Comment by jandrese

If the Apple II had something similar to Steam do you think you would have pirated as much? Ignore the fact that the tech wasn't ready yet and imagine a world where buying Apple II software was as frictionless as buying a Steam game. Also imagine that the software went on deep discounts regularly that allowed you to build up a big backlog of games to play. Do you think you would have been motivated to seek out the seedy underbelly of the software world looking for illicit copies to add to your backlog? Certainly there are some people like that, but they might be a fairly small minority. And then suddenly DRM isn't really helpful because even if it might stop a minority of people who weren't going to buy your game in the first place it always costs you in frustration for paying customers.