I lot of those terms were thrown at the wall to see if they stuck, though. There's the First Sale doctrine for instance. If you actually signed a contract, all bets are off, but if you just bought a shrink-wrap, a lot of these terms were make-believe.

But when you owned a disc you could use offline, they were never going to come to your home and take it. It was effectively yours. Steam normalized a world where that license revocation could actually be invoked and enforced from afar.

Sadly, this is pretty accurate and not that different a situation from linux kernel where Linus still reigns. Their vision is driving both and, thankfully for most, they have been fairly benevolent dictators.

But, and it is not a small but, even with their benevolent dictatorship in place, it can only get much worse after they are gone. The pieces to a rather bad ecosystem are all in place.

Well, basically nothing happened in the last 10 years with Steam.

GOG have also said they will help honour bequeathing your library if you leave it to someone and identify your username/email. Steam have expressed no such desire.

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/gog-will-let-you-beq...

> "In general, your GOG account and GOG content is not transferable. However, if you can obtain a copy of a court order that specifically entitles someone to your GOG personal account, the digital content attached to it taking into account the EULAs of specific games within it, and that specifically refers to your GOG username or at least email address used to create such an account, we'd do our best to make it happen. We're willing to handle such a situation and preserve your GOG library—but currently we can only do it with the help of the justice system."

Not really, if the game is DRM-free (which is the case for all games on GOG and even some on Steam, plus the Steamworks DRM that most games use is very easy to bypass if there's nothing else in addition to it), you effectively do own it. Of course, it's your responsibility to preserve a copy of the files because your ability to redownload them in the future isn't guaranteed, but once you have them, nobody can stop you from using them.

No, steam is the worst of both worlds of digital selling: It is a mandatory subscription service, on top, to access your games, not just a one time purchase.

Then download the individual game installers.

I understand that there is some convenience to the GOG client but, if memory serves me correctly, you have to configure the client to keep the installers. If you do not keep the game installers, you are not much better off than you would be if you obtained the game through Steam. If anything were to happen to GOG you would eventually end up losing access to the game.

Besides, the ability to run games without the client is a huge benefit in my books. You simply launch the game and immerse yourself in it. You have do not have to go through the marketing department (erm, store) in order to play the game.

I can buy Windows software without Microsoft being a middleman. Steam on the other hand exists only to be a middleman. You could (most naturally) buy a game without paying a middleman, but it's the exception now for some reason and not the rule.

Heroic is reasonably seamless - it integrates with GOG and your Steam library, and by extension Proton. Pretty popular among Steam Deck users.

https://heroicgameslauncher.com/

I use Lutris for that, a bit clunky (especially updating games) but it does work.

See the other two posts for recommendations, but be aware that neither of the options listed is at the level of experience Steam may have spoiled us with. My last try was 4 or 5 months ago and I ended up just going with a VM.

I have heard of alternative game launchers that will take care of launching Windows games (including GOG titles) under Linux.

But I usually just end up purchasing Linux games through GOG and Windows games through Steam.

Lutris the popular option. Heroic is another but is a chromium app fyi.

This goes a step further than a typical CD key because the license is contingent on one's Steam account. If you lose your Steam account you lose all your licenses.

>The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services. To make use of the Content and Services, you must have a Steam Account and you may be required to be running the Steam client and maintaining a connection to the Internet. [1]

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement#2

Europeans, do your part: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/

Where does steam say that it is a $0/mo subscription?

You own a "license" to play the game which they can revoke whenever they want for any or no reason.

No, you don't even own that; if your account is disabled for any reason you will lose everything. You don't own anything.

If a vendor says that you bought something in the big print, then claims that you acutally paid for a revokable license in the small print, then I (personally) don't have much of a problem with someone pirating a copy to maintain access for what they paid for. After all, they convinced someone to pay for something through misrepresentation. That said, even with that qualification, I doubt the law would agree with that position.

That said, the author should have the right to decide the terms of sale (at least for luxury items) as long as they aren't misrepresenting the sale. If the button says something to the effect of "Buy Revokable License Now!", or something equally clear, instead of "Buy Now!" then the customer knows what they are getting into. They can either choose to pay for it, knowing they may lose access in the future, or they may choose not to pay for it since they view the terms as unacceptable.

This is the correct answer.

Ironically, once again, piracy provides the best service.

Piracy was never stealing in the first place.

Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that.

I’m so pro physical media it’s ridiculous that people can’t be bothered to go in a store and get a copy. They will only care when they get locked out of their account and realize that when steam says you really don’t own your games that they weren’t bluffing.

Well, the government owns all of the land, so by that logic you should just steal whatever land you want, right?

43 CFR 2920