This is in reference to a post titled Amazon Prime Video is able to remove a video from your library after purchase.. The title is kind of self-explanatory and piracy was brought up in the comments. Someone mentioned GOG and Steam granting users indefinite licenses to users regardless of whether or not the game is still being sold.

While I could see that with GOG something tells me that’s probably not the case with Steam but I can’t find a specific quote to back it up. I can’t seem to find an instance of them removing a game from someone’s library even when a game was banned in a country like in the case of Disco Elysium and Rimworld being banned in Australia.

I couldn’t see Valve removing games from people’s libraries without a good reason due to the amount of backlash that would cause but maybe under specific circumstances they would.

On a similar note I was curious if anything in the terms and conditions talks about Steam emulators. There’s a section it that says:

“… host or provide matchmaking services for the Content and Services or emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Valve in any network feature of the Content and Services, through protocol emulation, tunneling, modifying or adding components to the Content and Services …”

But I am not sure if I am misunderstanding what it’s trying to get across.

I looked through a majority of the Steam Subscriber Agreement but it can be a bit hard to decipher. There could also be comments from Valve staff elsewhere like on Twitter or Reddit that may at least shown their thoughts on the matter.

This might be a bit boring for a lot of people but I am curious about the DRM behind Steam. I feel like people have placed a lot of trust and money into Valve and Steam so I am curious about potential worst case scenarios.

  • CorrodedOPEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    There’s an old story about Gabe Newell saying that if Steam ever shuts down Valve will make sure players are able to access their games, but there’s a few problems with this:

    A little further down in the comments I commented about how it’s questionable if Gabe even said that to begin with. I vaguely remembered hearing the same story and wanted to check to see what the source was.

    • seaturtle@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Thanks for looking into that.

      Still something that’s merely word-of-mouth promise, not in any sort of legal documentation, and easily ignored if Valve does go down or change ownership. And that’s assuming the information is still current, which itself is questionable.

      (Not your fault; I don’t mean to sound like I’m arguing with you.)

      • CorrodedOPEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        (Not your fault; I don’t mean to sound like I’m arguing with you.)

        I didn’t take it that way. It is a lot of faith to put into a company when some people have invested thousands of dollars into their game library