I do as well. I like the cases and owning things. Its a shame that Netflix and Amazon Prime do some great shows that are not available to buy on DVD. And its not just them (Bob's Burgers) is not available on DVD at all here in the UK.

But on topic its Steam it goes down now and again. Its working fine for me now. (It did go down briefly for community functions earlier.)

I've never been denied access to a game before !

So, apart from that how did your first week in gaming go...?

This just in: sensationalist thread not a sensation!

;)

I tend to keep Steam shut down unless using it actively and even I can remember twice when the service went offline before, over many years for sure.

omg !.... i must have been so lucky for all of these years !! ..... There are some who really catch the bad side of life all of the time eh?
yes, i can confirm everything works again as its supposed too, what a relief!

There will be lots of articles where gaming and IT journalists act as if this a total surprise to them that one might lose access to his digital DRM purchases if the service provider goes under.

We have seen similar articles and reactions before in a smaller scale when e.g. some e-book services have gone down and people and journalists have been oh so surprised how they lost access to their purchased e-books. As if the thought never even occurred to them it could happen. The articles go like "No one ever thought this could happen, but...". Oh no, yes we did, but you idiots just didn't listen.

Many Steam users are under a similar fallacy at the moment, reassuring themselves "Steam will be around forever, and even if it wasn't, I am sure Valve would find some way to let me continue playing all my Steam games, even after the service is no more... I mean, come on, there must be some international law or something that would prevent them from just cutting my access to my purchased Steam games, right? Right?!? RIIIIIIIIIIIGHT???!?!".

Then someone says: "Sure, I recall reading somewhere that Gabe promised that if that ever occurred, he would just hit that Steam kill switch that is located in his bedroom, that will instantly make all your Steam games playable forever, including those with third-party DRM. Non problemos, muchahos amigos. Aribaaa! We are the three amigos..."

lol

Then I see no reason to continue posting here.

Steam is so different now that it is ALMOST unusable! they should OF NOT tried to compete with the MOBILE/(UN)EPIC MARKET

I didn't think were any real tech journalists left. It's nearly all "cut & paste PR release" marketing these days.

LOL. Whenever this subject appears most people on the Steam forums sit around telling each other what they want to hear. I actually researched this "Gabe promised us / guaranteed that" claim in the past managing to track down his original quoted post (which has since been removed from the Steam forums) and that anyone at Valve has ever "promised" Steam "subscribers" continued access to their "subscriptions" post Steam is a myth:-

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/has_gog_said_what_would_happen_to_our_games_if_it_shuts_down/post32

No.

Because the only way they could do that is to apply a patch through their server-client system, and if they can have that system patching out DRM, then that system is already up and running again and there's no need to patch the game files anymore.

Extremely hypothetically they could provide modified game exes from a separate server, but most of Steam users probably wouldn't know how to use them, as they only know the launcher.

that's a strong claim. Any evidence?

(and no, preferring to use the Steam client =/= don't know how to use anything else)

The patient turnover of psychotherapists will increase ?

steam goes out of business? not in the near future that's for sure