Valve says Steam users don't own a thing, GOG says its games can't be taken away

This is the result I expected when I first read about the new California law.

With a bit of luck, this story will get wide enough distribution that GOG will gain a bit of market share.

Sadly, if GOG gains enough new market share to have a material effect on Valve's bottom line, I imagine Valve's initial response will be a "most favored nation" clause in future publisher contracts allowing Steam to introduce offline, DRM-free installers for the subset of Steam games also available on GOG, diluting GOG's unique value proposition with a move that will nevertheless be hailed as a victory for consumers.

Isn't this just Valve implementing the new law required in California?

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24254922/california-digit...

A long time ago, I used Paypal to purchase a steam game. This was like 15 years ago. For some reason Paypal marked it as suspicious and immediately cancelled the transaction. Steam then locked me out of my account. I had several dozen games. I couldn't get anyone to reply to me from Steam. To this day, I'm locked out of that account and all of the games I had purchased. I started a new account but yeah it's scary.

A couple years ago I opted out of the new game release rat race because I realized they're costing more and I'm getting less and I don't find recent AAA games any more fun than older games (and often quite a bit less fun). I was also just sick of all the bullshit like many games being released in a buggy state, content being held back for the inevitable DLC, and having to sign up for an online account on some publisher's site after buying the game from another online service.

I've switched to retro gaming and find I enjoy it more. For example, exploring 90s Japanese games that never saw wide release in the US. Recently I've found some real winners exploring the X360 and PS3 back catalog of indie games via emulation. I'd never seen many of these because they were only released on their respective online services. Of course, with the shutdown of those stores, these titles would be lost to time were it not for the preservation and emulation communities archiving them. This is why I'm a fan of publishers like GOG who're at least making an effort toward perpetual availability.

If you don't have the source code, you don't really "own" the software anyway. Any closed source software will eventually stop working due to technological changes, etc.

I treat games as mostly consumption items. I play them for a while, and then I might as well throw them to trash if they were physical items. If it wasn't for that I wouldn't accept lack of source code anyway, just like with the OS and important personal computing software.

I think it's worth once again linking the "Stop Killing Games" campaign, for those that don't know about it! https://www.stopkillinggames.com/

Neither GOG or Steam are selling games. Both are selling licenses. The only people who own copyright works are the rights holders. You can't take a GOG licensed game and sell copies or make a derivative work so you don't own it but it is close to what people mean when they say they "own" a book or other physical media. Games that are only usable with online license checks are more fragile than DRM free games from GOG but practically there isn't much practical difference for the majority of users. I enjoy the convenience and added features of Steam but GOG serves an important role as a piracy alternative for those demanding fully functional stand alone, offline copies of games.

GOG is still not “selling” the game, even though they offer offline installers, as one would with certainty face legal objections for setting up a resale marketplace website for games purchased from GOG. That your license is indefinite and your installer can be archived is excellent, but that’s still only a license with benefits.

What I can't understand is that CDPR is willing to confer legal rights to play their games in perpetuity in stark contrast to virtually every other similar platform, yet they don't bother to hire a few developers to maintain a Linux client, effectively forcing its users to be at the whim of Microsoft, which surely is going to have its users' best interests at heart.

Full title (84 characters too long): Valve reminds Steam users they don't actually own a darn thing they buy, GOG pounces and says its games "cannot be taken away from you" thanks to offline installers

"If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/

Also, Steam should not offer buying games. Renting games would be more accurate.

This title is super weighted, Valve makes it quite clear that users do in fact own a thing, a license for a product on Steam. This is fundamental to games with online DRM.

I didn't know about GOG. Symptoms of getting older. I need similar for films. I don't want to stream, I don't want to rip, and I'm too out of touch with torrent things to feel comfortable; not that I ever dared in simpler times, of course.

There was confusion around this?

There's something so much better about having physical cartridges :)

While that wouldn't make sense these days, knowing the installer you downloaded will still work decades from now is great, and I hope to see more companies like GOG start doing this.

[dupe]

More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41809193

then what dafuq do you buy when you spend money on steam?

Can you sell you GOG game on to another person?

I feel slightly less bad about stealing all my games now.