Well can you see beforehand which game uses Steam DRM? And I still need the client installed to download anything, and even then I only archive the actual game, not any dependency.

They were also complicated circuit boards with full color manuals and box graphics, none of which is in digital nor the overhead of the creation thereof.

and today they sell like 10x as many copies.

Yeah fair it is arbitrary, but the line in the sand must be drawn somewhere. So coming from PC platform and 59,99 being the agreed upon number for probably decade or more is a good enough arbitrary point to use as a line in the sand.

The perceived value back then was not having to pluck down 25c every time you played at the arcade. So even if the price was high it seemed cheap in the long run.

Editt : reading it again I've missed my point by a decade, this applies mostly to the late 80s

No need to apologize for ranting, rant on.

Yeah, but it suffices as a line in the sand. We could probably use horse armor as well, but that's even more arbitrary and there are few publisher who have managed to keep mtx based market under control and run a free successful game for years, ex POE.

Yes, but that's just finding justifications for publisher who use every possible opportunity to screw us over at every opportunity while delivering shittier products every year.

No need to run free PR for them, corpos have whole departments for that. Fuck em, use the same mentality corpos use towards us, show them no mercy or forgiveness. Treat corpos with the contempt they deserve. We are the ones who have to exert the counter force, not just accept whatever they throw at us.