Valve reminds Steam users they don't actually own a darn thing they buy
Valve reminds Steam users they don't actually own a darn thing they buy, GOG pounces and says its games "cannot be taken away from you" thanks to offline installers
I guess it's just a matter of time before you subscribe to games, and you lose access when you stop paying.
How many times is this shocking revelation going to be made? I've seen the same damn article regurgitated four times today and over a dozen times over the week. It's getting as annoying as the "I use arch btw" and "how do I quit vim" memes in the unixsphere.
Nothing of importance has even changed! The only difference is that a California law is forcing storefronts to use different nomenclature. The "you're actually paying for a license" thing has been public knowledge for pissing years.
We get it.
Outrage bait is obnoxious. Your kids aren’t going to be playing that one game you played 50 years ago. If they want to play it I’m sure there’s internet archive or they could pick it up for like $1
internet archive is literally right now under attack by hostile actors, which by all logic must be capitalists or governments who want to destroy the public library in favor of a paid and/or censored one.
we shouldnt trust that it will still exist in a few years the way the world is moving.
In fairness, a lot of parents force their interests in their kids. That said, when my sister's husband wanted to force his kids to like Mario he had me set up an emulator rather than dig out an NES.
But yeah. People also overestimate how long hardware will last or what a mess playing decade old software is. Even when I want to play a chaos gate, I am jumping through enough hoops that I am not even starting from the big box.
Journalism really degraded and been milking this shit like they discovered something big after it's been around for 20+ years since Steam was released.
Welcome to Lemmy :-) Not much different from Reddit, eh?
It's full of... ugh... redditors.
You are wrong about "nothing of importance has changed".
I can take a pc game I bought on a disc and still play it. It's mine. Even if the company stops developing the game, I can play it. It's on my disc, not in the cloud where I have no control over it.
You don't realize this if you grew up with everything being digital in the cloud. Then it's normal for you to not have any control over what happens to the content. But I'm telling you, it was different before and something of value has been lost now.
Now, game makers are adding patches that change anything about the game too. You can't play if you don't accept the patch.
A lot of freedom is lost today and I think you should realize that the convenience of the cloud has a cost, and that cost is less/no control over what you once paid for.
We should all avoid subscriptions and rentals like a plague, despite its convenience. It's costing us more and makes us dependent on the companies.
Good job completely missing my point.
I was talking about the actual event that happened in the recent past and what all of these lazy copy-remix-paste articles are parroting. Let me break it down for you.
Do you see how fuck all has changed in that period? You are getting the same deal, but journalists need the sensationalism, so they're retelling the same known facts (known since the controversy decades ago where some famous person wrote into his will that his daughter should inherit his iTunes library and Apple said no) about the revocable licenses as if they had just discovered them.
I'm fully aware of the consequences of digital-only distribution. I have stacks of PC game discs, and have dedicated a large part of my NAS to storing game installers. Do not talk down to me like I'm an idiot.
You can take most of the game binaries out of steam as a backup, only few require steam to run in order to make DRM protection happy.
Additionally, you do not own the game on the disk, you have the license to use it privately, like you have with games bought at steam.
So the only difference is, that you are dependent on steam to keep them server running in order for you to download and reinstall a game, if you failed to back it up, prior loss.
Different are the games that require a server running in order to work, but this is not valve’s fault, but the owner of the game. I think the owner of such games should be forced to either keep the server running, or release the binary or the source in order for people to host their own server.
I love how everyone is whaling on steam, the one honest good product that does digital sales, instead of the stupid streaming and online movie sites which this was targeted at.
I guess they were the only ones to make a significant visual change?
No good deed goes unpunished.
We've never owned the games themselves, only a license to use them (at best). Even the physical media of an older game was legally speaking a physical licence. Ownership rights in gaming started off minimal and got worse over the decades.
Wait until people hear about Microsoft's license....
What happens to a steam account when someone dies? Its not like Steam does a lookup against a deaths register.
If the password is handed on, is the account auto deleted after 120 years?
If someone dies at 20 does the account live on for another 100 years?
I get the legality aspect, but how is this handled in practice?
GameStop Retro stores seem to be right with their timing.
GoG lets you own the game.
So my Steam library, 500 plus games are worth shit. I actually knew this buying digital...still this practise should be very illegal.
How the heck are you just now realizing this? It's literally always been like that. Anything digital you "buy" has always been just a license. From music on iPods, Windows, and Office to Games. It's always been that way. Is it kind of annoying and dirty? Absolutely. But I don't understand how people are acting surprised about this.
I guess you skipped over the..
I actually knew this buying digital.
...part.
And here I am literally not caring. This is software, it will become outdated eventually and unable to be run at all.
Nothin is forever. So i guess you do not need to own anything.
I remember a couple years back when gamers thought Nintendo and Steam were the best and most ethical
Good for GoG seeling a peoduct you iwn.
I am fine using steam until they eventuakly change leadership and go down the tubes as the last 20 years have been the best computer gaming experience with convenient updates and support for games of any age, community connections for playing with friends, and easy access to a massive number of AAA titles on steep discoubts, independent games, and lots of little fun free games like Pineapple on Pizza.
Yes, I know I don't own the games in the literal sense. But the convenience and lowered prices have been worth the money in the long run.
Gog also sells you a revokable license. From the legal side they're identical, from a practical side they save you one step.
GoG may make some market share up with the new CA law. We'll see. Some competition would be nice.
Won't fix any of the always online games being bricked when the servers go offline, but still would be nice