If you want to own your games, get used to either having old games and going to flea markets to find them, or buy from GOG. I've made a deliberate and purposeful shift to buy my games from GOG for this reason.
Except for a stupid prank ( https://www.criticalhit.net/gaming/breaking-gog-com-shuts-do... ) that - to this day - I am a bit annoyed by, I've greatly appreciated their service.
For example going to the Steam checkout page it very clearly states that I have the option to "Purchase for myself" or "Purchase as a gift". I, like most English speakers, understand the word "Purchase" to mean something very specific. The words license, lease, rental, etc. do not even exist anywhere on any page in the checkout flow all the way through entering your payment information. I can only assume this omission is by design.
For example, your Titanfall purchase on Steam is now useless, and actually it was useless for the entire time it was available for sale (since the servers were never operational at any time during the period it was available).
All of these titles they're talking about Ubi are available on Steam too (and the article specifically notes that some of them are still on sale with no indication they will be removed in less than two months).
"Steam games can't be taken away" is false, and "valve as a company hasn't taken away your orange box yet" is not a particularly interesting or insightful observation. And to be clear, they are legally allowed to do so under the ToS under some circumstances!
We all hate middlemen but this shows why they're needed (in the absence of regulation).
It's not perfect, as GOG does not have everything, especially most of the recent titles from EA, but it does alleviate the problem to a large degree.
> If a game is removed from your Steam account for any reason, such as through manual deletion or a refund – we reserve the right to remove the games from your GOG.com library. (see https://www.gog.com/connect#faq)
I'd say it's unclear at best how well you'll be protected, but at least you can download and backup the DRM free installers for use even if GOG pulls the games out of your library.
> Valve hereby grants, and you accept, a non-exclusive license and right, to use the Content and Services for your personal, non-commercial use (except where commercial use is expressly allowed herein or in the applicable Subscription Terms). This license ends upon termination of (a) this Agreement or (b) a Subscription that includes the license. The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services
> F. Ownership of Content and Services
> All title, ownership rights and intellectual property rights in and to the Content and Services and any and all copies thereof, are owned by Valve and/or its or its affiliates’ licensors. All rights are reserved, except as expressly stated herein. The Content and Services are protected by copyright laws, international copyright treaties and conventions and other laws. The Content and Services contain certain licensed materials and Valve’s and its affiliates’ licensors may protect their rights in the event of any violation of this Agreement.
> G. Restrictions on Use of Content and Services
> You may not use the Content and Services for any purpose other than the permitted access to Steam and your Subscriptions, and to make personal, non-commercial use of your Subscriptions, except as otherwise permitted by this Agreement or applicable Subscription Terms. Except as otherwise permitted under this Agreement (including any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use), or under applicable law notwithstanding these restrictions, you may not, in whole or in part, copy, photocopy, reproduce, publish, distribute, translate, reverse engineer, derive source code from, modify, disassemble, decompile, create derivative works based on, or remove any proprietary notices or labels from the Content and Services or any software accessed via Steam without the prior consent, in writing, of Valve.
> You are entitled to use the Content and Services for your own personal use, but you are not entitled to: (i) sell, grant a security interest in or transfer reproductions of the Content and Services to other parties in any way, nor to rent, lease or license the Content and Services to others without the prior written consent of Valve, except to the extent expressly permitted elsewhere in this Agreement (including any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use); (ii) 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, use of a utility program or any other techniques now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose including, but not limited to network play over the Internet, network play utilizing commercial or non-commercial gaming networks or as part of content aggregation networks, websites or services, without the prior written consent of Valve; or (iii) exploit the Content and Services or any of its parts for any commercial purpose, except as expressly permitted elsewhere in this Agreement (including any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use).
IDGAF, just because you wave a license agreement around doesn't free you from the moral responsibility to be honest about what you're selling. If you say BUY NOW and then bury specific redefinitions of 'buy' in a 5,000 word contract then you are engaged in deception. Just because it's legal doesn't mean you're not running a fraud, it's just a particularly elaborate and narrowly specified one. It's not that I don't understand contract language, but most people don't and there's a reason most service contracts are rendered in 5 point type and optimized for leverage rather than clarity.
