this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
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Interesting because my Steam digital purchases go back to 2007 and I can still play them all.
My first digital purchase was the Orange Box and my second purchase was Psychonauts.
I had purchased Half Life 2 as a physical copy and it still works, too.
Sure they're all just licenses, but a lot of effort has been put into me being able to continue playing them, including on Linux.
Yes, Valve is a different story because they're a private company, but 20 years of license when I could play on any computer I owned at any time I think is showing that digital licensing isn't inherently evil as much as it is widely abused for control.
If steam changed ownership and control, there is nothing stopping the new people from doing things similar to other big companies.
Many games are potentially a heart attack away from loss of access
Absolutely, that's my point about them being widely abused.
They're actually not just licenses. When you download a game from steam you get the game data. You can back up this gamedata if you wish. Sure it will have steam DRM but thats something on can get around one way or another.
This is the power of open platform like PC
Real and based. If you get them on GOG, you can download offline installers with no DRM. My GOG collection isn't as big as my Steam, but it's also fairly significant as well. Heroic Launcher on Linux is sweet for GOG games (you just have to plan out wine prefix and directory structure to properly have updates install).
The same is true of Xbox consoles btw. You can back-up your game files from your Xbox to a external hdd and transfer them back to your Xbox in 50 years time and play them even if they’ve been delisted and Xbox no longer exists.
They are still only licenses though, same with steam. Steam still has verification servers. If steam disappeared you are no better off than if xbox did.
Steam DRM can be trivially removed. 3rd party DRM is a problem, but thankfully not all games use it and many games have had their DRM removed as well (either by the publisher or through crackers).
You still couldn’t redownload games that you bought, that’s the point.
Orange Box was my first digital purchase too!