No, you own the licence - a fact that has been made abundantly clear again and again. The licensor is not at liberty to arbitrarily revoke said licence. There are certain limited conditions under which a licence is deemed void (mostly major culpable violations of the ToU) but the licence is otherwise yours to keep indefinitely.

When you sign up to the Steam service (or GOG), you agree to two contracts. The first is for the service, which is governed by the GOG Terms of Use or SSA. This affects your ability to download the games, keep it updated with patches, use the forums, chat etc. etc. etc. The second is for the software, which is independent of GOG or Steam. The termination of the first does not automatically entail the termination of the second.

Should Valve unilaterally terminate the Steam service and leave you unable to play your games, then you are entitled to demand a remedy from the other party of the EULA of the software (the publisher) or take appropriate measures to circumvent the copy protection. The only difference relative to GOG is that if GOG were to terminate your account, neither GOG nor the publisher need to provide a remedy, because the software functions as-is.

I definitely prefer the service that doesn't treat all its customers as potential criminals.

Assuming you had your stuff backed up

No it is just me being very bad at explaining thing. Point being, as said before - the only difference between a GoG game and a Steam game is that Steam can enforce any legal what-evers, while gog trust the user to it themselves. The whole backup thing was a blind alley.
The problem is that people are still pirating, so a customer is a potential criminal. It do no matter that it is only 1 in 100000 who do so, but it do mean that each customer is at 0.0001% chance of being a criminal. Therefore all customers are potential customers. Logic, hee?

Well, at least that is how some larger corp sees it, and I can not blame them for it. And can see why some do not buy into DRM free, even if DRM do not work that well.

Indeed. And if you didn't, that's your own bloody fault :-p

The only thing to be added, is that if gog folds, it becomes on the onus of the customers to bug (pun intended) the individual developers for any hotfixes, patches, expansions and so on, as this was part of GoG's service. The people selling the licenses is still obliged to provide this (I think that was one of the things in the EU ruling), but only if you deal directly with them. You are not allowed to use any other services for to 'maintain' your software (unless the service allows you to do so).

Sheesh, I have to mention once again that emulation exists, and most likely will exist in the future. I don't have an XP computer, but I have XP on a virtual machine. I have run Amiga and C64 games on emulators. Lots of GOG games are emulated right now. Regardless of what happens to GOG, there has always been and probably will be people who will build emulators to run old games with. It's not a guarantee, but it's not like we are dependable on old hardware.

I think there are strong misconceptions about Steam that make people so trusting on the service. There's the misconception that if a service provider (like Gabe newell in this case) promises something, they will absolutely hold those promises. There's a misconception that Gabe Newell *has* promised to remove the DRM if Steam ever went down under. There's a misconception that Gabe Newell would be *able* to do it. And there's a misconception that if a company is very big and healthy and clearly the most popular in the marketplace, it must be so forever and the gaming marketplace will not have dramatic changes in the future.

Actually, I think you can redownload the games you've bought even if they ger removed from the catalogue. I have Space Rangers 2 on my library and I can download it now. Only the store page has been removed.

The point here being that even GOG itself has warned us to download games 'just in case' when certain licenses came to end due to problems with the company behind them. Even though it may not have happened yet, clearly the possibility of it happening is a real one, else they wouldn't have bothered mentioning it.

@Emulators and the like. Naturally those possibilities remain an option. Yet we see people rebuying their collection all the time here, either to have digital copies of what they already have or often to not have to deal with the extra effort it requires to get them to run.

I don't expect this attitude to change, and I personally don't doubt that in 10-15 years, I'll be rebuying a fair amount of my collection (for pennies on sale) in yet even more improved forms. Be they either compatibility upgrades for platforms of the times, or 'remakes' so we can actually have proper full screen rather than the ancient resolutions we're currently using, or to upgrade to whatever storage format we're using then that we may not even have yet.

Apart from my PS2 I barely play older games anymore (classic X-com probably being the oldest, the pre-emulated working version on Steam), and even then that's because I upgraded it with a HDD. I have a PS1 still but I'd prefer to play a remake of those games on PSP or a digital version for PSN. Heck, even with the PS2 games I'd prefer that.

I've rebought some classics on GOG but realistically I've found I still play very few of them. I'd probably forego it entirely if I had decent alternatives to some of the great classics.

Why it is not likely? Is Linux going away? If open platforms cease to exist completely, where will people develop new software and learn the ropes with software development? Only on vendor supplied closed SDKs?

Your argument is quite silly anyway. I take the safety belt analogy again. You are still arguing that is makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for me to use a safety belt while driving, because I make an assumption that I will not be crushed between two high speed trucks, or that I will not drive off off a high cliff.

Without DRM, I still have the control over playing the game, either on the original system I bought it for, or emulator, or whatever, even if the store I bought it from has ceased to exist.

