Carighan MaconarSteam keeps on winning
echo64I know everyone loves Valve, but it feels super weird to be celebrating a monopoly so much and so ferociously. (I know Steam isn’t a technical monopoly. We don’t need to have that discussion)
Gaben is old, and he’s gonna retire. It’ll likely be a lot sooner than anyone here is comfortable with. When Valve gets sold, or even when gaben isn’t in total control anymore, things are going to start changing, and there isn’t going to be a healthy, diverse marketplace to soften that.
There is a very good chance that the PC platform will be a really horrible place because of the lack of consumer choice in which they can purchase and play games.
Yep.
People fanboy over Steam endlessly without realizing that with time, it will turn to shit as well.
More competition is good, and maybe Epic is shit today but if their leadership changes then maybe it could actually significantly improve and surpass Steam.
But if it doesn’t exist, then if Steam turns to shit then you’re much more likely to just be stuck with shit.
In a similar vein, I’m still surprised that so few people care about possible long term issues of digital distribution generally.
I can still legally buy Atari 2600 games that are pushing 50 years old, but a whole bunch of games are gonna disappear from the legal market if Steam shuts down. Similarly, I can give away the old box of Atari games to my kids, and they can keep playing them after I die, but I can’t even fucking give away my digital games. Sure, I can give them the password, but that’s not even technically allowed. And they’re probably gonna figure out the account isn’t being used by the original owner and delete it when it’s 120 years old or some shit.
The whole thing is a good temporary solution, but it’s a shit long term solution. It basically relies on pirates for preservation. Thankfully, they’re doing a pretty good job for most games.
Also, in theory a VC firm can buy up someone like Steam or EGS and start charging a monthly fee to access the games you already bought. You will have the option of giving up your collection or paying.
VlynPreservation is a joke. Sure, for super old games sold on cartridges it works. But for anything around… 1998 to 2010 or so? Forget it.
Even when you owned the original PC CDs with the box, the game updates are no longer available (Developer might not even exist anymore, site is shutdown). And if you get the wrong DRM like SecuROM you can’t start your game at all. Valid CD key or not (I tried it with Sacred 2, couldn’t get it to run due to the DRM servers being gone. Support from the shop I bought it years ago just gave me a Steam key afterwards, lol). And of course even if you get things to run, the online servers are no longer available, so that limits it to singleplayer games mostly.
Looking back at all the games I bought right now Steam is doing the best job when it comes to actually keep them running. GOG is a good second place. Hell, my PC doesn’t even have a DVD drive anymore, it’s simply not necessary.
Having played on PC for the last ~27 years I really don’t understand the nostalgia. PC gaming back then was a major hassle between physical media, manual game patching (version 1.01a to 1.01b to 1.02 to 1.1 to …) and shitty DRM that barely worked. We can only hope Steam isn’t going down the gutter, but for now they rake in tons of cash and it’s a privately held company so it should be fine.
This has not been my experience at all. The vast majority of my PC games from 1998 to 2010 are still working well. Yes, it is sometimes a pain to find updates, but my experience has been that many games from that time period worked acceptably well straight off the disc. And most games I want to play I can still find legal copies of on eBay or elsewhere.
In contrast, a number of newer games have already been delisted from Steam and are only available to pirates or people who bought them before they were delisted.
Also, preservation isn’t just about keeping it running right now. You can’t transfer licenses of Steam games. Anything that’s delisted will, outside of piracy, die when the account holders die. In contrast, I can buy legal physical copies of games that haven’t been sold for 20 years.
Well, physical media breaks, discs get scratched and you might no longer find the updates.
If you want to preserve your games nowadays your best option is buying from GOG and backing up your installers (it’s DRM free and with no launcher). But it’s a massive hassle compared to just using Steam and having auto updates. The GOG launcher that does updates for you exists, but it’s a bit meh.
Anything that’s delisted will, outside of piracy, die when the account holders die.
Not totally true, it’s allowed to bequeath your account to someone through your will. At least for your Steam account. Of course you have to take care to do that before you die…
Valve isn’t going broke anytime soon, they get around a 30% cut of every game sold and on top of that they also get a cut from all the steam market transactions. Valve is a privately owned company, which means no shareholders who want constant growth for any price, so for a company worth around 7.7 billion USD in 2022 I’m really not afraid Steam will go away anytime soon.
And even if Steam has to shut down, Gaben at least made the promise to give you downloads for all your purchased games. You can decide how much that’s worth.
Well, physical media breaks, discs get scratched and you might no longer find the updates.
This is true, but, and maybe I’m weird, I’ve lost more games due to account issues / services shutting down than I have from damaged discs. Plus, it’s fair use (in most countries) to make disc images of your own discs, so you actually have an option to legally preserve your games beyond the life of the media.
I agree about GOG.
Not totally true, it’s allowed to bequeath your account to someone through your will. At least for your Steam account. Of course you have to take care to do that before you die…
No exception was provided for this last time I looked through the subscriber agreement. I’m not real keen on reading through it again. Can you share the relevant portion?
And even if Steam has to shut down, Gaben at least made the promise to give you downloads for all your purchased games. You can decide how much that’s worth.
I tried to track down the source of this comment years ago, and I’m not convinced he ever said it. It goes back to someone on the Steam forums saying that he said it. Others on Reddit tried to track it down and I’m not aware that anyone ever succeeded.
No exception was provided for this last time I looked through the subscriber agreement. I’m not real keen on reading through it again. Can you share the relevant portion?
Ah, it’s unfortunately not in the contract. They do it (See for example this answer where another family member got the account after their little brother died), but it looks like it’s not a guarantee.
As for the big red button at Valve, I can only find snippets of information. The only “official” one: imgur.com/4sa1Ln6 Most information is just from interviews or private messages, claiming there is an inner senior circle at Valve and they do have a contingency plan.
What will happen to my Steam games when I die?
Answer (1 of 21): There are some great and fulsome answers here with regards to legality of assets ownership after death, digital rights, etc. But I'm going to take this question a little more literally: what will happen to those digital assets long after you're dead, not from an ownership standp...