Kinda funny how they're driving us right back to piracy.
Digital content is not forever. If I can't purchase it and download it to my local hard drive, I'm not purchasing it.
Reminds me of those old anti piracy PSAs: "you wouldn't download a car." (note: yes, yes I would if I could).
But if the new car-buying process was "pay $20k for this Honda Civic, but just know that we are just allowing you to drive it, we can take it away from you at any time" you can be sure that either no one will ever buy cars again, or they'd just "steal" them.
If compliance is too hard or too inconvenient or just plain stupid or malicious, then people won't comply. Easy as that.
Makes me wonder what would happen with my Steam games if the publisher pulls it from the store, or what if Steam decides it won't support my system anymore (and I don't want to update).
I own a few games that got yanked from the Steam store. I can still download, install and play those games as much as I want to.
Generally this has only happened with games that are no longer developed, but if they got yanked for any other reason I believe Valve wouldn't distribute any new patches to me.
I feel like there were a few cases where this has happened, and Steam actually still had the game stored for people who had purchased to download, it was just that no one else could buy the game. Not sure if those cases were the publisher not wanting to generate bad will among its customers, or if Steam's contract with the publisher states outright that even when the game is pulled from the platform it must remain available for people who have already purchased it. Either way, it would certainly be the case that any future patches wouldn't be pushed to Steam.
On the other hand, many games (by number at least) on Steam do not have any DRM and you can back up the installed files as easily as you can back up a GOG installer. Many more games only need Steamworks which is easily bypassed.
Meanwhile Valve is actively working on making Linux gaming better (which I care about) while GOG/CDPR can't even be bothered to port their own games or their store client.
Alpha Protocol was removed from stores over music licensing issues. I freaked out because I didn’t have it downloaded, but it’s still in my library and I can download it. You just can’t even view it now if you don’t already own it.
I do this too. I don't want to have to resort to this, but I also don't want to risk Amazon taking away all of the books that I've paid for! All I want is to pay for DRM-free content.
I started buying huge stacks of DVDs from Goodwill. They are on my Plex NAS now, along with all of my music. All legally purchased. I was considering starting a donation chain where I give all of my DVDs to someone who wants to do the same, who in turn would give them to someone after they are done. It is a lot of work but my shows and movies are super fast, ad-free, and accessible from anywhere. A pleasant friction-free experience after ingestion.
