Why Does Piracy Feel Better When You're Broke?

Why does piracy sometimes feel better than paying? I'm currently broke, and that made me start noticing something I probably wouldn't have thought about otherwise: almost everything we consume digitally has become a subscription, a platform exclusive, a region wide restriction to the media, or simply a $70 purchase, or some combination of all of the above. So, I started with a simple question: Why does piracy feel so attractive when you're broke? What started as a rant about expensive entertainment turned into a much stranger rabbit hole involving Netflix, streaming fragmentation, digital ownership, DRM, Steam, Spotify, game prices, region restricted availability and access, preservation of media, and the question of why people pirate things they could technically afford. Maybe piracy isn't simply about getting things for free, It's actually about convenience, it's about availability, it's about ownership, or simply maybe it's about something much simpler: “Maybe people don't hate paying. They hate feeling like they're getting a worse deal.” This isn't an argument that piracy is automatically good, or that creators don't deserve to be paid. It's an attempt to understand why piracy keeps coming back over and over again and why the legal alternatives feels like the worse product. Link to Full Interview of Gabe Newell:    • Gabe Newell on Video Game Piracy (Full Ver...   Link to the Study by University of Twente: https://essay.utwente.nl/ CHAPTERS: 00:00 – Introduction 01:36 – The First Problem 04:20 – Is It About Money? 21:20 – Piracy is a Mirror 27:31 – Conclusion Subscribe if you enjoy:    / @theumerk1   (Thanks!) #Piracy #Streaming #Gaming #DigitalOwnership #Internet #Netflix #YouTube #Entertainment #Anime #Manga #Spotify