99% likely, yes. Also considering how low the maintenance costs probably are, why would Valve ever go under on the Steam side unless they did something colossally stupid? I think the much more likely scenario would be that in 30 years or something the PC gaming market is so infinitely small, due to new technologies, that there is really no use keeping Steam going because usage would be so small. In that case I'm sure those of us hardcore enough to play games from 1999 will have a way to do so.

I don't really care about the DRM aspect of Steam in all honesty. If I did I wouldn't buy Steam games, but I do. Why don't I care? Because Steam isn't going anywhere for a long time and because if my account is lost for some reason I can just torrent the games I had owned. DRM is irrelevant because DRM is irrelevant, that's just the honest truth of it.

What I more get pissed off about, and got REALLY pissed off about yesterday, is the whole "games as a service you own nothing" attitude they have. It just irks me on a personal level. "We're going to patch Skyrim whether you like it or not, whether it breaks things or not, and you can't do anything about it because we technically own that portion of your hard drive according to our largely untested in court terms of service!" And they sell this "games as a service" thing to consumers as if it always benefits them, when it doesn't.

Valve to me is the epitome of the business man who acts like he's your best friend in the world and then screws you over in the boardroom for more money. It's all a sham, they just want your cash. THAT is what irritates me about them, honestly.

Personally I think whole auto-patching thing is a net plus. Note that Skyrim is only one of TWO games where there's even a semi-reasonable argument against auto-patching. In Civ5 this was a problem only because their patches ended up being so vast that it would 'break' save games rendering previous games unplayable because your empire was thrown into massive unhappiness. So there, I could see how disabling auto-patching had at least some kind of relevant gameplay problems.

And even with Skyrim if the auto-patching had not disabled LAA it would have been a non-issue. People wouldn't even be talking about autopatching as a 'problem'. So to me even this is not a really good case against the autopatch feature.

Also I think the anger is misdirected. LAA fixes have been in EVERY SINGLE Bethesda game ever made. Yes they have never incorporated it into the official exe. After 4-5 of your games have a fix that is almost universally used by all players, and yet you don't seem to want to incorporate it each time, I think Steam isn't really the problem.


Obviously my own experience but I was playing through DragonAge2 and hadn't noticed until well through my 2nd play through they had fixed a slowdown problem with Isabella in your party. I never noticed the patch because well I was too busy playing the game. If I had Steam the patch would have installed and fixed a lot of issues I was having. Since I'm at work a lot such patches are usually downloaded and installed even before I get home. Having to hunt for patches for each of my games is not something that I"m really excited to do anymore.

I don't use Steam and I don't intend to.
Pretty much every major game nowadays, with or without Steamworks, contains DRM.
Disc check or serials are annoying. Nothing more, nothing less.

Most forms of DRM nowadays can prevent people from playing a legally acquired game. Unfortunately with those DRMs you're basically not buying a game, you're renting it.
Steam is a fine example of that.

Steam going bankrupt is not too likely with the income it generates. So it's not something to worry about. What's more troublesome are things like legal issues. Content found unsuited, offending, illegal, etc. People start lawsuits for a lot of nonsense in the US. In the worst case scenario Steam could be forced to shutdown.
For those who think that's unlikely, check the US' SOPA bill which is currently being discussed. 1 complaint is all it will take to take a website at least temporarily down.

I've had many patches break games in my 20+ years of PC gaming. Bethesda patches are actually notorious for this, in my experience. The Fallout 3 1.5 patch for example broke all mods and introduces a crashing bug when in VATS. It took them like a month and half to release another patch.

Auto-patching removes freedom and choice, two of the core concepts to PC gaming. Just because you have a problem keeping up with patches does not mean there shouldn't be a true option that works to keep a game from updating, or even better, to allow you to choose which version you want installed.

Also:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4Ws9JSCwh0

This was the first thing that came to my mind when I read the title of the thread

Hrum. I tried to dig up the support article that stated Steam's shut down plan, but I can no longer find it. The most I can find is some moderators saying the same thing I did. To be fair, they're only moderators, so they may not be right.

