Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

That sucks and all, but to be fair this is entirely on you. They sold you a DRM-Free file and you chose to not actually use it and to rely on their servers which you have no control over. This isn't a "DRM Free" issue.

Personal ownership means you take personal responsibility for it.

If you buy something DRM free, you must keep an offline copy. They can take away the option to download it, but they can't prevent you from playing the copy you already downloaded.

On Bandcamp you could have downloaded the files, the song could still be playable and you would still own it. DRM-free just allows you to download stuff so that if anything changes in the future you still have the original available, anything hosted can be changed at any time in order to stay out of trouble as a site owner. It still sucks that this is happening though

Louis Rossmann shouts this from the YouTube rooftops all the time. Why not Randall?

Of course it's real. This is maybe one of the least shocking beliefs from a webcomic like xkcd ever. Like 1/5 of all the comics are about hacker culture or Linux.

He's gotten a bit less edgy over the years. Mostly in good ways.

It should be illegal to revoke or modify people's purchases. All games should be able to be kept and played using the version you bought it at except maybe MMOs due to technical reasons. Forced updates and DRM need to be outlawed.

I literally had to look this up just now. Such a high profile game did such a huge thing and somehow I am just now hearing about it? Insane, tbh.

I chose to pirate Minecraft back when Notch was charging $20 CAD for a game in which the health bar didn't work, and I've been nothing but validated by every decision around the game since.

I haven't played Minecraft since they took it from me.

sometimes, especially with niche artists, there aren't that many high quality flacs out there in the first place

Bandcamp only works if the band originated there. Most labels don't sell anything through bandcamp. If a label doesn't release digital lossless for me to buy it's getting downloaded on Soulseek.

Also PSA that Amazon Auto-Rip still exists for all CD and vinyl purchases you ever used your account for

256kbps AAC is still proprietary, but you can convert it to an MP3 with something like dBPowerAmp

i don't buy audible anymore but i had a sizable library from before and this works great!

Many Steam games are actually DRM free. You can just copy the game folder onto a flash drive, sometimes modify a single file, and then run it from the flash drive in any PC.

You should still buy from GOG first imo, but I wouldn't entirely count out Steam.

if it’s not on GOG, you can also check itch.io!

iirc all games there are DRM-free as well (tho I could be wrong)

But then you should also back up the optional downloadable install files for each game. Just using the launcher is not a fail proof way to keep your game collection

...or Humble Bundle if they offer the actual software download.

Not if they just offer Steam keys.

In my opinion.