Steam Now Warns Consumers That They’re Buying a License, Not a Game During a Purchase
www.cgmagonline.com
external-link
Whenever you purchase a game on Steam, you’ll now be met with a warning, stating that you're buying a license and not the game itself.

unless you keep the offline installers.

@Voyajer@lemmy.world
link
fedilink
English
197M

I mean at that point you can just make backups of your steam games too. A lot work straight from the exe and for the rest there are steam simulators.

GHiLA
link
fedilink
English
127M

Well, gentlemen. I guess we got this all sorted out. Not a big deal, after all.

@Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
link
fedilink
English
0
edit-2
7M

A small minority of GOG games have DRM, a majority of Steam games have a form of DRM. “Use a simulator” isn’t a solution, I shouldn’t need a third party program to play the games I paid for.

Also there’s a pretty big difference between downloading the installer and backing up the installed files, one is an intended backup solution, the other is a workaround.

@yamanii@lemmy.world
link
fedilink
English
17M

Which gog games have DRM? The costumers over there even protested Hitman’s inclusion in the store precisely because without internet you can’t unlock anything in the game, GOG even removed it from sale.

@can@sh.itjust.works
link
fedilink
English
57M

If I back up a DRM-free installer what’s the difference?

Fushuan [he/him]
link
fedilink
English
87M

If you back up the folder of a steam installed game that doesn’t need steam to run, what’s the difference?

Owning the copy in a legal sense doesn’t affect most of the userbase tbh.

@radix@lemmy.world
link
fedilink
English
24
edit-2
7M

Legally, it’s still a license, it’s just effectively impossible to revoke.

Edit to expand on this: A truly offline forever-purchase of physical goods can be re-sold. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine (this is the US-specific version, other jurisdictions may have similar doctrines).

American legal concept that limits the rights of an intellectual property owner to control resale of products embodying its intellectual property.

A digital “purchase” is usually non-transferable, even from GOG. It can’t be removed from your own HDD once you download the installer, but there are still restrictions attached on what you can do with it, even if those are limited and hard to enforce.

@TheEntity@lemmy.world
link
fedilink
English
157M

Just like any game ever sold on a CD.

xapr [he/him]
link
fedilink
English
87M

Technically, probably yes, but you can buy old, opened games on eBay. I doubt you can do the same with GOG games. Digital media is much harder if not impossible to resell.

Create a post

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Weekly Threads:

What Are You Playing?

The Weekly Discussion Topic

Rules:

  1. Submissions have to be related to games

  2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

  3. No excessive self-promotion

  4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

  5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

  6. No linking to piracy

More information about the community rules can be found here and here.

  • 1 user online
  • 488 users / day
  • 932 users / week
  • 2.69K users / month
  • 6.54K users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 5.91K Posts
  • 120K Comments
  • Modlog