Rule of owning

I appreciate the transparency tbh. Would be better if things were different but it is what it is for now.

Its pretty much up to the developer. You can have no DRM and not even require steam to be open, or you can make your game unplayable.

This was always the case, just stated explicitly now

This is also the case for physical copies, and has been since software was first sold

Did California's new law requiring this already go into effect?

Twitter is bad.

it's not stealing it's not stealing it's not stealing it's not stealing it's not stealing it's not stealing it's not stealing it's not stealing it's not stealing it's not stealing it's not stealing it's not stealing it's not stealing it's not stealing it's not stealing it's not stealing

Gog games

This is literally how it has always been.

You don't own any of the games you paid for, you bought a license to play those games under specific circumstances. It's the same with books & movies.

Valve have (allegedly) stated that in the case of Steam shutting down, games they can update to remove Steam DRM, they will.

OK. I know I'm about to get blown the fuck up but... You will own nothing and be happy. But. Like. Unironically.

I really don't think most people want to manage thousands of music files on their computer. Or hundreds of movie files. Or thousands of picture files. Or hundreds of video game files.

There are definitely options for doing this, but people who go this route are usually tech elite nerds. Not your parents or grandparents. Not normies.

(I self-host Navidrome, Jellyfin, Immich, etc.)

Personally I think we should bring back physical games to PC. Imagine a cartridge like device that can effectively use external storage as swap memory (which copies to ram as needed), laptops and desktops can be built with this while other computers could use an adapter.

no need be angry at steam. that is how it always has been. kudos to them to point it out very cleanly and not hiding it on page 400 of the 3rd EULA.

Remember the people who long ago told you "in the future you will own nothing, and you will be happy"?

How'd you react? Did you call them crazy? Conspiracy theorists? Perhaps a Doomer?

You know what they should be called? Correct.

It's a good job Gabe Newell has made gamers comfortable with not owning their games.

Thank you California law!

new law

The reason people buy from steam though and develop for them though is because of their service.

Thor from pirate software mentions that even as a developer there are good reasons for them to use steam.

Even just the cloud saves and such is awesome

This is solving the wrong problem entirely.

You do own games. They're products. They're mass-market goods, as surely as when they came on plastic rectangles or glass circles.

Being permitted to continue having things on your hard drive is not a service.

I hope we don't get expiration dates now...

Steam doesnt make you pay for subscription fee and theres no expiry date for those games, so it's fine I think?