PC Gamers- doesn't it bother you that you dont 'own' games on Steam?

StatutoryApe said:
You don't own the game itself even if you have a physical copy of it. You are still bound by the license to not try to copy or modify the game in any way. Discs have DRM and a license you agree upon when you buy it. You own the physical distribution of the media, but not the media itself.
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This.
 
StatutoryApe said:
You don't own the game itself even if you have a physical copy of it. You are still bound by the license to not try to copy or modify the game in any way. Discs have DRM and a license you agree upon when you buy it. You own the physical distribution of the media, but not the media itself.
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Came to basically say this. No matter what, you don't own the code. Furthermore, if we reach a point where Steam goes dark, chances are your no better off having a disc. Just about any modern PC game is still going to have some sort of DRM that requires connecting to a server to activate. If those servers aren't there, your discs are frisbees.

No concerns whatsoever. I've lost of a lot of games due to lost/damaged/lent-and-not-returned discs (or CD-Key) in the pre-steam and pre-DD console days. Since sticking strictly to digital content, I've never lost a single thing I've paid for. Seems like a win to me.
 
Mr Happy said:
Forgive my ignorance but....

I already knew that I dont "own" the Windows OS that I use, and also most software on my PC.

As far as games go, I have physical disc versions of console games which I have bought over the past two decades- I didnt code them myself, but I thought that I do "own" them....

Movies you say? So I dont "own" the blu ray disc movies that I have...?
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Nope. You don't own any of that. You own the physical media but you don't own what's on it. What you have is a license to use it. If you check the FBI warnings on your movies and other fine print, the actual owner / distributor even dictates how they are to be used. For example you can't view "your" movie in a public place. The license for that is different.

If you actually owned these things you could copy, view or redistribute them as you see fit.
 
Yes, it bothers me. I own my "license" and I should be able to transfer or sell it to whoever I want. But I do like the way Steam works most of the time.
 
Remember, there are limits to the force of a license agreement. Not everything in all EULA's will stand if challenged in a court of law. There will always be some dubious parts of contention.

One good thing about Steam though is that it has prevented a lot of horrible DRM solutions. A lot of publishers will just say, "we'll just a stick it on steam and be done with it." without looking further to install rootkits on your computer.
 
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Half-Life 3.............there I said it.

I will give all my games back if Valve will just make the damn game......
 
Dayaks said:
One of the few risks Steam has against it's revenue is pissing off the quite vocal community. It keeps them from doing anything stupid.

I love steam. What you speak of is of absolutely no concern to me.
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How does it keep them from doing anything stupid?

Valve tried to introduced paid mods then reversed it due to community not liking it.- I applaud them for that.

I also applaud Valve for introducing refunds to Steam, the inability to get a refund for games purchased on Steam was a major issue for me.

But If Valve made changes to Steam that the community didn't like, and then refused to change it back to the old way, what would happen?

Would all the PC gamers quit using Steam go and buy PS4s instead?

What Im trying to say is that Valve has a monopoly like situation over PC gaming, its not like there are alternatives (correct me if Im wrong).
 
Parmenides said:
Remember, there are limits to the force of a license agreement. Not everything in all EULA's will stand if challenged in a court of law. There will always be some dubious parts of contention.

One good thing about Steam though is that it has prevented a lot of horrible DRM solutions. A lot of publishers will just say, "we'll just a stick it on steam and be done with it." without looking further to install rootkits on your computer.
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this is an interesting post....

can you explain what you mean by 'dubious parts of contention'?

also

what ''horrible DRM solutions'' might there have been?

cheers
 
Mr Happy said:
what ''horrible DRM solutions'' might there have been?
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The ones that existed back before Steam was the juggernaut it is today? SecuROM, StarForce, Tages to name a few. DRMs that had sensitive activations, forced drivers (of questionable security), always-online, etc. A lot of the DRM solutions from way back when have gone away. I think it's safe to say a large part of it was their negative reputation, but it certainly helps that Steam offered a DRM solution that was generally thought to be acceptable. Who knows where these DRM platforms would have ended up if there wasn't a simple, unified platform to take their place?
 
It bothers me more that there's lots of games that can only be played through steam because of steamworks, especially when developers move to this exclusivity out of 'convenience' (see all of paradox's titles, which are steam exclusive now). It feels like Valve is trying to destroy what little competition they have left in game distribution.
 
I'm not concerned right now because we have a wonderful torrent system in place. As long as they keep making backup copies for us it's all good. Steam has been so good lately that I haven't had to visit them in years.
 
