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Comment by tracerbulletx | Hacker News Reader

I think it's perfectly realistic to think there is a substantial risk of losing library content you've bought on Valve in the next 20 years. Don't know what the odds are, but they're greater than zero.

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I will pirate every game I have in my steam library that I want to play if that is ever the case. Without the a moment of hesitation. I payed for it.

I personally think that, between the two, gog is far more likely to disappear than steam.

I'm happy both exist. I've nothing against gog (except maybe for their broken promises around Linux support, but I do understand changing market forces) and like I said, I hope they succeed. They've got a good mission.

GOG might disappear, but your games won't.

If Steam disappears, your games will become inaccessible.

It's actually mostly the same in both cases. If steam or GOG goes down, you can no longer download the games you bought. But what about the games you have downloaded? Well GOG games will work out of the box, however the steam "DRM" is really just basic protection to stop you from copying the files to your friend's computer, and can easily be removed by already existing tools like Steamless and Goldberg Emulator. So I'm not really that worried about the vast majority of my steam library. The only thing I'd worry about is spiking storage costs when steam's demise seems imminent!

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