It can certainly be both. A worse service might be worth a cheaper price. And people will pay extra for good service. That's literally the airline ticket business model.

It was also 100% a payment issue back when I was a broke student and paying for things simply wasn't an option. The fact that Steam offered a more convenient service than the pirates at the time was irrelevant because I couldn't afford it.

[–] crispy_kilt@feddit.de 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

This is a good point.

If you cannot pay, then you either pirate or not - you don't buy, because you can't. In either case, the producer loses nothing, because there is nothing to gain.

In the other case where you could pay, but doing so is much more painful than pirating, the producer is the idiot - they made it painful to buy. They are losing sales not because people don't want to pay but because they make buying the product painful.