You have that right! When I buy a game to play I want to be able to play that game, whenever and however I want. Most people that have Steam, I don't think they have any real concept of power or phone line loss that could make your entire catalog not work.

The way I see it is that when you buy a game, except for MMOs, I expect to have the right to use it, not rent a service to play an offline or LAN game.

Also I am seeing more and more people not realize that more people live in the sticks with crappy net speeds. I wish the companies would realize this. Here in Florida in a rural town, the wind could sneeze the wrong way and your phone might be out for days.

Yes, of course you own it. And until it works.
But that something is a backup copy on your HDD.

Personally, I can t see myself very exited about it.
All these games will endup in an abandonware site, at one point or another.

Sites that I use to get games that I already own in physical form, that I has trouble to read anyway (FDD anyone?)

Car emissions tests aren't the same thing. Cars have to pass MOT, road-worthiness tests, environmental laws, etc, video games don't. A better analogy is this - I own the game Outrun 2006 on retail disc (a racing game based on "Outrun" arcade machines of the 1980's). You now cannot buy the game legally anywhere apparently due to the license with Ferrari expiring. This means the publisher of the game can't sell new copies of the game anymore. However, people who already own the game can continue to play it. We can even resell our discs 2nd hand on Ebay. We just can't buy a new copy from the publisher (eg for replacement discs).

The only stuff that can be ordered to be destroyed retroactively is counterfeit media. Licensing music / brands / soundtracks, etc, contracts expiring don't fall under that. They are a distribution contract between the publisher and musician, etc, made during development. That's why you're also allowed to play games from developers / publishers who've gone out of business or read books from author's who've decided later on to pull all of their work from sale.

As for GTA 4's soundtrack, they got away with force deleting it from people's accounts simply because Steam's DRM & T&C's of service lets them get away with it. As Mueslinator said, DRM is ultimately about losing control of your own games and watering down owning a product into "renting a service" which comes laden with "you must agree that ultimately we have total control over your games and can downgrade whatever content we like" style clauses.

Valve even call it the Steam Subscriber Agreement:-

"2A. General Content and Services License

The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services.

For reasons that include, without limitation, system security, stability, and multiplayer interoperability, Steam may need to automatically update, pre-load, create new versions of or otherwise enhance the Content and Services and accordingly, the system requirements to use the Content and Services may change over time. You consent to such automatic updating"

"Create new versions" + "forced updates" means they can forcibly downgrade anything you've bought just as easily as upgrading it. You also don't own anything on Steam. Although everyone tries to claim that in every software EULA, the difference is multiple courts in several countries have ruled that physical media is owned (hence why you can resell 2nd hand games discs, DVD's, CD's, books, etc, on Ebay). And with GOG offline installers, although you can't resell them, you do get to own a local copy in a tangible sense of retaining "version control" that's just as immune to such retroactive downgrades as physical discs. Got a version that works as you want it backed up locally? It can remain "static" for life no matter who tries to do what on Internet "cloud" accounts.

However with Steam, there's a compulsory "layer" that sits between the game and you. It's that "layer" that basically gives publishers the ability to change or downgrade whatever they want, whenever they want from your Steam account (eg, removing a soundtrack / piece of artwork, censoring items, etc, or adding pay2win mechanics post-launch then making the gameplay much more grindy to 'encourage' you to spend more money to restore the pre-crippled gameplay).

Worth noting if GOG sold GTA4 you'd be equally screwed probably unless you downloaded and backed up a previous version. GOG likely would have been forced to update their version as well, is my point, so you'd need to back up your entire GOG library to avoid issues like that, which I would guess 90%+ of GOG users do not do.

Luckily we're on PC where I would bet someone makes a "fix GTA4's music" mod soon enough. On closed console systems DRM really f**ks you, which is why it's a shame to see people eagerly embracing digital purchases there. I thought discs might win out on consoles after the Xbox One debacle. Convenience always wins though.

Haven't read through all of this but concerning the "GOG is mostly selling new stuff nowadays!!" argument:

I don't get it, what did/do people expect to happen? There is only a finite number of old games and with many of those that are still missing its probably a licensing issue or maybe technical problems in a few cases.

Anyway, its pretty obvious GOG can't keep releasing old games forever. But they are a business and a few 80s/90s/early 00s enthusiasts buying old games aren't a very expandable audience. They might sell stuff now that the older crowd might not care about or ones that are available on Steam too, but it keeps GOG going and in the end preserves all those games that -are- released here. At least thats how I see it :P

And on DRM: Preservation is a good keyword I think. I never had any problems with copy protections, not even SecuRom, but what happens when services shut down, or publishers shut down and can't patch it out anymore if one day necessary (or if its just not financially attractive to them). Those games might end up dead, that probably won't happen with DRM free releases, thats why id always be willing to buy a copy of my favourite games here, if they ever get released.

Make that "media" instead of games. Remember when Amazon removed 1984 (yes, ironic...) from people's readers?


Yes they can. By the semi-official criterion this year all games from 2008 are "old". Next year those of 2009 will be. ;-)

You buy it, you OWN it. vs You buy it ,you RENT it.

I do. You don't have to for what I care..

Neither GOG or Steam you can sell your game so owning it is clearly not that apt. Control is the difference. You're bound by license terms in either case. The difference is that in one case, you get to decide whether to follow them or not whereas in the other another party can enforce it.

Still a significant difference but in neither case do you own your game.

aye, the problem mention here is about auto-updates, not DRM. you could have set GTA4 to never update in Steam, and nothing would happen.

But then. as we know, DRM just means "everything I do not like" today.

edit- and you might add, not only backing up the gOg version, but also never update/patch it again after that point.

AFAIK this not possible reliably in Steam. A friend of mine set some game to never update (because of changed balancing) and after a few weeks the update was installed without his consent... Don't remember which game though.

Steam still have some bugs - yes.

Hell yeah I care.

Downloaded more than 200+ titles (some still waiting to be played) thru gog's servers and all and happily played the majority of these without Galaxy - which is a great client - for many years. Go "winetrick" your windows games and try to get through hellish drm. Heck even Galaxy or Steam or whatever makes the whole thing a pain, heh. Be my guest.

If it wasn't for GOG's drm-free games (and oldies for sure) I wouldn't be here.

No it's not bugs. The option to disable automatic updates in Steam doesn't exist anymore; it was removed years ago.

The closest you can get to controlling automatic updates is to set Steam to never auto-update UNTIL you play the game. At this point, Steam will find there is an update and you will be unable to do anything until the game is forcibly updated.

This is not a bug. This is a feature. And if the game can't start without Steam, then you're pretty much screwed.