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Steam Now Warns Consumers That They're Buying a License, Not a Game During a Purchase
(www.cgmagonline.com)
Hey, at least they're clearing the air a little bit
this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
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Isn't this only because it's soon to be legally required in California? I don't think they're doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.
If only there was a Girl who was Fit that could, I don't know, Repack this situation, thus saving us from it...
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And that's why the bulk of my game library comes from GOG, and I have Steam more out of commitment than taste.
"EA, play the license".
We all know here that you don't own anything on Steam or any other client with DRM. Duh...
B this shit should be illegal, I buy a product, game, license whatever you call it, it is mine. This farce of consumer protection... "do you understand the words coming out of my mouth!?....License!!'. Yeah we do, let us own our purchased games.
I’m pretty sure this is in response to a recent California bill that forces digital storefronts to disclose if it is a license you are getting. Otherwise the storefront is not allowed to use words like “buy” or “purchase”.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24254922/california-digital-purchase-disclosure-law-ab-2426
If there's an offline game you love and play all the time, consider buying it again on GOG.com.
Nah, I'm good 😂
https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632089-GOG-User-Agreement?product=gog
Check 2.1, GOG is the same.
unless you keep the offline installers.
I mean at that point you can just make backups of your steam games too. A lot work straight from the exe and for the rest there are steam simulators.
Well, gentlemen. I guess we got this all sorted out. Not a big deal, after all.
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If I back up a DRM-free installer what's the difference?
If you back up the folder of a steam installed game that doesn't need steam to run, what's the difference?
Owning the copy in a legal sense doesn't affect most of the userbase tbh.
Legally, it's still a license, it's just effectively impossible to revoke.
Edit to expand on this: A truly offline forever-purchase of physical goods can be re-sold. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine (this is the US-specific version, other jurisdictions may have similar doctrines).
American legal concept that limits the rights of an intellectual property owner to control resale of products embodying its intellectual property.
A digital "purchase" is usually non-transferable, even from GOG. It can't be removed from your own HDD once you download the installer, but there are still restrictions attached on what you can do with it, even if those are limited and hard to enforce.
Just like any game ever sold on a CD.
Technically, probably yes, but you can buy old, opened games on eBay. I doubt you can do the same with GOG games. Digital media is much harder if not impossible to resell.
Soon, GOG and all other storefronts will state that you're purchasing a temporary digital license for any game who's publisher uses an EULA that states you don't own the game. This is due to the recently signed California law that forces storefronts to be transparent about the publishers EULA.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24254922/california-digital-purchase-disclosure-law-ab-2426
But also with GOG you can download the installers and play offline. It's literally one of their big selling points. It's less convenient than things like steam, but you can do whatever the hell you want when you buy it. So in that regard, it literally is a purchase. Or as close as you can get with digital goods.
Depends on the game, they still sell DRM games which are limited in being able to be downloaded freely
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That's not GOG works. Get your offline installers.
On a legal level, it is how GOG works. They still only sell licenses. You just have the loophole that their installers and the games installed by them will work regardless.
While that may be partly true, (also likely) depending on the county you're located, they're not able to revoke the license though.
So in this specific case you having the files makes a world of difference.
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Also don’t forget to download the offline installers from GOG. I spent all of last week doing that
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I would say, if you’ve purchased, just get a free version.
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Before Steam you bought a physical disc and it didn't matter that you technically only purchased a license, the disc was yours and nobody was coming to your house to take it away if the publisher started fighting with the developer or whatever.
The modern equivalent would be to make cold backups of your steam stuff.
True, with some modifications:
Some games had online activation built in. Some games would simply not install on a second or third machine without getting permission from the publisher.
Regular CDs have a lifespan of 5-10 years, shorter if not stored ideally. Almost all games had sophisticated mechanisms to prevent backups being taken.
Even if you could take a backup, record associations and publishers lobbied to make it illegal and punishable by severe fines in many countries.
Sony shipped fucking root kits on their CD that would hijack your PC and screw with backup software. EA shipped CDs with autoexexuting software that would actually delete CloneCD and other CD copying software and prevent new installes from working. My copy of Sims 2 came with that bullshit and OH MAN I was not happy about it.
Sony shipped fucking root kits on their CD that would hijack your PC and screw with backup software.
Worse, this thing from Sony was on music CD's and not even games.
The Sony Rootkit debacle is one of the reasons that I still will not do business with Sony in any of its guises, for any reason, no matter the price. And believe me, I have a long memory.
I've got CDs I've had for 25+ years and they're still fine
Yeah good ones allegedly last 200 years if stored correctly. Cheap ones are 5-10. 20 can be expected for quality CDs stored correctly.
But no matter the claimed quality, it's a gamble. Our local library had a lot of 10-20 year old CDs that had developed microbubbles.
5 years is low range for CDs, but common enough that you should be taking backups for anything you keep longer.
Don't conflate a mastered CD with an aluminum data layer with a recordable CD-R or CD-RW, which use organic dyes that have a significantly shorter lifespan.
A properly manufactured CD can last 200+ years if it's stored in a dry environment free of UV exposure and high levels of moisture.
Even a quality CD-R can't really be expected to retain all of its data integrity for much more than 10 years.
First released in Japan in October 1982, the CD was the second optical disc technology to be invented (--Wikipedia)
Sorta doubting whatever study found proof that a CD can last 200 years...
Obviously no one's seen it happen first hand. It's a projection based on what's known about the materials and how they're made. Burned CD-R's have definitely been out in the real world for people to learn how short their lifespans can be, though.
Nobody could "prove," for instance, that the Voyager 1 could stay operational in deep space for 47+ years when it was launched in 1977, but the engineers could still predict and they launched it anyway, and it did. I don't think your argument really holds water.
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Some games would simply not install on a second or third machine without getting permission from the publisher.
I remember binning DDR2 RAM on a test bench back in the day and Windows deactivated itself after about a dozen times lol
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