I'm sure pretty much every judge would?

It's copyright infringement, not theft. The media industries just want to guilt trip consumers into thinking it's theft, but it's not. Neither legally nor actually.

I'm sure someone pirating for personal use will ever encounter a judge.

Pounds of sarcasm, in case this wasn't clear.

I don't think it matters if the judge agrees with me.

Cases will be brought before judges based on money. Big pirates that are somehow making money doing it will be brought in front of a judge and some love will impact them.

Anybody hypothetically pirating one steam game to play for themselves because they felt alienated by Steam isn't going to be dragged in a judge.

> Sega might claim that they have only licensed them and you don't own them; a court might disagree, given the big "buy" button and the consideration paid for them.

I'd really like to believe that is the case, but I think we've already seen that is generally not true based on other digital marketplaces (e.g. Kindle books, iTunes media, etc.)

But specifically regarding Steam... this was just last month[0][1]

> Valve is now explicitly disclosing that you don’t own the games you buy from its Steam online store. The company has added a note on the payment checkout screen stating that “a purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam,” as reported earlier by Engadget.

>

> ...

>

> Why? Probably, a new law. California has a law going into effect next year that’ll require digital storefronts like Valve’s Steam platform to clearly say that you’re only purchasing a license for your digital media because some companies like Ubisoft and PlayStation were removing digital purchases from users’ libraries, keeping them from playing games like The Crew or watching their old Discovery shows.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/11/24267864/steam-buy-purch...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41809193

Does the Coen Brothers 2010 version of True Grit count? I think it was better than the 1969 John Wayne version, but maybe it doesn't count as a "remake" because both were based on Charles Portis' novel.

Not a movie, but Battlestar Galactica was a great remake.

If the game developer wants to follow a particular marketing plan, e.g. they've discovered they get more sales when there's a lot of positive Steam reviews, then of course you can help with that. If retweets, or Reddit posts, or Facebook likes or lets-play Twitch streams, or whatever else sells copies, and you're in a position to do that...

However, when buying on Steam, you need to watch out for your own interests too. Will you still be able to play this game in 20 years? Checking there is a crack is your insurance policy.

If you can buy it DRM-free on itch.io or GOG, do that instead. Steam store pages will list if there is any _third-party_ DRM, but won't list if the developer is using Steamworks DRM, so generally you have to assume it is (unless the developer assures otherwise, or it's on https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_g... )

The reason I suggest itch.io is because they take ~10% cut, compared to Valve and CD Projekt's 30% cut. The developer gets more money.

But if itch.io, GOG or Steam shut down tomorrow... I would not expect to be able to download from them at all. You should install the games on your computer, storing them at your own cost. And if the game is DRM-free, you can still play the game!

Steam is of course very nice in serving re-installs to customers of no-longer-purchasable games. But you can expect that some day it will end. That's why the fight is to have no DRM... to ensure publishers can't "take away" a game already on your computer, or a book already on your e-reader. It's not to demand storefronts let you download your stuff from their servers indefinitely, which is nice but ruinously expensive for them.

The license doesn't matter if you can have the DRM-free installer on your harddrive forever. They sold it to me (and called it a "purchase"), I downloaded it, who cares about the license, it's mine now.

But GOG offers offline executable installers, so from a practical perspective even if your license was revoked, they'd have no way of preventing you from playing the game (assuming that you had downloaded the installer, of course).

The even joked about it after Steam added the checkout banner: https://x.com/GOGcom/status/1844752098145038435

Offline installer that doesn't ring home.

But is there a way to actually back up an installer (or the installed game) in a way that lets you run it on a different computer after, say, your Steam account has been closed for whatever reason?

On macOS an app bundle is usually self-contained, so if there is no DRM backups are simple enough; for Windows, it's usually not that easy, I believe.