I have seen that Ventura has much tighter inspections of modifications to executables. From that article :
The more stringent codesigning checks in Ventura verify that all notarized apps are correctly signed and have not been modified by unauthorized processes, even after the first launch. This is an improvement from previous versions of macOS, where Gatekeeper would only validate applications during their initial launch and would regard the file as trusted once it was successfully launched.
Should I stick with the previous MacOS version for as long as possible? I really don’t want to have to give money to fucking Adobe.
spoiler
Also - shut up, the apple lappie was literally half price because of a superficial tiny dent on one corner. I mostly use Linux.
I use Ventura and have been since release and haven’t had a single problem. You can just disable Gatekeeper.
I had to reinstall Ventura recently because I broke the Apple Books app (don’t try to relocate its storage directory via symlink, it will kill the app and the app is built in) back to the point: The reinstall preserved all of my data and apps except it deleted qBitTorrent and Soulseek. It did not stop me reinstalling them and using them like before tho.
I don’t use MacOS, but it seems like you can disable Gatekeeper with the command line. I doubt a change in its behavior would make a difference if it’s disabled in the first place.
I have been using Ventura and lately the latest Beta release of Sonoma, and haven’t noticed new difficulties or limitations in pirating apps.