Imagine this situation: you bought a new BMW car for, let's say, $74,000.
Adaptive suspension, a 360-degree camera system, auto-parking, heated seats—all of this is built into your car. But here’s the catch: to actually heat your new seats, you have to pay a subscription of $18 a month.  

The situation is not new. According to Zuora data, the subscription market has grown by 435% over the last 10 years and is now worth $492 billion.
Companies used to earn money once by selling a product. Now, they earn money by granting temporary access to it— this makes the flow of money limitless.

We can no longer buy a specific movie and put it on a shelf. Instead, we pay for temporary access to a catalog where the movie we want might not even be there.
The average user pays $84 to $150 per month for digital subscriptions. That’s $1,800 a year for access to movies and music that we might not even like that much.

The Steam User Agreement explicitly states that your account and all its content are not your property.
You bought the game for full price, but it doesn't belong to you. You can't lend it to a friend, trade it or resell it. You can’t even leave it to someone in your will.    

Any content can be removed from the catalog at any time without your knowledge.
In 2024, Ubisoft revoked the licenses for all owners of the game The Crew—and it was absolutely legal. The game simply ceased to exist.

We can’t even repair our own tractors.
John Deere has built protected software into its tractors. Even if you bought a tractor for $500,000, you cannot repair it yourself. Any serious diagnostics or repairs require connection to official dealer software.  

People feel that the rules of the game have changed unilaterally and are reacting accordingly.
In addition to a gradual return to physical media like vinyl and DVDs, a slogan is gaining popularity on the internet: «If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.»

Torrent trackers are popular worldwide again; users are switching to open source, setting up their own music and movie servers, and increasingly using underground libraries.
Piracy has stopped being shameful—it is perceived as a rational response to corporate greed.