I'm willing to bet game pass will come to the steam deck. Also, that's fair. Subscription models for tentative and unsustainable game series makes sense. My issue is more with normal games having to compete with game pass.

I'm willing to bet game pass will come to the steam deck. Also, that's fair. Subscription models for tentative and unsustainable game series makes sense. My issue is more with normal games having to compete with game pass.

Game pass isn't going to come to steam deck. Not as a native app that installs games locally. You can already stream games through the web browser that's all you will get. The fact they are making changes to windows and partnering with Asus on releasing Xbox hardware in the same space is more than enough evidence, but also, the steam deck is a tiny part of the market(it might be the best but it is still tiny). Linux as a whole is also nothing for Microsoft to worry about, it is slowly increasing in market share, sure. But it is nothing on the scale of windows, and won't be for years at the current growth rate.

>The fact they are making changes to windows and partnering with Asus on releasing Xbox hardware in the same space is more than enough evidence, but also, the steam deck is a tiny part of the market(it might be the best but it is still tiny). I do wonder how this works for offline play which is fairly common for handheld PCs. Does Game Pass work for offline games?

But why would you buy a game if game pass exists?

  

Counterpoint: Without music streaming or pirating I wouldn't have discovered most of the artists I listen to. Artists of which I have bought concert tickets and merch (and in one case recurring support through youtube membership), and even just buying songs on bandcamp outright in spite of only listening via streaming. Streaming is shit at generating revenue, but far far better at allowing artists to get noticed, which puts more power into the artists' hands rather than labels. "Support what you like through donations and merch" seems like a much better model overall (and has been proven to work), which also allows people with less money to enjoy the music while those with money to spare support it (and usually artists would want nothing more than for everyone to be able to enjoy their work, but they also have to live off something). Though this is an outside perspective and I'd be interested in what actual musicians have to say about it, particularly those that have been making a living/significant money off it both before and after the event of streaming (and not the huge ones, because they never had any exposure issues). There's also a chance that as a result of the discoverability, even if total money reaching the artists was unchanged, it's split over more recipients, so it's harder to actually make a living off it, but maybe easier to see at least some returns instead of it only being a money sink. Whether that'd be good or bad overall I can't say.

Of course its better for consumers, thats why they do it. Its worse for artists, that was the original point.

Piracy always exists and will always be there once you get an awful deal as a customer. That's what's already happening to streaming services. If they don't learn from that, they'll just suffer later on.