I’m also not convinced that a company’s highest priority when on the verge of collapse is going to be to take steps to make their products freely usable by their former customers. I freely concede that these are not things we likely need worry about in the next few years (at least, not with Valve. Other digital distribution options, and other games with DRM that phones home to the developer or publisher…). But I would prefer not to need to worry about them at all.

Valve as a company? In all honesty, I really doubt Valve would care if people can play their games if they ever go belly up. It’s not like they’d continue to get money from more sales. Some of the more benevolent employees may want to allow it, sure, but as Steam is owned by Valve, only Valve as a company could do it, not the individual employees.

And it wouldn’t even take the company going defunct for something to happen. All it’d take is Valve no longer seeing a benefit for maintaining Steam. The servers and bandwidth cost money to maintain, after all, and if they see more losses than gains with no hope of recovering, down it goes.

The EVILZ OF CAPITILIZM argument (OK, I apologise if I offend anyone by mocking it slightly there, but it’s another argument that’s very overused as if it’s a GetOutofJailFree card imo) – is flawed for one very good reason. And it involves the 13 million active users. I don’t think, no matter how big Valve get, that the voices of distain and outcry of that number of people is going to be ignorable. Companies and coporations may be seen as heartless bastards that don’t care about the people sometimes, but even from a purely buisness standpoint, ignoring a customer base that large is amount to commercial suicide, and quite frankly it’s rather niave to presume the worst of a company just because they appear to be becoming less personal than a small indie developer that they once were.

however the issue is moot tbh, because if Valve did go wobbly somewhere down the road someone like EA or Activision would snap them up just for the IPs alone. Also I’m pretty sure Valve don’t pay for bandwidth in the same way you or I do.

I fully understand what people are getting at when they use that comment, but again in all fairness – to think that Valve won’t have planned something for if Steam were ever to close are surely being a bit niave

Valve as a company? In all honesty, I really doubt Valve would care if people can play their games if they ever go belly up. It’s not like they’d continue to get money from more sales. Some of the more benevolent employees may want to allow it, sure, but as Steam is owned by Valve, only Valve as a company could do it, not the individual employees.

And it wouldn’t even take the company going defunct for something to happen. All it’d take is Valve no longer seeing a benefit for maintaining Steam. The servers and bandwidth cost money to maintain, after all, and if they see more losses than gains with no hope of recovering, down it goes.

@The_B – ya know, some of us like playing old games. You know, multiple decades old. I don’t think there’s any question that Steam will be around in 5 years, but I’m not so sure it’ll be around in 50… and what if I feel like taking out the old nostalgia-mobile at that time? When I buy something, I want to own it… and while I do use and purchase games through Steam, that’s not to say I don’t have a reservation or two.

I fully understand what people are getting at when they use that comment, but again in all fairness – to think that Valve won’t have planned something for if Steam were ever to close are surely being a bit niave, and for them to even consider closing down – everyone knows that there are a very large number of defunct developers and publishers. But by this point it’s a lot like saying you never want to cross a road again because you might get knocked down and die. No one is trying to pretend it will never happen, but the possibility by this point is so remote, expecting the worst is being very over pessimistic to be frank, especially with Valve’s current position – they’re bigger than EA in the digitial distribution field.

There’s a lot of people that refuse to buy and play games that require Steam as long as the DRM restrictions are in place. Which is kinda funny, because such lost sales are then attributed to piracy, causing developers/publishers to use more DRM, which causes more people to get fed up, etc..

Fun fact: Morrowind and Oblivion contain practically no DRM what-so-ever, yet both sold extremely well. The strength of your DRM isnt what determines how well your game will sell. The quality of the game and the ease of which your users can play it do.

If I buy a game and can’t play it on a computer without an internet connection (or with a very poor connection), that’s not really easy, is it? Especially when you consider a broken internet connection to be the time people would most want to play a (non-multiplayer-based) game.

I’d be lying if I said I was comfortable with either prospect. It hasn’t stopped me buying Valve games or other things on Steam, mind you. But I don’t make as much of a habit of it as I might if those risks weren’t there (and Steam version prices kept parity or dropped below retail, which they don’t, generally.)

@The_B – ya know, some of us like playing old games. You know, multiple decades old. I don’t think there’s any question that Steam will be around in 5 years, but I’m not so sure it’ll be around in 50… and what if I feel like taking out the old nostalgia-mobile at that time? When I buy something, I want to own it… and while I do use and purchase games through Steam, that’s not to say I don’t have a reservation or two.