I imagine they will just switch to offering cloud gaming exclusively. It allows them to sell to anyone with a screen, regardless of specs. It also aligns perfectly with the ongoing death of local gaming hardware.

▲

hombre_fatal a day ago | parent [-]

People have been claiming this in response to piracy for decades, yet people still go out and buy the official game.

Perhaps game developers already have the tools they need: try distributing your browser version of a game anybody cares about instead of a 20 year old game. This game isn't even available on Steam/GOG.

▲

cubefox a day ago | parent [-]

Only 20 year old games have any hope running in the browser. And why would anyone pay for a game running in a browser? It doesn't make any sense.

> yet people still go out and buy the official game.

Not all people, especially not if piracy is easy.

▲

hombre_fatal a day ago | parent [-]

> why would anyone pay for a game running in a browser?

The same reason you buy any game. Why did anyone pay for Runescape when it ran in the browser? Btw, with webgl/webgpu/wasm you can make high fidelity, high performant 3D games. The top games on Twitch are World of Warcraft, League of Legends, and Minecraft -- all trivial to build in the browser.

But browser gaming isn't relevant to the point. It's just piracy. The only reason this is on HN is because "click here to play this pirated game" is a lot more interesting than "download this pirated game".

Piracy didn't kill the gaming industry. I think the bigger threat is indie games that are trivial to clone with AI.

	▲	cubefox 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It didn't outright kill it, but it did have a negative effect on it, and this effect might get a lot worse now with LLMs cracking various copy protection mechanisms.