With Steam we have finally seen the promise of digital come true (lower prices, more effective patching, etc) ... they have also provided a good balance between the developer needs on DRM and the consumer needs for effective game play ... although Valve has made some missteps, their overall strategy with Steam has been good and they are the accepted standard for both developers and users now ... so no concerns

One other consideration is that the ownership model began changing when we went with online games and content ... when games were isolated from the net there was no question of ownership (you still had a license but there was no effective way to revoke it) ... with online environments there are lots of rules to maintain your license and failure to follow them puts your license at risk (and possibly your access to the software if there is no offline mode of play) ... that has been the tipping point on ownership, not Steam ;)
 
It bothers me that our network admin just blocked every port under the sun, including the one for Steam, so now I can't play any of those games :(

unless, is there anyway to download and play these games legally over torrent and/or HTTP? I'm talking single-player stuff only, of course...
 
PCMusicGuy said:
Yes, it bothers me. I own my "license" and I should be able to transfer or sell it to whoever I want. But I do like the way Steam works most of the time.
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Well movies and some games can be sold as you wish but that basically mounts to the selling gifting or trading of the disc to someone else. Sadly it isn't that easy with digital distribution.
 
Dan_D said:
Read your EULA, you don't own any software and you never have. You don't own Windows, you don't own Microsoft office, you don't own anything you haven't coded yourself. Software, movies, games etc. are always built on a licensing model.
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Personally though I don't really care what's in a EULA like most people. I don't agree to everything in any EULA I have ever read, I'll still click I agree under duress to install and use the product. IMO I bought it, I own the irrevocable right to use it. If they make it so that I can't use it, I have every right to mod it to make it run on my system so long as the full purchased price for the product in question was not returned to me.

FYI technically you have never "bought" any games from steam. You have subscribed to play the game from steam. They changed the terminology so in the off chance steam goes under, they are under no legal obligation to make sure you can still play games you have bought, cause you didn't, you bought a subscription and when it dies so do your games.

Mr Happy said:
what ''horrible DRM solutions'' might there have been?

cheers
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As far as the horrible DRM solutions, there were plenty in the past, Starforce, securom, safedisc, etc... The 2 that affected me the most was Starforce and safedisc. One game installed hidden system drivers (starforce) that randomly wrecked CD-R burns for me in Win95. There was no way to uninstall it at the time, and the only way to fix my system so I could reliably burn CD-Rs was to reinstall win95 from scratch. That doesn't sound so bad now but you have to remember at the time each CD-R was like $1.50 each. I probably wasted around $30-$40 of CD-Rs trying to figure out the cause of the random burn failures. There were also some reports of it actually breaking the CD-ROM Drives or causing the lasers on the device to misalign rendering them useless. Safedisc was a weird one for me, it didn't screw up my system but it just didn't work at all on my system either. Not sure the reason, but any game that had it at the time would not run. It never could check the drive that had the disc in it. Those were the 2 that I was boycotting for the longest time.
 
What you agree to in the EULA means jack shit if you click "I agree to the terms and conditions". Basically you've agreed to those terms legally speaking. As others pointed out you can challenge them in court but your fighting an uphill battle so long as nothing really unusual is in there.
Your "right" to use the software only exits so long as both parties follow the legal terms of the EULA. You don't have the "right" to do anything if your license were to be revoked. Not that such an event is likely even if you do violate the EULA to some extent.

But paying some cash for the product doesn't entitle you to do anything in violation of the license agreement.

I don't understand the sense of entitlement or the unjustified sense of empowerment that people in today's society seem bent on having. If you don't agree with the terms in an agreement do not sign it or click "yes". It's pretty simple.
 
No, it doesn't bother me. It is the reality of the situation, as I'm pretty sure there is case law backing up the right to use licensing that involved either Adobe, Autodesk, or both. Besides, even owning a physical copy of a game you're still required to activate it online after installation.

