How does this benefit anybody? It just adds DRM to a previously free piece of software.

Not that IT MEANS all the Rom's are going to be sold on steam!

I foresee tons of lazy roms getting "ported" with some achievements and cloud save slapped onto them.

I guess it means the developers get a more reliable source of income than donations to improve it.

Is that such a bad thing Cloud saves No ACHIEVEMENTS though It also means ROMS! Gabe Newel has come to the rescue he's chucking a Nintendo Better then Nintendo could!

...as in selling ROMS? Uhm... no. Never.

Nintendo are one of the biggest in the game and they would rather die in a horrible streaming error, than start selling quality ROMS. However, I’ve been known to be wrong before...

No not Nintendo roms other roms... Maybe Nintendo roms who knows.

Yeah Nintendo doesn't want money from the PC market would they, No that's not their business model (not bloody half.)

Nintendo online - NES and SNES games for 40 bucks a month

The sad part of this is that, as far as I know, most IPs are gone or the now owners doesn't not care or won't.

Unless there is a major revolution in copyright laws (f.ex. for software that's 10-20 years the owners either have to continue sell it or release it, and if no ones around to claim it any longer it's considered to be in the public domain) roms will always be illegal.

yay more control

As long as the ROMS are cheap and sold in packs I don't object.

I would gladly purchase a legacy bundle pack of all 6500 old late 80s/early 90s Amiga games I know about for 500 bucks or more, even though 99% of the old license rights holders don't even care or know and if they know they would release it for free (as they did before).

Some of those games are...rare to say the least. I know about games on that platform perhaps only perhaps 50 or less people know about, some good stories I could share as well.

Bringing Retroarch to Steam might be a good way for big publishers to understand the mass appeal even further regarding these older games. It took a while for Disney to publish their stuff on here for instance. Realistically, just releasing the games without the achievements is probably the most realistic case. Most console re-releases of older games are lazy jobs or license hell after all.

I don't know, most of these games haven't aged well, we already have Sega Genesis megapack on steam with such games and one publisher tried to publish some ports and failed with very bad ports. I ask myself if ROMs belong to PC gaming and PC gaming store. What they can do about screen size and quality overall? one thing is to play NES game in small screen of handheld or with emulator and another thing to treat it as PC game and play fullscreen.
The only thing that can be beneficial is if they can publish game prototypes (games created but never published for different reasons).

I use it for my PlayStation classic and have to admit, it's not bad.

That quotation is the best answer to this thread.

Gating ROMs behind the Steam DRM is horrible news. Better to keep them as they are currently, which is free of the Steam DRM.

I can already imagine thousands of lawyers' eyes creepily turning towards the direction of Steam, their hands furiously typing on their keyboards, as they prepare their next Cease and Desist templates.