I think it also bears pointing out that a ton of people, probably the vast majority of gamers, do not play old games. If you told them straight-up that Steam purchases were 10 or 20 year rentals they would probably shrug and say "who cares in 20 years I'll be playing something else." I have seen many gaming journalists do just that when asked about DRM.

If you don't want to rub people the wrong way, you might reconsider calling a willing choice to rent cheap games on Steam to be 'not caring about my rights as a consumer and a citizen'. I'm fairly sure I didn't abandon either when I was renting music on Google Music...

Wonderful post, sir.

Seriously, if publishers and the market gave us a choice with how we bought and sold our games, I wouldn't really care about Steam. Heck, I'd probably come to love it. It's not a bad service in its own right, if that's the sort of thing you're looking for. As you say, it offers convenience for lazy people. And yes, I'll openly admit that I do use that convenience if it doesn't affect my other rights - as I did recently with the Don't Starve retail version (which is DRM-free in Germany but does include a Steam key, for those that don't know).

What I personally object to is how that laziness and the excuses used to justify that laziness ("you never own your games anyway", "DRM is essential to protect developers", "Valve saved PC gaming") impacts how we play our games. People like myself are forced to suffer under other people's impatience, inertia and lack of respect for their own property. It astounds me to this day how people seriously find it too much like hard work to get out of the house in the fresh air, walk around a bit, pick a game from a store, bring it home and put the disc in the drive. It astonishes me that people think it takes too much of their precious time to get up to change a DVD, to download and install a patch, or to order a game on disc from Amazon and wait for a day for it to arrive. I wonder how many of them think it's too much of an imposition to walk 400 yards down to the nearest food shop, and simply take their car instead.

These days, it is practically impossible to buy a game on PC, on disc without having to register it to Steam, or UPlay, or Origin. This in turn, makes me rather wary when it comes to risk-taking with games - if I can't resell a game, then I'm less likely to take a chance on it. I'm more likely to buy a game on the basis of luck and the box blurb.

As I say, sure, Steam has its place - as a 'rental' service for example, and as a multiplayer matchmaking service à la GameSpy - and if Valve added the means to download DRM-free versions of the games, I'd be won over. But I don't appreciate it being used to noose me to the stuff I buy.

Somewhat late to the party, but when I read the title to the thread, I thought this would be about SecuROM, the DRM proof of Satan's existence!

True, Steam is DRM, but basically it works without getting in the way - with a few caveats.

All things equal, if there is a game on Steam and on gog, I'll get it here. But if not, then I'm happy enough with Steam for giving me games that run, even if they are locked down. My first copies of Timeshift and Bioshock, OTOH, were initially unplayable due to third party anti-theft measures preventing me from using the legally purchased discs I had.

Fair enough, just as long as people actually see it as a 'rental'.

Those people who actually believe that their Steam games will still be there without a shadow of a doubt 10-15 years from now deserve to be rubbed up the wrong way though.

Oh I hate that argument, so first of all, I think you are yourself fully aware of the fact that you can go DRM-free, so that renders most of what you said moot, but all right, I'll bite.
So first of all, you don't own your own games anyway. Stop pretending. If you want to make a valid point, say "You get to transfer your licence" - that's what it's called. Second two sound just about right tho. No matter,
Right, the closest game store to where I live is about 20 minutes by tram, and then 15 minutes walk. That's about 70 minutes just to get there and back, + whatever time it takes to buy the game. Other things I could do with that time include:
- Actually go out of the house in the fresh air and walk around a bit as opposed to travel in the middle of the city, full of people with my hatred for mobs and smog. You know, 70 minutes - that's enough to get to the nearby empty forest and look for mushrooms, or have illegal public sex with my wife! (hoping the forest actually is empty. Altho the 25 minutes remaining after the walk would, of course, just not be nearly enough for the manly man I am.)
- Go out and ride a bike, or rollerskates, or just take a walk with my bunny. Yes, we take walks with our bunny, shut up.
- Or, alternatively, play a videogame!
Time management, man, 70 minutes of my time is currently worth about 10 bucks - and I can freely spend those 70 minutes working.

Changing DVDs is fine, storing and cataloging them in a limited space and keeping them in a working condition? Not quite as simple. Neither is having to bulge them around with me every time I move. Most of the DVDs I have owned I threw away or gave away to my friends, and the rest is now lying in my basement, awaiting either of the two to happen to them. I have kept like... 10?

You bet your ass that takes too much time, especially for obscure, older titles which either have most links broken or I'm just flatout unable to find the said patch anywhere. And even if I am able to do that, single patch is often not enough - you need to find all the incremental updates, like in the case of Dawn of War. Again, that's something that can take me up to 30 minutes including the searching. There are many better things I can do with 30 minutes. Like write this post, in here. Yes, I consider writing to be more fun than googling for old .exes

Dunno about Amazon, but most games I have ever ordered retail wanted me to pay shipping, wich is about 5 bucks in here. That's a game on GOG right there. Besides, when I have enough time to play a game and when I decide that the game which is currently on sale is indeed the game I want to play, I want to play it now - 2 days later (no, it's never happened to me that it would only be a day) might just be the end of that empty window where I've had enough time to play videogames.

I don't have a car and I used to walk 2km to and from work every day. It's not possible now that we've moved sadly, but I'm trying to figure out how could I do that with a bike. I hate cars, I hate public transport, and I love walking.

Oh, I certainly can go DRM-free, if I buy digitally, and only with many indie titles. I'm pretty much out of the loop with €50-60 AAA games though.