LurkerLito said:
As far as the horrible DRM solutions, there were plenty in the past, Starforce, securom, safedisc, etc... The 2 that affected me the most was Starforce and safedisc. One game installed hidden system drivers (starforce) that randomly wrecked CD-R burns for me in Win95. There was no way to uninstall it at the time, and the only way to fix my system so I could reliably burn CD-Rs was to reinstall win95 from scratch. That doesn't sound so bad now but you have to remember at the time each CD-R was like $1.50 each. I probably wasted around $30-$40 of CD-Rs trying to figure out the cause of the random burn failures. There were also some reports of it actually breaking the CD-ROM Drives or causing the lasers on the device to misalign rendering them useless. Safedisc was a weird one for me, it didn't screw up my system but it just didn't work at all on my system either. Not sure the reason, but any game that had it at the time would not run. It never could check the drive that had the disc in it. Those were the 2 that I was boycotting for the longest time.
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Can confirm that the version of Starforce included with with Simbin's GTR killed a Lightscribe DVD±RW drive that I had. Formatting and reinstalling Windows XP didn't fix it. And when I tried to flash the firmware it would fail every time, whether it was an official HP version or region unlocked version.
 
every dvd/cd game i bought recently pretty much takes you to an online DRM program like steam, origin.
 
Mr Happy said:
One thing that never really gets mentioned, but concerns me is that you don't 'own' the game.
...
Does this concern any of you PC gamers?
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Not really. The games are cheap enough and the service reliable enough that it's not a big concern.
 
Youn said:
It bothers me that our network admin just blocked every port under the sun, including the one for Steam, so now I can't play any of those games :(

unless, is there anyway to download and play these games legally over torrent and/or HTTP? I'm talking single-player stuff only, of course...
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Put Steam into Offline mode.
 
Well, back in the day games cost $40-50 (in 1990 dollars!) if you were lucky enough to find it or patient enough to wait 2-6 weeks for shipping. They came on floppies/discs that if lost or destroyed had to be replaced at the users expense (discounted or otherwise) if you hadn't backed up ahead of time. but short of kicking your door down no one could take that copy.

Now games cost often cost less than $5 on a good sale and a fully patched copy can be downloaded in minutes. If the game gets yanked from steam you download it ... elsewhere ... with DRM already gone for cheap (GoG) or free ( ;) )

Which sounds better?
 
Dan_D said:
I don't understand the sense of entitlement or the unjustified sense of empowerment that people in today's society seem bent on having. If you don't agree with the terms in an agreement do not sign it or click "yes". It's pretty simple.
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Click through EULA and ToS are about the same level as the old prohibition laws. It's there, people know it's there, but don't care what it says simply because the people will still just go do what they want anyway regardless of what it says they can or can't do. It's not an unjustified sense of empowerment, it's just the American way. If not for this unjustified sense of empowerment there would be no mods today. You know every doom/quake mode broke the original EULA from id software. People just said I want to make this in doom and ignored the EULA, same thing now as it was then. EULAs only added modding allowances because too many people simply ignored it but had a side effect of prolonging the game life and increasing their profits for free. :)
 
So if something happens to Gaben and Steam gets sold off and killed off by EA? Didnt they say if something happened to Steam they would send out hard copies of your games yes? Or do they keep changing their ToS every year to fuck us all?
 
Yes it does.

Last time they updated the steam subscribers agreement you could NOT access your account or games until you clicked accept on this new terms of use.

that is TOTAL bullshit.

You've been using a service for 6 years, with their terms of service that they originally created. you shouldn't be FORCED to agree to some new bullshit terms.

Imagine if banks or insurance did this shit.
 
DF-1 said:
Yes it does.

Last time they updated the steam subscribers agreement you could NOT access your account or games until you clicked accept on this new terms of use.

that is TOTAL bullshit.

You've been using a service for 6 years, with their terms of service that they originally created. you shouldn't be FORCED to agree to some new bullshit terms.

Imagine if banks or insurance did this shit.
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This was something that entered my mind; i forgot to mention that in my opening post.

the article below puts it better than i could

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~damerell/games/steam.txt

what if they change it again.....
 
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Lets just say that prior to steam I have lost many hundreds of games to damaged media from the Atari 800 days up to 2010. After that I have never had a game unusable from lost/damaged media.

I am ok with the whole thing.
 
Interesting, so its a form of rent, we dont own anything. Agree to always changing TOS Contract or lose access to all your games. I wonder when they will start charging a monthly fee. Once Gaben is no more there will be a monthly fee just watch this train wreck happen! Gaben cares about Steam since he built it from ground up, everyone else cares only about making money like our most hated EA. Even if a monthly service kills off steam after Gaben is no more they dont give a fuck they just want their money. So long live Gaben since thats the worst scenario that can happen.
 
