"Some, if not all, of those who have have bought Reality Pump's 2006 PC strategy title Earth 2160 from Valve's digital distribution platform Steam have been unable to play the game since February, according to a Steam Forums thread filled with complaints. "
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I tipped this story to shacknews after drmlessgames mentioned in another thread that earth 2160 was unplayable on Steam, this made me look in the steam forums and he was right. After a Steam Client update in february Earth 2160 couldn't be played anymore, worse steam kept selling the game even tough you couldn't play it. This is one of the reasons why DRM sucks a lot. Hopefully GOG releases Earth 2160 soon so that people know that this is a problem caused by the Steam client.

Well that's shitty

Yay Steam! /sarcasm

I don't mind using Steam... but this is unacceptable.
At least take the game off the store and save some people their money until you get it fixed.

Wow, that's disgraceful. It's one thing to sell a game that has known issues on certain hardware or newer versions of Windows, but to sell a game that it seems nobody can actually play is really low. If this was a recent release you can be sure they would have fixed it by now.

They removed the Earth 2160 product page today, probably after the shacknews article. Too bad they couldn't be bothered to do it 2 months ago when the game stopped working.

Better than noting I suppose...
Though they should reimburse the people who bought a broken game somehow.

I believe the developer is also to blame for this, as I'm sure they wouldn't allow you to sell their game and tarnish their name if it was bad.

But the problem was with the steam update wasn't it? The game devs have no influence over that and as long as they kept getting paid & weren't recieving shitloads of complaints then they probably didn't even know about it.

Steam has a reputation with not taking quick action on broken games. Jagged Alliance 2 was broke for months and nothing was done about it and was still for sale. And just recently the Titan Quest expansion didn't have good key numbers for over three weeks, yet wasn't pulled from sale. And there are other examples that I could name. Steam may have some good features, but Valves customer service is complete garbage. This is one reason not to buy third party games off of Steam. If something doesn't work, Valve will say it's the publisher/developer's fault, while the pub/dev will say it's Valve/Steams fault. And the buck gets passed around and around.

Wow that is nasty. I've heard many bad things about Steam, but that's right at the top of the worst ones. Very unethical.

then I suppose the users could have had a bigger outcry to the developer. I'm not clearing the blame of steam, steam should have talked to them to.
Personally, if steam broke a game I made, I wouldn't allow steam to sell it.

It's sad to think that DRM has gotten so bad that Steam is considered to be a better form of DRM. At one time it was close to if not the worst. We all know that DRM doesn't stop piracy, but it does affect second hand sales. Which IMO, what it is all about. It's pretty pathetic that someone who stole a game off of the internet has less problems and less to worry about than a person who bought the damn thing!
EDIT: I just came back from the Steam forums, and Titan Quest: Immortal Throne is still borked.

Suckers.