[MichaelCollins]

If you have to download a pirate's crack to play a game, you may as well download a pirate version of the game in the first place. I don't see much substantial difference between these two scenarios.

Steam is a DRM system with good branding, that gamers treat as special because it comes from Valve. Anecdotally, a lot of gamers believe and trust that Valve would free their games of DRM if Valve ever went out of business or otherwise shut down Steam. Of course this isn't true, they wouldn't have the legal right to do that with any game that wasn't their own (which is the vast majority of the games on Steam) and whatever informal promises Gabe made years aren't worth a damn. Nevertheless, this sort of mistaken expectation affords Valve/Steam a lot of good will they really don't deserve.

[somenameforme]

> "..they wouldn't have the legal right to do that with any game that wasn't their own.."

Both Gabe Newell, the founder/owner of Steam/Vale, and the official support response is now to state that they would provide means for users to continue to have access to their games should Steam shut down. Suggesting they are lying demands more evidence than a random claim, especially as that lie itself would likely be unlawful and open the door to lawsuits against them from any user who claims they would not have purchased their games if they knew this statement to be untrue.

When game companies go out of business, Steam will remove their product from the store, but continue enabling users who already purchased it access to it, and I expect this independence/guarantee of of access is part of their normal licensing. There is also already 'offline mode' for Steam, and setting the expiration of this mode to e.g. 100 years would be trivial from their side.

[MichaelCollins]

In the case of first party games owned by Valve, they may earnestly intend to do as they say, and consequently aren't lying when they say it. Nevertheless, such promises about what will happen when the company is departing are worth approximately jack shit. Whether it's Gabe (or his heirs) later deciding to sell the company or creditors carving up the company after it fails, there are many scenarios in which those earnest promises will fall through. Notch once promised to eventually open source Minecraft. Maybe he wasn't lying when he said it, he might have earnestly meant it. But that went straight out the window when Microsoft wrote him a big fat check.

In the case of third party games with DRM on Steam: Valve doesn't have a license to distribute those games without DRM, so they're effectively promising to become a pirate software distributor. They have the technical means to do this, but not the legal right. They're almost certainly self-deluding if not lying outright when they promise to do this. I lean towards flagrantly lying; they know they don't have a license to do what they're promising but they're promising it anyway. And if they're willing to lie about this, I think you should reevaluate their promises respecting first party games as well.

[Aeolun]

> they know they don't have a license to do what they're promising

Do they not? Did you read the terms for publishing a game on Steam?

I didn’t, but it’s within reason it contains a provision for just this eventuality.

[MichaelCollins]

Such a term would be poison to most game developers, particularly in the early days of Steam when it had nothing more than a handful of first party games. Before Steam achieved market dominance, how would they have convinced third party developers to accept it?

Unless somebody shows me that term in the contracts, I don't believe it exists. It doesn't make sense for it to exist; the only reason to think it does is because you like Gabe and don't think he would lie to you.

[prepend]

It seems reasonable for developers (as I’m not a developer) as Steam was just selling licenses.

It would be the equivalent of Walmart saying they would let people buy copies of games and run them forever.

So it makes sense that Steam would be able to make it so the games sold keep running without Steam existing. It seems pretty simple technically too as they would just update their client to no longer phone home to Steam.

[Aeolun]

> how would they have convinced third party developers to accept it?

Present it as a feature?

“In the event of the dissolution of Steam/Valve, we will endeavour to do everything reasonable to ensure that previously purchased licenses to your content keep working for subscribers in the absence of the Steam platform.”

Just because they try to keep it working doesn’t mean they have to make it DRM free (e.g. copyable between all computers without any checks).

[toast0]

> Suggesting they are lying demands more evidence than a random claim, especially as that lie itself would likely be unlawful and open the door to lawsuits against them from any user who claims they would not have purchased their games if they knew this statement to be untrue.

If they shutdown due to bankruptcy (which seems unlikely at the moment, but could change, without much notice since they're private and don't have required public reporting), there may not be anything to collect or anyone to compell to fulfill the promise.

[majewsky]

I don't disagree, but there are other reasons to like Steam. I like Steam because they heavily invest into Linux support, even for games that are not theirs. I understand that they're not doing this out of altruism, they have several business-level reasons, but they happen to align with my interests and that's really all I can ask for in a for-profit company.

[anonymousab]

> If you have to download a pirate's crack to play a game, you may as well download a pirate version of the game in the first place. I don't see much substantial difference between these two scenarios

You can at least crack the local files or pirate a steam game. You can't do that for stadia games - they are special Linux versions running on bespoke hardware and they will be lost to time when stadia goes.

You can play the windows/Linux/console versions of most of the games, at least. Technically different but outside of preservation purposes, they won't be meaningfully different from the stadia versions as Google never really delivered on any of the game feature promises of their platforms. But stadia exclusives will vanish with the platform. Maybe one day they will get ports, assuming the stadia developer licensing allows it.

[gambiting]

>>I don't see much substantial difference between these two scenarios.

In one you paid for the product, in other you didn't.

I'd think that's a pretty substantial difference?

[justanorherhack]

His point is highlighting that even if you pay for it you don’t actually own the game. In this weird market you only own the game if you pirate it.

Ip laws are the worst and terrible for the market. Especially the media companies that just recharge you for for the same content just to watch it on a different medium.

[staticassertion]

> In this weird market you only own the game if you pirate it.

