What WOULD happen to our purchases if Steam goes bankrupt?

[BFG10K]

Can't be bothered to actually read what he said? He wasn't talking about exclusives in general - he was talking about exclusives in VR. Even if he wasn't talking about VR at the time of that comment, it's incredibly childish and immature to hold a grudge against the guy for having a few exclusives 20 years ago.

Only VR-exclusives you say?
Changed his mind since 20 years ago you say?

HL Alyx: VR title? Check.
HL Alyx: upcoming future title? Check.

So...when can we expect to see HL Alyx on Uplay/Origin/GOG? I mean GabeN's clearly changed his mind since then, and he's talking about VR titles. Right?

If anyone else was willing to take over the Valve exclusives, I doubt he would care but considering they have established communities on Steam, it would be a financial disaster to try and release any of the Valve games on another platform (aside from all the Valve games that were also ported to console which eliminates them from being exclusives).

LOL, wut? Financial "disasters"? Where did that come from? Show us your insider sales analysis figures to back that claim.

What "financial disaster" did EA/Ubisoft suffer from releasing their games on GOG?

 

[JujuFish]

Oh for crise sake - look into the history of steam and why it was developed and what alternatives were available at the time. Yes they could probably sell it on other platforms today but why would they ?

GOG was literally designed for this case. Good Old Games. The point is glaringly obvious. Gabe is a hypocrite. I can accept it and still do business with him, but at least I don't stick my head in the sand and ignore it.

 

[JujuFish]

There's no reasoning with someone who is just trolling. He'll only be satisfied if Gabe goes back in time and never expresses any opinions about anything. First he kept going on about exclusives and after being proven wrong, he just changes his tune to "PC digital distributor exclusives". Next he'll start asking why Gabe never ported any games to mobile.

The irony.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

We're talking about 100% of Valve developed/published titles. That entire catalog is tied to Steam DRM, unlike Ubisoft/EA which have some of their games on non Uplay/Origin clients, including DRM-free GOG.


But...but...but GabeN told us exclusives are bad. And his statement is used as "evidence" in this thread to "prove" there'll be a DRM removal patch post-bankruptcy.


Why do you feel there are such questions going forward given historical evidence has more than answered them? I can run games right now from the late 1970s and later on Windows 10 October 2019 on a brand new PC built two months ago, including non-x86 platforms.

Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

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DRM (especially Cloud based/always online/streaming) is the problem here, not a fictional incompatibility doomsday.

The expectations that a developer that sells games on its own store front and uses networking to make playing that game easier to do would somehow make another version to sell on its competitors stores is just odd.
Regarding a game from 15 or 20 or 30 years ago running on current hardware is just as valid as saying steam will somehow disappear.
This topic is getting really tiresome. If someone doesn’t like steam they shouldn’t buy games from steam, problem solved. Vote with your wallet for the next alternative, to have thousands of games on steam and complain that steam sucks is sort of a lie (maybe an unintentional lie) to someone like me that sounds like over a lifetime that person has spent a overwhelming percentage of “game” money on steam and not on other distribution platforms therefore rewarding steam’s business practices, which is telling valve/steam you prefer their product.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Oh for crise sake - look into the history of steam and why it was developed and what alternatives were available at the time. Yes they could probably sell it on other platforms today but why would they ?

This is an excellent point, how old is everyone? Maybe some have forgotten what a PITA loading, patching then likely downloading some sort of server browser was for multiplayer games pre-steam networking.
I remember waiting for a sizable patch from wolfenstein to download, unzipping the patch, follow instructions as in copy to x file and over write vs merge. Waiting forever for the server browerser to update (I think that was a separate program but I may be thinking of another game) all to find out the first 3 servers you tried to join are running a different version of the game and won’t allow you to join.
I remember being excited to play, getting home from work then it taking one hour plus to play the damn game. Sometimes I’d screw something up and stress about if I broke the game or worse I broke windows.
I do not miss those days.

 

[WiriWout]

Ya, it's a more 'years from now' topic. You could spend hundreds with Microsoft on "Age of Empires Online" content - they're still in business, but you lost all of that. I effectively lost a lot of games I'd bought from an online seller when they went out of business (they did make some arrangements, but I lost track).

Age of Empires: Online is still playable, for free now. Search for "Project Celeste".

 

[Craig234]

Age of Empires: Online is still playable, for free now. Search for "Project Celeste".

Thanks, thought I heard something about that. I assume you don't benefit from having spent money on the original.