I didn't read this whole thread, so mostly responding to the OP. It doesn't matter if you get your games digitally, or on physical media. The license agreement (that you're basically agreeing to by using the product) is more or less the same. Nobody owns their games. They are buying the right to play the game, use the software, etc. with limitations set by the developer and publisher. (or at least their filthy legal teams) I'd be willing to bet that most games on physical media still need to validate with some server somewhere at this point, if not activate on Steam itself. It doesn't matter where you buy your game, or what it came on, the same rules technically apply. Should the whole universe go south, and places like Steam are no longer, or change their policies, odds are your physical copy isn't going to work either. Same thing with modern console games most likely too.

It's possible that having a physical copy of the game might allow you to crack it or something if the validation servers went away, but then A. you're out of compliance with your license anyway, B. there may be negative side effects, and C. if we're at that point, we may have bigger things to worry about than whether our games work or not.

The solution? Buy up all of the cartridge based game consoles you can find. The games likely still had some form of license restrictions, but good luck taking those away. :D

Otherwise, get on Steam pay for your licenses, enjoy playing, and forget about it for now. It's the way EVERYTHING is going. Might as well get used to it, unless you're some kind of digital activist. Then I don't know what to say for you.

Side Note: You can skirt the issue to some degree by buying DRM-Free from a place like GOG. Then download everything, and keep a huge archive on reliable physical media. However, I'd still be careful of which games might need network connectivity to play (kind of a grey area when it comes to "DRM" or just plain network connected play.) I would stick to classics, and known games that are absolutely complete on their own, maybe contain dedicated server abilities, etc. We're starting to creep into fallout shelter paranoia territory here though.

I don't particularly like being at the mercy of a large company like that, but I have yet to have a single issue, the benefits far outweigh the downsides, and even though I have a significant investment into my Steam collection, Valve has treated it respectfully up until now for me, so I'll continue to trust them. If it ever becomes a problem, I'll start looking for workarounds at that time, and at least we're only talking about games here. There are far more important things in life.
 
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schizrade said:
Lets just say that prior to steam I have lost many hundreds of games to damaged media from the Atari 800 days up to 2010. After that I have never had a game unusable from lost/damaged media.

I am ok with the whole thing.
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This is why I don't feel bad about emulating old computers that I've owned. Chances are I bought the games that I still like to play at some point or other, and the floppies just died. (I even have a few cases full of old Amiga floppies, and even some C64 disks. I eventually just tossed them in the garage, so I doubt any of them still work, but that's why I have disk images for all of them in their respective emulators now.
 
Initially I've had some concerns that they could take games away at a whim. But now steam
is too big to crash. I hated "please insert game disk" anyway. For every game I've had to
insert a different disk. I've had three, and for a short period even four optical drives in my computer, and it still was a pain.

Now I only have an external bluray writer that I touch maybe once or twice a year. PC gaming
has never been easier. I pay for the service, and what it offers. I don't have a reason to distrust steam.

And old games that you own the media for don't last forever either. Damaged media was very common, especially during the days of the most brutal copy protections. When I cringed at the sounds my drives were making during "authentication". And this happened every time I started a freaking game.
 
It totally bothers me. That's why I only use Steam for free codes and buy the rest through GoG if possible.
 
I'll be 40 in October of this year. If you mouse-over my Steam badge, you can see that I held out as long as I could:

http://steamcommunity.com/id/CryonicSuspension/

Member since September 3, 2010

What started happening in Toronto, Canada at retail stores like EB games and practically every other store except for Best Buy is that the shelf space devoted to PC games started shrinking drastically. It got to be a joke. I asked the clerk what the deal was with PC games on shelves shrinking and the EB games clerk mentioned that Steam cornered the market on PC games, so to counter that, the shelves started filling up with console games.

Combine the above situation with numerous threads on [H] talking about Steam sales and group buys and the decision was inevitable.

At first I was skeptical at the concept of not owning a physical disc but I tend to play one game at a time, to completion and finish it and Steam was relatively painless and had utility; downtime was minimal ( Steam going accidentally offline ).

The thing that you have to bare in mind is that "we the people" actually pushed the digital revolution via MP3. Prior to MP3s, people used audio cassettes, compact discs and vinyl. People started posting digital copies of their songs on their own personal website ( this was pre-MySpace, pre-social networking ), so every tech person would dabble in creating their own web page and people who didn't have the tech skills ( web page design was as difficult as using Microsoft Word ) would pay for professional web sites to be designed.

