LogFAQs > #888832390

Kyuubi4269 posted...

Steam didn't invent drm and my games run fine offline.

Never said they did, and (some of) the games you purchased run fine offline, which is going to be zero help to someone who is interested in playing those games but doesn't already own them.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

If Steam dies in my gaming lifetime, a patch either from Steam or the community will let me play freely.

I doubt Steam will release a patch if they're going under (despite their claims that they'd do that) - odds are no creditor would let them, and I wouldn't be surprised if they have legal contracts with some of their client-companies stipulating that they can't do that very thing, because part of the appeal of Steam as a distribution model for games companies is the fact that it is, by its nature, DRM.

If you're relying on the community, good luck, but they'll be operating illegally in doing that and piracy is no substitute for commerce. That's assuming enough of them care to even craft the thousands of patches that would need to be applied to thousands of games in the first place.

EightySeven posted...

We can't know that.

Which is why I posted it in an "unpopular opinion" thread, rather than an "unpopular facts" thread.

EightySeven posted...

Also you can get a large portion of the Steam library from GoG DRM free and GoG only exists because Steam pioneered the model.

Which is an excellent argument for abandoning Steam and switching over to GOG, not so much for Steam's continued existence.

Unfortunately, much of Steam's library is not on GOG, which somewhat hobbles this point further.

Rockies posted...

I mean, how many games are really going to be "taken down" when Steam dies? Or I should say, how many worthwhile games - of course it will probably be thousands, but Steam is loaded with bad indie shovelware that nobody cares about, or decent games that people have in their library and aren't playing anyway. So people might have to re-buy them, but they won't exactly disappear off the face of the earth. I know Steam is usually cheaper, but I guess not having full ownership is a sacrifice people have decided to make to save money in the short-term.

I don't really care what the ratio of decent-to-terrible games is on Steam - the point is, video gaming is part of our culture and should be archived as such. Yes, even the really shitty stuff. And this is going to become more and more of an issue in the future, the signs of which are already starting to emerge.

The example I love to give for this point is Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Have you ever played it? If not, you likely never will now. The game has been pulled from sale on all digital distribution software platforms, due to rights expiring, and anyone who doesn't already own it cannot purchase or download it in any form.

It says something about our society that I can buy a book that's thousands of years old or watch a 100-year-old movie with ease, yet cannot purchase a fucking six-year-old game.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

DLC and microtransactions were standardised before Steam and Steam sales exist because gaming has fat profit margins.

DLC/microtransactions were rare-to-non-existent pre-Steam.

Rockies brings up another great point. The reams-of-low-cost-titles-flooding-the-market thing has been done before. Back in the early 80s. It predicated a crash that nearly wiped out the industry. That sort of wipe-out is unlikely today, but destroying a large portion of the market is much more feasible.
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