memes

My steam key to download steam came with my physical copy of half life 2. I was there when the old magic was written, and that HL2 box was the last physical game I ever bought for my PC. For the decade before that, almost all my games were also digital copies, just not legit ones ;) And that's the part you're missing. Steam and Netflix were both easier and higher quality than pirating and cheap enough to justify. Netflix decided to milk that for all its worth, but Valve stuck to its plan and has consistently offered a very good alternative to piracy, which won over a generation of digital media hoarders.