In the late 1980's / early 1990's, vinyl and audio cassettes were being phased out in favour of compact discs. People were sold on the concept that it cost fifty cents to press a CD and the costs would be passed on to the customer. The costs were never passed on to the customer. If there's one thing that's consistent with format changes, it's that the customer almost always gets economically shafted by new formats. Think about the concept that some audiophile's vinyl record selection would take up 6 shelves in a dedicated room and the music industry is trying to convince that person to ditch vinyl in favour of cassettes and then ditch casettes in favour of compact discs and then ditch compact discs in favour of DVDs and then ditch DVDs in favour of Blue Ray. At some point, people started saying, "hey my wallet's empty and I have no music to show for it, fuck the music industry, I'll just convert it to MP3, I'll share what I have with other people online and fuck the music industry."

So then the big guns came out: peer to peer sharing ( Napster ) and when Napster was shut down Audiogalaxy was opened up ( a bulletin board style sharing ). In order to try and regain control of MP3s, the music industry reluctantly went digital so we ended up with Itunes.

The overall trend is to go from physically owning something, to digitally owning something, which brings up problems with the concept of digitally archiving something ( What compression do I use? lossy versus lossless? For what operating system? Will it be readable in the future? ). For music, you have to weigh up how much physical storage space a CD collection will take up, versus digital formats. You have to do risk evaluations regarding possibly losing your MP3 collection ( a friend who barely knows anything about computers left his hard drive in the boot ( trunk ) of a car during summer - woops ).

For online gaming, I have a dual-boot system ( Win XP 32 bit with Win 7 64 bit ) but since I finished all of my physical Win XP games and all but a couple Steam Win XP games, operating system format isn't a big deal.

There are odd things with Steam where Steam will pull a game from a Store and usually it's not a problem with your library but on the odd occasion, they will pull a game from your library, at which point you hopefully got to play it, before it was pulled ( it's usually politics between Steam and the developer ).

My entire music collection is on CD ( 300+ bought CDs ) because I'm a Libra and I value art, I have control over my art collection and I'm too lazy to convert it to digital, also I'd rather listen to lossless versions of Enya & Cliff Martinez's "Solaris" sound track.

My entire library disappearing on Steam isn't something I worry about because the trade off is buying games for dirt cheap, during sales.
 
You don't really own your physical copies anyways. Ever check out rockstar's eula before?

"Your license rights are subject to your compliance with this Agreement. The term of your license under this Agreement shall commence on the date that you install or otherwise use the Software and ends on the earlier date of either your disposal of the Software or the termination of this Agreement"

"Upon any termination of this Agreement, you must destroy or return the physical copy of Software to Licensor, as well as permanently destroy all copies of the Software, accompanying documentation, associated materials, and all of its component parts in your possession or control, including from any client server, computer, gaming unit, or mobile device on which it has been installed. Upon termination of this Agreement, your rights to use the Software, including any VC or VG associated with your User Account, will terminate immediately, and you must cease all use of the Software."

According to their eula you have to destroy your copy if you don't follow their "code of conduct" which of course is vague and broad.

"you will not use the Online Services to create, upload, or post any material that is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, obscene, profane, hateful, harassing, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of one’s privacy, in violation of any law, or is inconsistent with community standards"

I haven't bothered check other companies eula's i imagine they are identical.
 
yourgrandma said:
You don't really own your physical copies anyways. Ever check out rockstar's eula before?

"Your license rights are subject to your compliance with this Agreement. The term of your license under this Agreement shall commence on the date that you install or otherwise use the Software and ends on the earlier date of either your disposal of the Software or the termination of this Agreement"

"Upon any termination of this Agreement, you must destroy or return the physical copy of Software to Licensor, as well as permanently destroy all copies of the Software, accompanying documentation, associated materials, and all of its component parts in your possession or control, including from any client server, computer, gaming unit, or mobile device on which it has been installed. Upon termination of this Agreement, your rights to use the Software, including any VC or VG associated with your User Account, will terminate immediately, and you must cease all use of the Software."

According to their eula you have to destroy your copy if you don't follow their "code of conduct" which of course is vague and broad.

"you will not use the Online Services to create, upload, or post any material that is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, obscene, profane, hateful, harassing, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of one’s privacy, in violation of any law, or is inconsistent with community standards"

I haven't bothered check other companies eula's i imagine they are identical.
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Physical single player media at the start of computer gaming gave the illusion of ownership (since it was hard for a company to rescind your license) ... however, it was exactly that, an illusion ... it was only when online games came along (and multiplayer that used online servers) that companies finally had the ability to enforce your license ... bottom line is we have never had ownership of our games and unless we want to get rid of online games and multiplayer we will never have that illusion again either
 
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