Video games are no longer what we remember them as from our childhood. They gradually became social platforms. They let people self-express, and even become ways to earn real money. And despite all the goods, now tall gamers in the world are facing a huge crisis.

Players are tired of platforms (Steam, EGS, Apple, and Google Stores) limitations. You must always oblige to give away your data, your identity, your preferences to satisfy the bigger. And here we came to the digital autonomy idea.

Steam, DRM, and total control

We’ve all seen those memes of Gabe Newell as Jesus, right? There’s no point in criticizing him for his mistakes, but we can’t help but remember his overly high percentage for game distribution through Steam, some ad campaigns that were overly noisy, and other things that were generated by tight relationships with the publishers.

Despite all its pros, Steam is a platform with its own rules that change at the manager’s will and without warning. When you broke the rule about changing the region or downloaded a third-party mod and… Oops! Account blocked.

There is also the problem of political context. Some games may be banned due to content, theme, or the developer’s country, or even due to Mastercard complaints!

On the other hand, players in some countries do not have access to games, and this is all because the platform decided so.

It’s clear that this is causing outrage and user backlash. These days, there’s the rise of GOG with its DRM-free policy or itch.io, which offers uncensored indie games. More and more people vote for buying games from developers, not through greedy third-party. It sounds crazy, but players just want to regain the fundamental right to use what they paid for.

The problem of censorship on top platforms

In 2023-2025, the gaming community protested censorship several times. It was about banning games with “politically sensitive” plots and removing projects due to pressure from sponsors or advertisers.

And this goes a little beyond development or marketing. We just can’t be sure that a game won’t disappear from Steam in an instant because its developer made an inappropriate joke in X. So why don’t we look for an option where this definitely won’t happen?

The latest issues on Steam

One of the hottest topics today is whether Steam can actually unevitably delete thousands of games just because of the complaint from Collective Shout (a legal service that helps Mastercard take care of the dirty play with gamers), a company located in Australia.

The company made a valid point about inappropriate content, but despite a brave goal, the execution was a mess. Not only were the games with unhealthy 18+ content deleted, but some reasonably fair titles were also deleted. That’s where the protest began.

For now, gamers all over the world are working on a petition to Visa and Mastercard to stop harassing their money and choices. Even Yoko Taro, creator of the Nier world, is against censorship in the industry.

DTC sales

We’ve already mentioned that nowadays, more people buy games from game makers. Game devs also suffer from the totalitarianism of distributors, so they are increasingly returning to direct sales. Some make their own launchers, like the Epic Games Store or Riot Client. And some indie devs don’t have an intermediary at all. This way, they can better manage prices and interact with fans of their games.

NFT Games

Some have gone even further and are using blockchain technology in video games. For example, by playing Illuvium or Star Atlas, you become a co-owner of the product. By buying the game, you are actually buying the ownership, and this kind of deal is more likely to withstand the pressure than the game’s Steam Page.

Skins, inventory, collectibles – all of this becomes NFTs. These assets are stored in your crypto wallet, independent of the game servers. You can sell, give away, or keep them even if the game no longer exists.

You can influence the game economy in real life.

Freedom as a generational demand

As gamers, we have a desire for freedom that is not limited to gaming. It encompasses all digital behavior. We use VPNs and multi-accounting. We have cryptocurrency. We seek alternative launchers and anonymous platforms.

With that in mind, even such phenomena as slots sites not on GamStop become more understandable. It is not just about gambling. This is another example of how the user escapes the control system imposed on him.

As Altair said, nothing is true – everything is permitted.