LogFAQs > #909237576

DPsx7 posted...

It kind of is because as you keep changing the hardware and OS, your old games break.

Which is no less true of consoles. If you replace an N64 with a Gamecube, you won't be able to play your N64 games. If you want to be able to play games that rely on old hardware, don't change your hardware. That applies equally to PC's and consoles, though even then consoles are the worse offenders because PC hardware changes often don't introduce issues (especially these days; anything back to about Windows XP is usually compatible with modern systems).

DPsx7 posted...

As for the second point it's not that simple. We haven't lost paid content but have lost free content and the point I'm making is they have the ability to - it COULD happen.

Sure, it could happen. Valve could, on a whim, decide to revoke 67 million users' libraries entirely. Presuming that each of those users has spent an average of $100 (which is probably actually a pretty conservative estimate), though, they'd then be staring a $6.7 billion class action lawsuit in the face. There's a good chance they'd win, since the EULA does legally permit them to revoke access to people's games for any reason (which is no less true of physical games), but that'd be an awfully expensive lawsuit to fight, and when the dust had settled they'd never make another cent because nobody would trust them.

Could they? Sure. But will they? Almost certainly not, and citing that possibility as a reason to steer clear of Steam and digital sales entirely is ridiculously paranoid.

DPsx7 posted...

They claim to but they probably don't know what they're doing.

You don't really need a lot of expertise to be able to answer the questions "am I playing this game?" and "am I connected to the Internet?". The idea that the people who are able to get Steam working offline are the ones that *don't* know what they're doing is kind of funny.

Do I doubt that you couldn't get it to work in 2006? No, actually. Do I think you're a fool for insisting that it still won't work despite over a decade of updates to the platform and dozens of people telling you that it does? Absolutely.