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Steam's new disclaimer reminds everyone that you don't actually own your games, GOG moves in for the killshot: Its offline installers 'cannot be taken away from you' (www.pcgamer.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Doesn't steam have a clause to the effect of "if we go out of business, you'll get X period to download your games so you can manage them yourself"?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I don't know if it's a clause but Gabe said it at one point. Is that legally binding though? It wouldn't surprise me one bit that whatever VC eventually buys steam and then runs it into the ground would have no problem changing the user agreement to whatever suited them....

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

I think I read in the steam agreement itself - I could be wrong, but I generally have a source tagged to my knowledge, and the knowledge is tagged as a direct quote from the document

And yes, if a VC buys out steam I'd be horrified, but it's structurally resistant to that. It's largely employee owned and heavily employee managed, their handbook helped me understand the concept of how employee owned businesses could be the answer to many of society's problems

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

It's not legally binding, since it isn't part of the user agreement you review when buying games on Steam.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If there’s a grace period, perhaps, however:

Steam does not provide installers for games, this means that whatever game you want, needs to be 100% functional and already be parsed/deployed/installed by steam on your hard drive.
That game needs to be DRM free, meaning that it has an executable available that can be launched without steam running or requiring any sort of authentication or input from the steam servers/services before being able to launch, play or even interact with the menus

So only the DRM free games will remain, and only the installed ones at that. Anything that wasn’t will be lost to the wind the moment the distribution service or storage (yours or theirs) bits the dust…

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

As long as you understand the terms of your agreement with Steam as a platform, everything is fine. Physical media for games are outdated anyway, especially with frequent updates, patches, and DLC releases. Regarding older titles that are no longer supported, well, as the saying goes: "If buying isn't owing..."

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (3 children)

2.1 We give you and other GOG users the personal right (known legally as a 'license') to use GOG services and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content. This license is for your personal use. We can stop or suspend this license in some situations, which are explained later on.

https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632089-GOG-User-Agreement?product=gog

GOG has the same drawbacks as Steam without any of the useful features. They should cut down on their "owning games" lies and spend time improving their platform instead.