Yeah I've been on and off dabbling in downloads for probably a solid 20 years now and it never really "died". I frequently download things like games to avoid dropping £40+ on something that might be completely worthless before I'll throw money at it. And I know steam refunds are pretty good now but they're not perfect and anything out of steam isn't affected by them. Hell my most played steam game, rimworld, I initially pirated and dropped before trying again later on and buying. I'm happy to pay for things like streaming services if they actually provide something I want and I don't have to navigate the bs. If they can't sort out licensing then that's not really a me problem, it's a them problem. After Netflix started price hikes and screwing around with recommendations I dropped it.

[–] Schmoo@startrek.website 3 points 5 days ago

Hell my most played steam game, rimworld, I initially pirated and dropped before trying again later on and buying.

Back in the day you could buy Rimworld directly from the developer's website and that shit was portable. I played it off a flash drive on my high school computers. Did the same thing with FTL as well. Most of my hours in those games are not logged, lol.