Nonfree game programs (like other nonfree programs) are unethical because they deny freedom to their users. (Game art is a different issue, because it isn’t software.) If you want freedom, one requisite for it is not having or running nonfree programs on your computer. That much is clear.
However, if you’re going to use these games, you’re better off using them on GNU/Linux rather than on Microsoft Windows. At least you avoid the harm to your freedom that Windows would do.
I’ve had some really complicated feelings about nonfree games. The first thing to get out of the way is my treat brain that likes playing video games and has liked playing video games ever since I was old enough to pick up a Playstation 2 controller.
However, I can also recognize the immense level of harm that proprietary video games are capable of producing. The company, whose client program I effectively disengaged from, pioneered the online gambling epidemic that has only spread throughout the world (even in China, where efforts to curb the practice have sadly failed AFAIK). However it is that same company who created Proton, a translation layer for video games meant to be run on Windows to be able to run on GNU/Linux (so far, porting Wine to other free operating systems is possible) and have little to no performance loss. This program and the company’s tie-in hardware product “The Steam Deck” has been responsible for an upsurge in people using a free operating system, even if it is to play nonfree games using a DRM-based client.
I suppose that availability of popular nonfree programs on the GNU/Linux system can boost adoption of the system. However, the aim of GNU goes beyond “success”; its purpose is to bring freedom to the users. Thus, the larger question is how this development affects users’ freedom.
Perhaps some of these users will learn about the inherent value of software which respects your freedom. Maybe I am one of those users. To be honest, I started my journey into free software only two years ago, back when I installed Kubuntu 22.04 onto my lenovo laptop and marveled at a desktop that didn’t eat 4 GBs of RAM and didn’t have ads on startup. The freedom part came later, much later (I was still using Windows to play modded Fallout: New Vegas on my “gaming pc”).
Then I asked myself 
“What will I have after 500 years?” Well, not exactly, but the same sentiment. As I looked at my Steam library of games (I must have spent an embarrassing amount of money and time on) I just thought to myself for a very long while.
Why would I even delete my account? I can just leave it there if I ever want to use it again. If I delete it, I’m just going to wasting my money I spent on those games. I’ll be forced to buy them again, who would want to play video games with someone who doesn’t even have a Steam account. Steam is synonymous with video games, if you don’t have one (or its many shallow imitators), you don’t get to play games. If you don’t have a video game console, you don’t get to play games.
Just keep the account, just forget about it. Don’t install Steam on your operating system, the account can just stay. You’d be an idiot to waste your money and waste all this good VaLuE. 
To have freedom in your computing, requires rejecting nonfree software, pure and simple. You as a freedom-lover won’t use the nonfree game if it exists, so you won’t lose anything if it does not exist.
So I contacted Steam support and asked for them to delete my account, a few days later, they emailed back that they did.
After 500 years, I’ll still be freer than I was 500 years ago. 
I’m going to read a book now 
.
i see we’re stallmanposting
I’ll be forced to buy them again, who would want to play video games with someone who doesn’t even have a Steam account. Steam is synonymous with video games, if you don’t have one (or its many shallow imitators), you don’t get to play games. If you don’t have a video game console, you don’t get to play games.
ridiculous. 🏴☠️ is an option (and an important part of art preservation) and console emulators like dolphin and fightcade have netplay features that let you do local vs over the internet, xenia is working on it. people have reverse-engineered some of xbox live. make free-er versions of those things if the difference actually matters to you.
we’ll be dead in 500 years and our posterity will have infinite copies of the gog installer for new vegas, no matter how much of a piss baby hodd toward is, assuming capitalism didn’t kill everyone, and that videogaming isn’t replaced entirely by some kind of holodeck or legal super-LSD.
i see we’re stallmanposting
Seeing Stallman admit that using Steam on Linux is better than using Steam on Windows was amusing to me. Also most of his writing on gnu dot org is very good and he’s not the only writer on the site. Emphasis on most though.
My point was more about how one is suppossed to engage with obtaining video games, buying into both the nonfree video game and the DRM clients used to launch them and ending up not owning anything. I don’t see how the option of using illegally distributed copies makes my point ridiculous, that’s not how most people get their media (at least in the US). I mentioned video game consoles to make a connection with steam’s DRM and the DRM of game consoles.
make free-er versions of those things if the difference actually matters to you.
Again, my point was to critique Steam and the concept of digital marketplaces where non-ownership is the norm, which we collectively as a society have accepted as the new normal, not even batting an eye to it anymore. Deleting my Steam account was to prove to myself that I do not accept DRM nor do I endorse it. In doing so, I’ve made myself the weird one, someone whos not willing to go along and my internal conflict was suppossed to represent that.
I probably should have made it more clear that I do use emulators/cracked copies of games though. Don’t worry about me comrade.
we’ll be dead in 500 years
I don’t know if I should be banking on right to repair and libre cyborg bodies right about now /j.
i guess for me the thing with steam drm is that it’s so trivial to defeat that it doesn’t actually matter. i care way more that we don’t have source or tools for these things than the fact that i need to spoof some dll file.
i think the bigger “problem” if steam shut its doors tomorrow is network stuff rather than losing access to software. you’re not going to get cod kids to not play cod so it doesn’t seem like a fruitful windmill to tilt at.
It goes beyond gaming. There’s a similar phenomenon where millennials and zoomers would rather just listen music on Spotify than have local copies of music albums even if that means access to music is completely controlled by a corporation. This shows that for all the hype about the thin client-mainframe paradigm being supplanted by individual desktops, the thin client-mainframe paradigm still exists. People don’t want to lug around tens of thousands of local copies, whether they’re songs or videogames or movies, let along spend effort in file management to make those tens of thousands of copies organized.
The thin client-mainframe paradigm is probably what socialized computing would look like. In other words, people having individual desktops is the computing equivalent of people driving around in cars instead of using public transportation. Just imagine how much power is consumed with desktops versus thin clients. Any personal files like photos can just be saved in an external drive. But does the videogame itself or the music player or the video player need to actually be locally saved? And by thin client, it doesn’t have to be currently existing thin clients since smartphones can easily fill that role as well.
The problem with Spotify, Steam, Netflix, and so on has more to do with them being privately owned than their existence in and of themselves. Piracy or using GOG to buy games is just a workaround to the Steam problem. The actual solution is to nationalize Steam and expropriate it from Gabe’s grubby hands.
unfortunately the ui on spotify is better than my folders full of mp3s and flacs. i should take another look for a downloader though, sometimes the ISP shits its pants.
The thin client-mainframe paradigm is probably what socialized computing would look like. In other words, people having individual desktops is the computing equivalent of people driving around in cars instead of using public transportation. Just imagine how much power is consumed with desktops versus thin clients. Any personal files like photos can just be saved in an external drive. But does the videogame itself or the music player or the video player need to actually be locally saved? And by thin client, it doesn’t have to be currently existing thin clients since smartphones can easily fill that role as well.
depending on the videogame yeah you fucking want that shit local. Streaming crap like Stadia (rip bozo) is not good enough for fast response games and socialism isn’t going to make FTL networks. games with no time pressure on the player could be remote with little to no loss of fidelity but anything like hades, street fighter, or shooters suffer horribly with as little as 30ms extra input delay.
Lots of mod making would be an extra pain in the ass if i have to upload the modified files to some server to be processed and then streamed back to me. Speaking of networks, again, if the ISP has problems or limitations you want all that stuff local too.
The actual solution is to nationalize Steam and expropriate it from Gabe’s grubby hands.
yeah steam and it’s shitty imitators, all media stores and streaming sites really, should be a public monopoly that people can make their own front-ends.
