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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Really? I was against Steam when it came out, it felt like insanity: I have to create an account, then register my CD key and it's gone!? How will I be able to share this game with my friends?!
But after a while it's straight up better. Do you still remember SecuROM (which shut off its servers, so you can't even get games with it to run nowadays)? Or having to go to the developer's website to manually download update 1.0.1a to 1.0.1b to 1.1 to 1.1.2 to 1.3a to 1.4 to ... (if you were lucky they offered bigger patches where you could directly jump from 1.0.1a to 1.4 or something). And then years later the developer was bought up or shut down, so the patches were no longer available.
Don't even remind me of having to stand up, go over to my pile of games, find the right box, open it up, grab the CD, go back to the PC, put the CD in, then start the game I want (hopefully the CD wasn't scratched). Nowadays I don't even have a CD drive anymore and I currently have ~70 games installed that I can start in a second or two.
I grew up with sharing CDs (and keys) with friends, or putting a CD into one computer, boot the game, put the CD in a second computer, boot the game, then play on LAN. Steam is way better still. If you don't like it, buy from GOG.
I do buy from GOG. It's my primary online store. I only go to the others when something isn't available there. Which is most of the time, because we live in the lamest dystopia.
For what it's worth, fanboys are gonna fanboy, but I have no need to deny Steam's conveniences to call them out on the anti-property DRM crap. Absolutely piecemeal DRM is worse. Not that Steam made it disappear, I had a game install Denuvo on me over Steam just this week.
Absolutely digitally purchasing games is better than digging up optical media for DRM checks. Absolutely it's better to have worldwide digital launches where you just... get the game the second it launches instead of running around after it like a crazy person.
But we do live in a DRM dystopia where we own nothing and are supposed to like it, the tens of thousands of dollars dumped into my Steam account will go away the moment a Steam moderator decides they don't like me and they will certainly evaporate after I'm gone, and many, many games are now lost media like we just started making TV but haven't invented video tapes yet.
All those things get to be true at the same time. I was kinda joking with my original post just to remind people that Steam was far from controversial and beloved at launch, but since we're talking about it... yeah, hell yeah, we gave up on basic ownership for the sake of convenience and Steam was absolutely part of that process.
"God damn you all to hell" indeed.
Not every game on Steam has DRM. There are plenty of indie games on there where you can download it, copy the files away and play them offline. And for what it's worth: Gabe Newell did promise that if Steam ever shuts down they'll offer you all your games as downloads (though so far they have been solid).
I've never heard of a legitimate Steam account getting banned. You might be thinking of VAC bans (where your account is flagged as a cheater), which can force you out of multiplayer servers. But losing your entire Steam library? Unheard of so far if you don't mess up on purpose (like trading stolen items, excessive account sharing, using a stolen credit card, doing chargebacks, etc.).
Right. See, you think that list of bannable reasons at the end is making this sound less dystopian and DRM-abusive and stuff?
It's kinda doing the opposite.
Don't get me wrong, most of those are scummy (not sure about the account sharing one, though), but in real life you at best get fined or banned from a store or something. Nobody comes into your house and sets your 20 year old game collection on fire for being a bit of a dick.
Which, hey, whatever, I don't expect my Steam account to get banned any time soon. But the EULA is very clear that none of those games are a thing that I own and I don't get to give them away and people don't get to inherit them eventually and if they DO decide I'm a scumbag those games are gone.
And that sounded quaint and hypothetical in the early 2000s, but dude, that account is a significant share of my assets by now. If I had bought all those games physically I could live on reselling them for months.
Go and do a chargeback on literally any other service on this planet and see what happens, whatever account it is will get nuked from orbit.
Reselling didn't even work back in the day with physical copies. The CD key was often only good for x activations, then at some point you had to call a support line. It's a dubious argument.
Yes, pay to license a game that doesn't belong to you isn't great, but I'm confident that at least in the EU Valve wouldn't get away with taking access away from an entire game library. Especially for random TOS violations.
But we haven't had a single legitimate case so far, so discussing what might or could happen is moot.
"Service" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. As is the narrow band of time and games you're referring to that required online activations at all. For a long chunk of PC gaming even games with a CD key only performed an offline algorithmic check on the key.
So yeah, if you breach the EULA in a service you get banned. If you own a thing you don't get it destroyed for a separate infraction, though. Which is my point.
And honestly, I seriously doubt that they wouldn't get away with an account ban in the EU. There are many ways in which the EU does good stuff to curb abuses of so-called "services", including dragging Steam kicking and screaming into having a semi-functional return policy, but EULA-based infractions driving account bans hasn't historically been one of their pet peeves, and there are absolutely examples of people losing access to large libraries out there.
Do you have an example? I'd love to read it. I only find people who lost their account (like forgetting their credentials), who got hacked or did illegal things (stolen credit cards, scamming, selling stolen items).
I can't find someone legitimate so far who lost all access to their Steam account for ToS reasons.
I'd argue the "illegal things" fit my definition because, again, you do not lose access to legitimately purchased things for doing those things in the physical world.
Likewise for banned bought-and-sold accounts, of which there are some examples online. Selling things or telling someone your credentials is not illegal, the only basis to remove access to the account on that would be the EULA.