As for "you don't own your games", that's a big facepalm there. Regurgitating the age-old industry arguments does not make them true. "You own a licence", "you're transferring a licence". It's semantics. You want to play the semantics game, fine, the principle still holds. I own my car, but it doesn't give me the right to build an imitation version of that and drive it around.

In your particular case, that's fine. I have a few options where I live - we have a proper game store about 20 minutes walk from here, or two electronics stores that sell plenty of games, each half an hour on foot from here. Ultimately though, it doesn't amount to much of a difference to your situation - if I went there specifically to buy a game, it would also take in excess of an hour. Where my situation differs is that I rarely go there JUST to buy a game - I usually often have a coffee there, or do some other shopping. If all I want is a game, I buy it from Amazon.

How do you think I get to the games stores? :)

Yeah, well...wait, what?

Fair enough, that's your choice. I agree that it's a lot of work to move that many games - albeit work that I personally find worthwhile - and I agree that storage takes up a lot of space. A lack of space and game preservation are generally the only largely compelling reasons in favour of digital.

Keeping discs in working condition is less of a problem though - I've never had a game that I (or a previous own) didn't mistreat fail on me, and I have games dating back to the 80s. Generally, games only fail if people don't take care of them. And I've seen plenty of that - discs lying on floors, being thrown around, covered in food.

And that problem will amplify ten-fold when Steam goes bust. And it will, eventually, just like every online service that people thought was indispensible. The difference being that EXE and ZIP patches can be archived and you can at least rely on some measure of charity from sites like Patches Scrolls. Yes, the Dawn of War patches are a pain, but compare that to games like Cross Rally Championship 2005, which had a form of autoupdate that directly download the update to your directory. The server is now offline, and the game is unplayable without the corresponding patch, which noone thought to archive.

Likewise, when Steam goes bust, most of those patches will be irrevocably lost, unless you download some complete cracked version of the game somewhere.

That's a matter of either time planning or patience. If I want to play a game NOW, I go and get it from the shop, but I've never been in the situation where I've had an hour spare and nothing to play. Nothing has ever compelled me to want to play a game that I don't have right this instant. And besides, especially on consoles but also on PC, it's often proven quicker to go and buy the game than to buy a download version.

As for Amazon, yeah, shipping is free from €20 onwards. Other stores often charge €2-3 shipping, but the price of that game at any given moment is usually lower than the digital price, offsetting the difference. I agree that other people's situation will be different, but for the most part, online physical has been fairly competitive with brick and mortar retail.

The appeal of digital for me lies in two things - a legal means to obtain out-of-print, rare games, and a source of simple games for which a physical release would otherwise not be worthwhile.

I have a similar view but a completely different opposite situation. We have a car by necessity (my family live out in the sticks 400km away and without public transport links), but I can't stand the damn things. I love cycling and walking, but I work from home, so I have to make a concerted effort to find reasons to get out of the house. I go on an 8km cycle every morning which I treat as my "cycle to work".

Thanks for the details, but Enhanced Steam does helped me alot though.

Nobody is realistically going to take away your license or hinder its use by you if there is no DRM or dependency to begin with. You have control.

You don't have the control with DRM and/or a client dependency. The control is held by the publisher and distributor.

Control is the key word.

I think most (at least I hope) are aware that we don't actually own the software code or have rights to it. We own a license to the software.

Let's assume that regardless of the circumstances of Steam going down for good, they do what you suggest and that it works. What would happen if/ when a future Windows update breaks the client in some way? And what if/ when the client breaks on a later version of Windows and/ or other OSes? Would Valve update/ patch the client after Steam's no longer around? And for how long?

Stars! You know Stars!? A lovely game, which still works, assuming your OS is compatible. Single serial check as I recall, but a 16-bit window application. If you do have the hardware that you ran it on though, you can still enjoy it.

If I'm bluntly honest, that's not really so much the problem. All software is subject to compatibility issues with later revisions of the underlying OS, except on consoles where the software undergoes first-party certification to specifically avoid that.

It's a given that such a modified client may not work on future versions of Windows, but that wouldn't be Valve's fault or Valve's problem. As long as it works on the OS it was designed for, everyone should be happy. After all, we don't expect DOS games to natively run in Windows 7, do we?

The problem with Valve's claim is that official "Steam backups" don't contain all the necessary files, so a modified client would be a moot point. Many backups (including those delivered at retail) don't contain executables - these need to be downloaded from the Steam server upon installation (which is where CEG gets its name in the first place).

Do you think that the average Steam user keeps their older hardware/ OS handy? I get the feeling that people repeat this "statement" from Valve in the context of their at_the_time_this_happens systems in use.


I don't think that it's as easy as Valve modifying the client, I was only indulging those that claim that the solution may be as simple as Valve doing just that.

Irrelevant. Assume Steam goes down tomorrow, and they do indeed release such a client. The client works with Win Vista, 7, 8 and since they are bored, with XP as well. It also works with Mac OS 10.6 to 10.9, and specific versions of Linux.
Next year, for unknown reasons, the dominant CPU architecture switches to ARM. The modified steam client no longer works. Valve does not modify their modified client. Steam games reliant on said modified client are no better (or worse) than any DRM free games that rely on specific OS and/or CPU architecture.

It may well be, I just don't think that those believing that Valve will keep their Steam games available if/ after Steam goes down see it this way.

And there's still the case of future OS updates breaking the functionality of the client.