That's a really good way of putting it, I'm gonna steal that (irony unintended). It's totally true - when you purchase software or services it's conditional. You have some voucher that can be redeemed at the discretion of the provider, and there are always many ways (EULA violation, company goes away) that the voucher can be negated.

But when you steal something you aren't beholden to anyone. You actually "own" that piece of software in a way more concrete way. Yes, someone could pursue legal charges and force you to remove it, but it's a totally separate system vs the built-in contract between customer/ service.

[gambiting]

>>His point is highlighting that even if you pay for it you don’t actually own the game

In the EU at least, you absolutely own the copy and are free to do with it as you please though, including making more copies for your own safekeeping. There are other comments in this thread pointing out that even in US with its crazy laws you also have this right, although I cannot comment on that personally.

[MichaelCollins]

The two scenarios I'm comparing (and finding not much difference between) are:

> You "buy" the game from Stadia, it's taken from you, so now you pirate the game.

> You "buy" the game from Steam, it's taken from you, so now you download the pirate's crack to the game.

In either case, the original developer received compensation so I don't think you should feel any moral obligations to anybody. Morally they're equivalent, the only real difference is whether you have the gamefiles already downloaded or not. In both cases you need to dip into the shadier side of the net to get the game you "bought" to run.

[gambiting]

Yeah I think I can agree with that. The two scenarios you posted are equal in my mind. I was thinking more about a scenario where you bought a game from steam, then used a pirate crack to play it, vs a scenario where you didn't buy a game, just pirated it. Those two aren't the same - obviously.

[Wowfunhappy]

But the product you're using isn't the one you bought.

[LadyCailin]

They're completely fungible, and the "damage" to the manufacturer, even a potentially contrived "piracy is theft" argument doesn't hold up. You already bought the game, the developer got paid as much as they would have if the service stayed up. Just because the service provider shuts down doesn't change those facts.

[gambiting]

That's like saying that if you're watching a blu ray rip of your own purchased disc, it isn't the same product you bought. Technically correct, but it's completely legal to rip your own discs(at least in the EU, can't comment on other countries).

[Wowfunhappy]

I'm not even thinking about legality.

My issue with "just download a crack" is that I have to spend time hunting down the crack, and I can't be sure the crack won't include malware, or won't introduce bugs which only appear later in the game. The last of these has happened to me on multiple occasions. A cracked game is no longer the product I bought.

By contrast, when I buy a game on GOG, I get a product that is DRM Free and will work forever—and because it's the product I actually purchased, I receive some minimal level of assurance from the retailer.

I would feel somewhat differently if there was a single "universal" crack that worked on all Steam games, or even which worked on 95% of Steam games and failed in a predictable way on the remaining 5%. This is the case for iTunes TV Shows, and so I have no problem paying for those, because I can run them through some software and I know the DRM will get stripped correctly every time with no quality loss. I'm not aware of any such software for Steam games.

[gambiting]

You are correct of course. My point is that if Steam would disappear, a technological solution would appear to play your games. Just like even once every single PS1 on the planet turns into dust, we can still play PS1 games by other means. With stadia, this will never happen because you can't get a copy of a Stadia game I'm the first place.

[Wowfunhappy]

I just question how much that matters in practice. In both cases, you can theoretically replace the game you bought with a pirated copy.

All PS1 games have been archived, yes, because the method of ripping a PS1 game is consistent across every title, and the total number of games released was relatively small. That's not the case with PC games today, and I think it's virtually inevitable that a lot of indie games released exclusively on Steam will eventually be lost to time. As will many of the indie games released without DRM on itch.io—but at least any game you downloaded from itch.io will be playable forever.

You can argue cloud gaming is even worse. Maybe so, but at least it provides a lot of extra utility, since you can play on low-end devices. Steam provides automatic updates, that's kind of nice I guess, but not in the same class as running Assassin's Creed on your phone†. (Even then, I personally wouldn't pay full price for a game I can only run on someone else's servers, but I understand why someone else might.)

I don't like Steam.

† In theory. I've always found cloud gaming has too much latency for me. But in theory, if it worked perfectly—which perhaps it never will—the promise is nuts.

[Cederfjard]

You seem to be saying (and be certain of) that in the EU, were Steam to be discontinued, it'd be completely legal for you to download a crack to bypass the DRM for the game you were previously licensed to play through Valve's platform. Is this established as a matter of law? Could you share any links on the topic?

If it wouldn't be legal, then downloading the crack to the game you paid to play through Steam but can't anymore would presumably be just as illegal as pirating the whole game to begin with. Did you really purchase the game or just an indefinite (but not necessarily eternal) license to play it?

[mrighele]

Steam’s DRM “just works” and that’s why gamers don’t complain much about it. Also it’s the best way to play games under Linux.

I have a few hundreds games in steam and while maybe one day I may lose access to all of them it’s a risk I am willing to take because:

- I don’t think it will happen anytime soon because it’s a money making machine. The biggest risk for me is Microsoft acquiring it and stopping any work on Linux related stuff (I have been using steam solely on Linux for the past 7+ years)

- Even if I lose access to the library, Steam will have done a better job that I could. I know for sure that I lost the media for the first steam-enabled games I bought but I can still play them.

[paulmd]

> I have a few hundreds games in steam

those are rookie numbers, a couple months of humble bundle and your library can be full of shit you'll never play

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Steam's DRM is also completely optional, publishers are under no obligation to use it and many don't.