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Comment by bentley | Hacker News Reader

It doesn’t have to be this way.

I’ve been buying games on Steam for 15 years. Even my earliest purchases are still downloadable and playable, and have been on every PC I’ve owned, including most recently the Steam Deck.

The same is true for my GOG library. Even more so, since I can (and do) save the DRM‐free installers of the games I buy.

Don’t reward hostile media platforms with your money or your attention!

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>It doesn’t have to be this way.

fyi it's mostly because Nintendo don't want to comply with the "new" payment regulations at least in the EU. Since 2021 Strong Customer Authentication (aka 2FA) is needed for most online purchases [0].

OK "don't want to comply" is a bit harsh but it's pretty much not worth implementing the 2FA system on 3DS/WiiU. They already removed credit cards access a long ago so even today you could only buy games if you top up your Nintendo account which is shared between Switch and the still functioning other stores.

Also you will be able to redownload games. They are just removing the option to buy new games. Better to CFW though and dump everything (but that was already recommended even before this closure)

0, https://www.jpmorgan.com/europe/merchant-services/insights/P...

Steam has benefited from a long period of good quality stable leadership, but as Gabe gets older I get more and more concerned for Steam.

I love the service, I've used it since launch alongside Half-Life 2 etc on PC, but I am extremely worried how it looks 15 years after Gabe Newell dies or sells. I would not be shocked to see Microsoft buy them in the end.

There's no public plans for what Valve looks like in the post Gabe-era, and as a privately held company there's not much need to explain/disclose either. I agree its been run great until now, but the future is unclear.

Valve is full of good people, like minded with Gabes ideas. I dont fear for Valve.

This simply won't matter if Gabe sells company to the "wrong" person/entity, which is a risk today.

This makes me curious about its ownership structure and what would happen if he died tomorrow.

Isn't Gabe one of the rich guys investing in life extension? If we're lucky, they figure it out before he dies and he can become Steam's eternal steward. Otherwise I absolutely see the platform going to shit once he's gone.

It's the same for the 3DS and WiiU eShops. Nintendo has said you'll be able to download your purchased content into the forseeable future. They're shutting down the ability to purchase content.

Steam has also removed the ability to purchase some content: https://delistedgames.com/all-delisted-steam-games/

I don't know how Valve will behave in the long term, but so far this has been one of the best things about Steam (other great things include auto management of updates and making multiplayer Just Work).

Our Steam games library goes back well over a decade and anything we ever want to play still works. Separately, during that same time period we bought 4-5 consoles, and currently exactly zero of those console games are playable because over time the consoles fall into disuse or peripherals break, then the consoles get boxed up, are too much of a hassle to get out when you have a slight hankering to play a game, and then eventually they just get tossed/donated away.

Apart from a Steam Deck or something similar, I don't foresee us ever buying a console again. Now, if we could only get Nintendo to be just a software company...

Older titles do occasionally have issues. Fortune Summoners has weird input lag, and Split/Second is incredibly picky about gamepads, for example. Fortunately the community guides usually have workarounds or fan patches.

I have about 2500 titles owned going back to the early 90s. Of those I have about a dozen or so that just do not work. The entire DOS set is emulated fairly good these days. A few are starforce being the usual suspect and a 'no-cd' crack not being available. I have 5 or so that just do not work on newer version of windows. Either relying on some quirk of XP/98 or a particular CPU speed range. One is longest journey which works again thru scummvm.

Emulation is about the only way I can keep my games running long term. Due to hw changes or OS changes.

Steam/PC games are a slow rot. Some of my games have issues running on modern platforms because of things like DRM, broken/missing APIs and problems from modern hardware not agreeing with the game in general. Sometimes you get lucky and some dude has created a new executable for modern times, or the fix isn't too bad and documented somewhere but sometimes it's a multi-hour fiddling process.

While not a "PC", I have games in my Steam library and from GoG that I can't play on a modern mac anymore because they removed 32-bit support post Mojave, so I keep an increasingly-difficult-to-use MacBook Pro on Mojava.

So, Steam didn't save me :(

The whole idea of an archive is to archive stuff. "Just memory-hole the stuff that's hostile to archival" is not a solution.

You misrepresent my suggestion. By all means, archive. But Nintendo’s hostile practices succeed because ordinary people with no interest in archival are willing to buy the same game rereleased for console after console. Long‐term carrying over of purchases is perfectly doable, as evidenced by the fact that this is the norm in the PC market. It is possible that market pressure can cause Nintendo to budge in its practices.

AFAIK, Steam delisted and removed the option to download purchased games in the past. Devotion springs to mind.

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