>Why not just try it and if it's sucks throw it away, the same way you might with a new food item? That argument doesn't work on them for some reason.

Even mediocre food is still functional, and usually still enjoyable.

Quite a lot of paid software does not meet that bar. It's far more likely to both cost you money and waste a few hours (much longer than that food demanded, unless you got food poisoning).

I generally agree it's far out of balance, but I do think it's broadly understandable.

IMO the problem of many platforms is that they don't let you "own" the software (whatever that means).

Steam experience is closer to the feel of ownership because: - Most games don't just randomly upgrade. They are stable. - Steam is cross platform enough that you can use the software on different devices as if you were copying it. - Your steam account isn't the center of your digital life, it's access isn't subject to many associated risks.

Thanks to Australian customer protection laws, Steam has some of the most lenient refund policies among digital software stores. You can usually get a full refund if your play time is less than a few hours. Plus there are frequent sales. Don’t underestimate the psychological impact of making people feel “I have to buy this now or the deal will be gone.”

I genuinely do not know how to get a refund from the google play store or the apple equivalent.

(The downside of the Steam policy is it makes Steam unviable for games that can be played in full very quickly. Develops can also game the system by dragging out early game so the player is over the refundable time by the time they reach the rough parts. But this is for another discussion.)

Maybe one of the reasons is that buying software in general case is more complicated. Kebab around the corner does not ask you for credit card details, delivery address, probably will not want to track what you will be doing while digesting the kebab etc… In contrast buying a CD in 90’s was more like buying a food, but the price usually was too high. That grown into huge pirate software markets, like in eastern Europe. To extents like the other commenter said - “nobody ever will pay for software”.

I think it is because humans spent thousands, tens of thousands of years not doing much other than searching for food and trading one physical object for another physical object.

The idea of trading something valuable for an abstract piece of software or paper is still not really natural to us, and is a learned behavior.

I think it depends on the demographic.

I still see a lot of people who are afraid of purchasing on the internet and give out their card number. My mother in law ask her daughters to call her a uber when she needs one because she is afraid of installing the app and giving her credit card number[1]. Yet she has all the social medias installed on her smartphone.

[1] The irony is she apparently don't care the her own daughters would have to take that risk for her.

Also, do people not pay for it because there are still so many free competing services?

If everything goes the way of ads and (for lack of a better term) enshittification, could consumer attitudes change?