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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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[-] Vlyn@lemmy.zip 1 points 8 months ago

Well, physical media breaks, discs get scratched and you might no longer find the updates.

If you want to preserve your games nowadays your best option is buying from GOG and backing up your installers (it's DRM free and with no launcher). But it's a massive hassle compared to just using Steam and having auto updates. The GOG launcher that does updates for you exists, but it's a bit meh.

Anything that’s delisted will, outside of piracy, die when the account holders die.

Not totally true, it's allowed to bequeath your account to someone through your will. At least for your Steam account. Of course you have to take care to do that before you die..

Valve isn't going broke anytime soon, they get around a 30% cut of every game sold and on top of that they also get a cut from all the steam market transactions. Valve is a privately owned company, which means no shareholders who want constant growth for any price, so for a company worth around 7.7 billion USD in 2022 I'm really not afraid Steam will go away anytime soon.

And even if Steam has to shut down, Gaben at least made the promise to give you downloads for all your purchased games. You can decide how much that's worth.

[-] mammut@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

Well, physical media breaks, discs get scratched and you might no longer find the updates.

This is true, but, and maybe I'm weird, I've lost more games due to account issues / services shutting down than I have from damaged discs. Plus, it's fair use (in most countries) to make disc images of your own discs, so you actually have an option to legally preserve your games beyond the life of the media.

I agree about GOG.

Not totally true, it's allowed to bequeath your account to someone through your will. At least for your Steam account. Of course you have to take care to do that before you die..

No exception was provided for this last time I looked through the subscriber agreement. I'm not real keen on reading through it again. Can you share the relevant portion?

And even if Steam has to shut down, Gaben at least made the promise to give you downloads for all your purchased games. You can decide how much that's worth.

I tried to track down the source of this comment years ago, and I'm not convinced he ever said it. It goes back to someone on the Steam forums saying that he said it. Others on Reddit tried to track it down and I'm not aware that anyone ever succeeded.

[-] Vlyn@lemmy.zip 1 points 8 months ago

No exception was provided for this last time I looked through the subscriber agreement. I’m not real keen on reading through it again. Can you share the relevant portion?

Ah, it's unfortunately not in the contract. They do it (See for example this answer where another family member got the account after their little brother died), but it looks like it's not a guarantee.

As for the big red button at Valve, I can only find snippets of information. The only "official" one: https://imgur.com/4sa1Ln6 Most information is just from interviews or private messages, claiming there is an inner senior circle at Valve and they do have a contingency plan.