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Steam keeps on winning (www.pcgamer.com)

submitted 8 months ago by Carighan@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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From the opinion piece:

Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin' back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.

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[-] mammut@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

As I said, it's a problem with digital distribution generally. It's killed physical copies. Even physical copies of PC games that do still exist are mostly just Steam or EGS installers and a CD key.

More specifically it's a problem with the way digital distribution is commonly handled. In theory, there could be no launcher requirement and consumers could be given the ability to transfer licenses and archive software. This would allow digital preservation to be handled mostly the same as physical was, and the games could be freely (and legally) passed down through the generations, and the games would work even if the original launcher shut down. I'm not aware of any distribution platform that offers those terms, though.