap. Was incredibly easy to try it and play enough to decide I like it.

Video game piracy has led to more purchases from me, because I’ll download a game to try on a whim that I wouldn’t have purchased, find out that’s it really good and buy it

I don’t know what makes you think I wasn’t asking, and I still don’t understand what you think a strawman is, but thank you for actually answering the question.

Personally I can think of better uses for $150 a year then “I don’t like having keys in my pocket/near the door” but I guess there’s a reason we keep seeing more companies trying to profit off subscriptions…

That’s why it’s an additional subscription feature.

So why is it worth a subscription? You’re defending it as something that is not a basic feature that validates the subscription, but asking what the feature actually provides is somehow a strawman?

How is asking you a follow-up question a strawman exactly? What do you think a strawman is?

Why do I need to unlock my car over the internet? What is the use case over a FOB?

My car has remote lock and unlock on a FOB, no reason for an app and subscription.
I also get the feeling that the diagnostics are done on board by the car, it’s just refusing to give you the information unless you’re paying the sub.

The comment I originally replied to:

They would just have to start DMing us meme images hosted on a server they control, and they’d get a list of IPs. All we’d have to do is look.

So they would send random DMs with pictures, to threaten lawsuits they couldn’t enforce, to achieve what exactly?

“Judge, they looked at this publicly accessible image” is hardly evidence

Sometimes you don’t have to win a court case legally, to win a court case. Just the harassment of the lawsuit is enough.

That’s not a lawsuit they would even attempt, as it would get immediately thrown out.

Unless anyone shared the in image link anywhere else on the internet. “Judge, they looked at this publicly accessible image” is hardly evidence

I have several games on Steam that I’ve “played” for less than an hour but have most of the achievements for because I’ve purchased it after finishing a pirated copy.

You can’t really “steal” services, even though they sometimes call it that.

If you hire me to paint your portrait and then don’t pay me you have stolen my labour. I have given my time and effort and have not been reimbursed for it.

If you paid me and then gave your neighbour a copy of your portrait then you have not stolen my labour.

I guess you can’t steal anything when you just decide to limit the definition of the word.

I guess you can steal anything when you expand the definition of the word to anything you want.

You live on the internet, it would take you 5 seconds to link to the “actual definition” you are using if the word was actually used that way.

Haven’t had any issues like that in decades. It’s pretty easy to find trusted sources and not download shady looking files.

You realize it’s even easier to pirate a game, play it without worrying about a time limit, and purchase it later if I like it?

The only games I haven’t pirated to try before buying are games that have a demo available.

YouTube: makes ads more and more intrusive.

People: block annoying intrusive ads.

This guy: “YoU’rE jUsT hUrTiNg ThE cReAtOr!”

Companies will keep making ads worse and worse until people stop putting up with it. I’m not going to put up with their bullshit so that the content creator can get 0.0001 cents from my view. If you want to support the creator that’s what Patreon is for.