I rarely bother to pirate anything, but lose zero sleep over the phenomenon because so many corporations engage in deceptive practices.
Which illustrates a large part of the problem. The sales page is designed to deceive you with the expectation that a very small number of customers will ever see and read through those terms. The terms by the way are 4,676 words and would take an average reader more than 15 minutes to read even if it wasn't obtusely written legalese.
Should that be legal and OK? To me this seems like an area where the offer needs to be plainly stated, and since that isn't happening then perhaps a consumer protection agency needs to step in.
(edit: previous word count was from the wrong version of the terms)
It's really frustrating to me that "say one thing on the page and another thing in the terms" has been steadily creeping from "that's a scam" to "that's a completely normal business practice", and it's even more frustrating that some people defend it.
Maybe we need a law that says "if advertising and the terms of purchase say different things, whichever one is more favorable to the buyer applies, even if the less favorable one has a provision that says it always applies in cases of conflict".
It's okay to lie everywhere else, as long as they tell the truth somewhere inside the small print nobody reads? And we are supposed to know which parts are lies and which the truth?
Unless you live in a country with actual consumer rights. Like Australia, as Steam found out when they tried to claim that their games weren't actually goods [0].
I think that the headline article with Ubisoft will also attract the attention of the ACCC, because how they're withdrawing access to a sold good's service, particularly the withdrawal of DLC, is likely to breach the conditions for how you're allowed to advertise and sell items in Australia.
[0] https://www.techradar.com/news/valve-has-copped-a-audollar3-...
Off-topic I know but Samsung retroactively disabled the oxygen sensor software for Samsung phones in Canada. I had been using it for a few years but one day after an update it was disabled by Samsung. The physical sensor still existed obviously but it was no longer usable on a Samsung phone that I owned. I think that should be illegal.
As a general rule, it should be illegal to issue updates that are not easily consumer-revokable to any device, if it changes functionality to be different to the time of purchase.
Happened to me. Awful customer service.
Of course, it might be ridiculously expensive (go through the courts)--but that's what these companies are counting on.
However, I hate to point out that, GoG does in fact have some games with DRM, even though they make a big deal of the fact that they are an anti-DRM shop, and they get away with it buy pretending the definition of DRM is different to what most people think.
E.g. I recently bought Worms WMD. You need a Galaxy account to play. I'm not even sure you can cross-play with Steam, I think you can't. Without it, the game is crippled. I would not have bought it if I had known.
I'm not installing Galaxy either, and GoG has developed some dark patterns to try to push it on you (links to the actual installers keep getting buried deeper and deeper) but as long as they continue to let you download games without it I'm happy enough.
You forgot the great equalizer that is internet piracy. Download cracked copies of every single game in your steam library and you'll be fine for as long you can emulate your current platform. It doesn't stop online services from being shut down, but it does mean you can at least play games offline in 15-20 years as well as you can do it now, not matter what happens to steam or your account.
I'll say I love GoG though, and it's the first place I look when I'm buying PC games.
Kind of reminds me of the Funnybot episode of South Park.
I for one think the prank that GOG pulled is HILARIOUS
Or, to this day.
It was a marketing prank. Someone, high up in their company, thought it would be HIGH HUMOR to pretend their site went down before users could download their drm free games. They relaunched a completely new redesigned site a few days later, but this was a mistkae.
I still haven't forgotten or forgiven about this, but I still buy from them because the alternative is much worst.
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/06/16/the-failure-state-of-...
Update: the highlight for anyone who doesn't care to follow a random link:
> The failure mode of clever is “asshole.”
On Steam at least games don't depend on Steam for network play, nor do they depend on Steam's existence for them to work.
They is a fraction of Steam games that don't integrate with Steam in any way and therefore can be started by running their binary, but in my experience that is not most games.