 

[ultimatebob]

This is an excellent point, how old is everyone? Maybe some have forgotten what a PITA loading, patching then likely downloading some sort of server browser was for multiplayer games pre-steam networking.
I remember waiting for a sizable patch from wolfenstein to download, unzipping the patch, follow instructions as in copy to x file and over write vs merge. Waiting forever for the server browerser to update (I think that was a separate program but I may be thinking of another game) all to find out the first 3 servers you tried to join are running a different version of the game and won’t allow you to join.
I remember being excited to play, getting home from work then it taking one hour plus to play the damn game. Sometimes I’d screw something up and stress about if I broke the game or worse I broke windows.
I do not miss those days.

Come on, it wasn't that bad. We had online game services like TEN, Mplayer, and Heat.net that would automatically patch your games to the latest version and do multiplayer matchmaking for dozens of different games all the way back in 1997. Some of them were even free to use.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Come on, it wasn't that bad. We had online game services like TEN, Mplayer, and Heat.net that would automatically patch your games to the latest version and do multiplayer matchmaking for dozens of different games all the way back in 1997. Some of them were even free to use.

That’s not the way I remember it but yes dial up access added to the pain greatly.

 

[ultimatebob]

That’s not the way I remember it but yes dial up access added to the pain greatly.

I'm probably biased (as a former employee), but Mplayer's technology was 10 years ahead of it's time. We were doing byte level patching of games and voice chat way before anyone else.

Sure, it still kinda sucked on dialup, but there wasn't much we could do about that. On broadband, it was pretty awesome.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I'm probably biased (as a former employee), but Mplayer's technology was 10 years ahead of it's time. We were doing byte level patching of games and voice chat way before anyone else.

Sure, it still kinda sucked on dialup, but there wasn't much we could do about that. On broadband, it was pretty awesome.

You were with Mplayer? Neat. I was a lowly volunteer TENGuide for a bit (on Total Entertainment Network).

 

[CP5670]

I have hundreds of games on Steam but wouldn't expect to get anything if Valve goes bankrupt, even though that seems very unlikely at this point. Usually some bigger tech firm or PE firm will acquire them if that happens, and would then change the terms however they like to get a return on their investment. They could, for example, keep Steam up but charge a monthly subscription fee to just login and play the games you have already paid for.

 

[WelshBloke]

With the same vague "we have ways" handwaving. Valve can promise whatever they like, but that doesn't prove anything. When the issue at hand is whether their millions of customers will be able to access what they have paid for, you'd think they'd take the issue a bit more seriously and treat their customers with a little more respect instead of dismissing them and saying "just trust us``.

What exactly would you like them to say?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

With the same vague "we have ways" handwaving. Valve can promise whatever they like, but that doesn't prove anything. When the issue at hand is whether their millions of customers will be able to access what they have paid for, you'd think they'd take the issue a bit more seriously and treat their customers with a little more respect instead of dismissing them and saying "just trust us``.

This has been covered, steam is worth far too much money to just close shop and end it. Someone would buy them.
I’m sure that would come with a change of TOS and management but regardless your games would still be there.
Any company valued at 8-12 BILLION isn’t going to go dark.
The customer lists of valve are probably worth a few billion more.

 

[right_to_know]

This is an excellent point, how old is everyone? Maybe some have forgotten what a PITA loading, patching then likely downloading some sort of server browser was for multiplayer games pre-steam networking.
I remember waiting for a sizable patch from wolfenstein to download, unzipping the patch, follow instructions as in copy to x file and over write vs merge. Waiting forever for the server browerser to update (I think that was a separate program but I may be thinking of another game) all to find out the first 3 servers you tried to join are running a different version of the game and won’t allow you to join.
I remember being excited to play, getting home from work then it taking one hour plus to play the damn game. Sometimes I’d screw something up and stress about if I broke the game or worse I broke windows.
I do not miss those days.

Oh the horror of going to a fileserver to download and install a patch or use a server browser program.
The people playing games 20 years ago must have had an I.Q of at least 150 to be able to take care of such a task.

 

[Stg-Flame]

This thread should just be locked. The discussion ended several months ago and new replies tend to just be overly sarcastic for no reason.

 

[right_to_know]

Don't forget to add overly condescending or even passive aggressive.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Oh the horror of going to a fileserver to download and install a patch or use a server browser program.
The people playing games 20 years ago must have had an I.Q of at least 150 to be able to take care of such a task.

Apparently it was that night I wanted to play wolfenstein after work. Nearly nobody did it.