Since Steam's existence currently relies on the existence of an open x86 platform, you are now arguing against your earlier argument that in the future there will not anymore be any open computer platform where you are allowed to run your own software, e.g. emulators. If e.g. Android took over completely, I don't think Valve/Steam has much chances to survive there, or at least become a major player.

Actually at this point it is quite hard for Android to put an end to it anymore, as they have already let people to purchase and use non-GooglePlay apps on their Android devices. If Google suddenly rejected people from doing that anymore, there would be an outrage. Once you have left the door open in a platform, it is hard to close it afterwards.

There are already emulators on Android devices, including DOSBox.

But, even though it is possible I get into an accident where the safety belt/airbag does not save me, it doesn't mean using them while driving is completely useless. Or, buying a travel insurance while travelling abroad.

So I take it then that you feel using a safety belt/airbag while driving is totally useless?

Without DRM, in the future I will have several _potential_ options to still play the game after the store from which I bought it has croaked. E.g. emulators or even playing it on the original hardware.

DRM in the game is an _extra_ obstacle in being able to play the game in the future, even if you have an emulator or the old hardware to play it on.

You can't make sweeping statements with one example. It depends completely on the Steam game how hard it is to crack. E.g. different Steam games need a different kind of "Steam emulator", on top of a cracked exe... and then you have to somehow figure out which are all the files under Steam folder that you need to back up in order to get all the related files. It is a total mess overall.

In the end, it would be much easier to just download the pirated version instead which someone else has cracked for you. But then you run into a different set of problems:

- What version is that cracked version? The latest, or the first buggy version?

- Does it include the same DLCs that you had too?

- Since you'll be most probably sharing the pirated version while downloading it, you are committing a crime already there. If everyone disabled uploading/sharing, then you wouldn't be able to download it at all.

- The pirated version may include unwanted trojans and stuff.

Just like when I use a safety belt/airbag on a car while driving, I am assuming that I will not be hit by a meteor, crushed between two high speed trucks, or drive off off a very high cliff.

Just like when I use a safety belt/airbag on a car while driving, I am assuming that I will not be hit by a meteor, crushed between two high speed trucks, or drive off off a very high cliff.

And actually, I didn't assume that the "standards of PC" will stay exactly the same. Your only argument seems to be that all future IT systems will be completely closed, with no option to install and run your own software (like emulators).

Poor software developer startups of the future...

And frankly, I think at least virtual machine software (VMWare and such) will still run even on closed systems. Dedicated game system emulators... depends.

I have most of my GOG games stored also locally. Some of them are not the latest installer versions at this point, but so what? I wouldn't mind GOG making an optional client that would check if all my installers are the latest version, and redownload those which are not. They can take some example from e.g. Humble Bundle's Android-client, which pretty much works like this. And fortunately the HBA client is completely optional too, especially considering some of its features (like downloading Android games only to internal memory on the Android device, not external).

Some digital stores even expect you to keep a local backup, ie. it is restricted how long or how many times you can download the purchased games from them. Strategy First's own store at least used to be like this, they expected me to download all those 29 games I bough from their bundle, right after purchasing them.

So I did. I still have the SFI games on my hard drive (two hard drives, actually).

At a simple level you are probably just hanging out in the wrong type of forum to have a proper mature discussion on all this. Steam has it's fan boys. So if in those kind of forums, maybe just don't bring GoG's awesomeness up so much, as fact is many games on Steam will not come to GoG and that is just something us GoG users have to accept and deal with.

So rather than let it stress you, just be happy that while a Steam user may not get to play their game for any number of technical reasons (server authentication overload/not able to be online at that time (travelling etc)/Steam DRM just messing up/Getting account banned etc). All your GoG games are 100% playable all of the time and whenever you choose to play them.

You 'own' your GoG games, your not just 'leasing' their use from an online third-party (such as Steam) that can stop you playing them. And yes while technically you probably don't own many games due to licensing wording, the reality is no-one (as in absolutely no-one) can ever stop you playing your GoG games, it is just not physically possible to do so, whatever the terms and conditions in any EULA or terms of service etc. Your GoG games are 100% fully controlled by you.

GoG is all about real power to the people.

Steam is about power and control to Steam first and foremost.

But that's their _choice_. If they feel they can't be arsed to try to play their older games anymore even if it was possible (either on the old hardware, or on an emulator), all the power to them.

Why should I care if someone else is not interested to play a game he bought a decade or two earlier? All I care is that I want to do it. On the other hand, classic game releases on GOG and Steam imply that there is lots of interest into older games too.

...

Sure. I prefer not walking around with a safety belt all the time though (to use that analogy). And yes, in the long run, that'll probably increase my gaming expenses a little compared to those who do. In the meantime though I don't worry about that stuff and enjoy the conveniences it brings me.