It's not clear what freedom you are sacrificing. Nobody is forcing you to play those games. If you don't want to let them run their anti cheat system, don't do it. This is not some unavoidable measure.
This has nothing at all to do with whether you are "forced" to do anything. Anyone who wants to play games should be able to do so without some abusive anticheat taking over their machine.
It doesn't matter what's written in their silly EULAs which nobody reads. I couldn't care less if it ruins the games or costs them billions in profits. You are morally justified in defeating their silly anticheat nonsense in order to enjoy games on your terms without them pwning your computer. You are only morally wrong if you actually cheat.
And it's not at all some "strange hill to die on". This is a fundamental computing freedom issue. It's about who owns the keys to the machine. It's the exact same issue Android users face when they install GrapheneOS only to discover their bank doesn't support it just because it's not owned by Google. In my opinion this should be literally illegal.
"abusive", "silly", "couldn't care less", "nonsense", "literally illegal". I don't think you'll find many people want to join your cause if you are this aggressive.
More on topic, I agree that you should be allowed to do with your computer what you want. That includes defeating their anti-cheat measures. Your computer, your rules. In return, they can refuse to support you or ban them from their servers. Their stuff, their rules.
But this idea that you are entitled to tell them they have to provide you with a version that does not have their anti-cheat measures, that is pretty far out there. That is where most people will stop following your reasoning.
> I don't think you'll find many people want to join your cause if you are this aggressive.
If I come off as aggressive, it's only because of my exasperation due to people sacrificing freedom for video games of all things. Online games that will be dead after a couple years. What a colossal waste.
Anyway, I'm no politician. I'm actually very close to giving up on these so called "causes", precisely because people refuse to listen. There's no point. Being polite doesn't make them listen. Nobody listened to Stallman. Threaten their convenience, their fun and games, and they're gone.
If they won't listen, then they deserve the consequences. One day all the corporations and authorities will start turning the screws on them. Only then will they start caring about this stuff. Nobody will listen to them either.
> But this idea that you are entitled to tell them they have to provide you with a version that does not have their anti-cheat measures, that is pretty far out there.
The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero. You could have zero fraud by ramping up the requirements before you trust someone enough to transact with them. That will result in very few purchases though. Decreases profits. So what they do is they let it happen and eat the costs. Fraud isn't a crime, it's an expense. Accounted for.
The optimal amount of crime is non-zero. You could virtually eliminate crime by implementing an orwellian dystopia where everybody is surveilled at all times. Nobody actually wants to endure such a subhuman existence though, so we're forced to accept the risk of crime. Tolerating some amount of crime is the price of our basic human dignity.
Same logic generalizes to online games. The optimal amount of cheating is non-zero. They could eliminate it by taking the computer away from us. That's an affront to our dignity as the owners of the machines. So we have to tolerate some cheating in order to keep our dignity.
These considerations are accounted for in society as a whole. It's no different here.
What a strange hill to want to die on.