We have all witnissed the debacle about a rootkit - denuvo anti-cheat - being added to Doom Eternal after release. While, yes, a lot of focus around this wasnt just that they did it but that they waited to do this till after the reviews are in.
But, no, that just shows they knew it is wrong, thats all. It wouldnt have been any less wrong to do this from the beginning.
I am currently still using steam and will keep doing so, i own those games (and, no, valve, in europe you cant just ban me from steam, either, its not a service, ive been billed for those individual games, in fact you are lucky if you dont have to allow me to resell them anyways, wouldnt be the first time an european court told you you have to enable me to sell my games. ) but buying new ones?
Im sorry, as long as you dont take a hard stance against rootkits such as denuvo anti-cheat being used by developers/publishers, if you tolerate rootkits on your plattform, i will have to buy all my games on GOG from now on.
As for all other devs, wether you use denuvo specificly or not, while i may be young ive got enough games to last me a lifetime, espacialy with modding.
Can still have a blast even with games that came out long before ive been born and weve got Dosbox for that.
If you cant meet the standarts of GOG - which are, no copyprotection or DRM AT ALL, well, you are out of luck if you want my money. We know for a fact that piracy is GOOD for business by now. We have the studies showing just that. Whenever a popular pirating website is taken down, sales of games or tickets in the case of movies go down, too, espacialy for smaller projects, while bigger projects with a ton of promotion benefit less from piracy. While i may not condone piracy beyond testing wether it runs on your system in the first place (which, if you cant test it you wouldnt buy it so i guess thats a perfect example of boosting sales), im well aware that it DOES boost sales. The researchers havent proven WHY it boosts sales, are hypothethising word of mouth from people that dont havve the money, either way it does.