Then they're this statement in the Steam Subscriber Agreement

"C. Termination by Valve.
[...]
2. In the case of a one-time purchase of a product license (e.g., purchase of a single game) from Valve, Valve may choose to terminate or cancel your Subscription in its entirety or may terminate or cancel only a portion of the Subscription (e.g., access to the software via Steam) and Valve may, but is not obligated to, provide access (for a limited period of time) to the download of a stand-alone version of the software and content associated with such one-time purchase."

It comes down to if you think Valve would follow through or not. I personally have enough goodwill towards Valve that I think they wouldn't shut down without warning, and would honour the statement agreement.

I guess the counterargument is that you never know what could make them shut down and it could be outside their control, but it's pretty much guaranteed that the only way Valve would suddenly shut down without warning is through collapse of the free world/nuclear war/asteroids/etc, and I would probably be far more concerned about said collapse of the free world/nuclear war/asteroids/etc than about my video games.

Basically, you'll see the signs of Steam's failure long before it happens, so just make back ups of all your games and be prepared to download some cracks.

I'll buy something from Valve if it's really cheap. $5, or maybe $10 if the game has a lot of value and replayability.

Otherwise, I generally don't trust these online DRM services. I can't be sure that they'll always give me my product, or that I'll be able to mod the product the way I want to.

So basically this might just be a discussion about laws vs. morals? Between people who are prepared to crack their purchased games anyway and people who prefer their purchased games legally DRM-free from the start? ;)

Or people who simply don't care about the Steam DRM because it doesn't bother them :)

Besides. If Steam goes down, and I have to use a crack, or Gog goes down and you use your premade installer. The only thing either of us will have left to prove we got it the 'legal' way is the receipt.

I know one thing about Steam ..... the Autumn Sale has started !! Wooooot :)

Sure, but I won't have to visit any torrent or warez sites, so they won't be after me. :P

Anyway, I'm just kidding, I've given in to the temptation of Steam sales occasionally, too. (And the Oddboxx offer looks VERY tempting right now, argh. ;) )

I think they have a bitchin sale, right now.

No, you were pretty screwed if the Isabella slowdown bug bit you. My Hawke was moving at less than 50% normal speed before I finally decided something was wrong (like a frog in a pot, my Hawke leached speed gradually so I didn't notice). A later patch prevented you from getting slowed down but would not cure the afflicted. It was necessary to edit your character with a utility. It took several hours of hunting to confirm the problem and find a solution. I almost quit the game over it (I was late in the 3rd act and had really been enjoying it).

My DA2 was a steam preorder.

My thoughts exactly, which is why I bought it.

I'm one of those anti-DRM freaks, so Steam has a strike against it right from the outset. That being said, I'm not one to bash something without personally experiencing it first. I chose to try out Steam after reading so many people saying what a great service it was. My trial game was Mass Effect (since I couldn't stomach the DRM included in the retail version, I figured this was a great game to test out the Steam service).

My verdict: I don't like Steam, and choose to use it as little as possible. It offers me nothing that I find useful, as I don't play multiplayer games, have no use for a friend system, and don't give a rat's ass about achievements. I found it annoying that when the client updated, it would revert my games from my off-line mode setting. I don't know if it still does this, but it did when I was using it to play ME. I also found it terribly slow to start up. Another issue I have is I have an off-line gaming rig that renders any Steam games unusable on that machine (something that activation DRM schemes also screw with). And I don't particularly like the thought of tying my purchases to a third party client, nor do I like the thought of a single player non-Valve game being forced to use the Steam client in order to run. So I'm not a Steam fan.

All that being said, I can certainly understand why other people like it, and I do buy the odd deeply-discounted game through Steam (almost exclusively games that I'm not sure about and that I don't really think I'd care about 'owning'). I tend to not bash Steam though, but I don't hesitate to give my opinion of it.