this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
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Steam Deck

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I've been a Steam customer for a very long time, having spent a few thousand dollars over the years with them. Like many of you, I've got a (small?) group of games that I bought and barely-if-ever played, and I'm cool with that. As they say, piracy is a service problem, and Steam is just... easy.

That was until I bought my Deck. Suddenly, I had two devices on which I could play my games: my proper gaming rig upstairs and my Deck plugged into the TV downstairs.

I also however, have a kid that likes video games, so sometimes I let her play a few games on the TV... and that's where everything breaks down. If she's playing Lego Marvel on the Deck, my copy of Dyson Sphere Program flakes out upstairs with a warning that "someone else is playing a game, so this game will have to shut off" or some nonsense like that.

I'm suddenly face to face with the fact that I don't actually own my games and those few thousand dollars weren't spent on what I expected. It's... enraging to put it gently.

I can appreciate that there would be an attempt to prevent me from playing the same game on two devices (though I think that's bullshit too), but to prevent me from playing two different games on two different machines when both are legally purchased running on my own hardware is not ok.

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[–] k1ck455kc 142 points 3 days ago (37 children)

This is a problem that Steam Family Share exists to solve.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 days ago (23 children)

the fact that I don’t actually own my games

It doesnt solve this in the slightest. Steam and game publishers can always take your games away without prior notice.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 3 days ago (14 children)

You never own any game, unless you code it yourself. You might hold a CD in your hands, but the game is still owned by someone else. You only have the right to use it as noted in the license you agreed by purchasing it.

[–] DScratch 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It’s true. Every book, movie, game or piece of software you’ve ever used (unless you made it yourself) has been subject to some kind of licence, that can be revoked.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Sure but no one is going to come in to my home and take my physical books away in the same way that can happen with online digital services.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You can reverse this logic though. If you lose or damage your physical copy it’s gone forever, digital copies can mostly be redownloaded/recovered anytime.

[–] Dariusmiles2123 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I had never thought about this but this is a great argument in favor of digital vs physical.

Still I prefer owning my games when given the choice.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

One issue is that, unless you (can) back them up yourself, digital goods can be changed. If I bought The Twits on Kindle, it literally wouldn't be the same book that I read as a child because they decided that words like "ugly" are too much for children. Even if I bought it before they censored it - it would be "updated".

[–] Dariusmiles2123 3 points 2 days ago

Good argument too.

I guess they’re adavantages and inconvenients in every situation.

What you’re talking about could even happen on a physical game receiving an online update.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

It's a great argument for backups. I don't think clod/DRM based services are the best backup - certainly they're not a complete backup system.

If you have a local system and/or communication failure, or bandwidth limitation; how long to restore the backup?

A backup on a local storage should be possible to plug into another computer and access fairly easily.

Ideally your backup system will give some resilience against many types of risk scenario, especialy for the data you care most about or can't go for a long time without. The fact that it's harder to backup DRM stuff is a limitation - so I'd avoid DRM unless i don't care about the thing.

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