6 ms·

Steam is explicitly NOT a rental model. You buy games, and then you have them, on your hard drive, to play whenever you like. You could be banned from Steam, Ga

Steam is explicitly NOT a rental model. You buy games, and then you have them, on your hard drive, to play whenever you like. You could be banned from Steam, Gabe could personally make a youtube video telling you to fuck off, and you could still start up Steam in offline mode and play all the games just fine. The only thing you could THEORETICALLY lose is the ability to re-download games in your library, but to my knowledge this has never happened aside from accounts getting hacked etc. Stadia, meanwhile, works like Netflix. Stop paying, or just anger the Stadia gods in some way, and all your games go away. I like owning things I pay for. Many other people do to. So it's gratifying to see that this one time, we don't have to have our rights trampled on. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

csunbird 5y ago
Actually, after a while being in the offline mode, Steam will ask you to go online, as far as I know.
- fragileone 5y ago
  Asks or forces? Because as far as I'm aware you can play offline indefinitely.
  - csunbird 5y ago
    Depends on the game. Some games with DRM wants (requires) to call back home after a while.
kevingadd 5y ago
It's technically possible for Valve to pull access to your entire library and games that use Steamworks DRM will no longer work in that circumstance, but as far as I know it's very rare for them to do it at this point. They used to do it if you issued a chargeback, but they had to stop doing that since it was in violation of various government and payment processor policies.
tokai 5y ago
Haven't tried a game on steam that couldn't be opened without steam running. Just go to the games folder and run the executable.
- throwaway3699 5y ago
  Those apps (assuming they aren't indie) will almost always try to communicate with the Steam client. There are hooks which automatically run Steam if it's not available.
  - creshal 5y ago
    Steam API integration is entirely optional, so it's not just indie games that ignore them or fail gracefully. Obviously you can't access Steam's online services in the game, but that's not a stopper for many games.
    - throwaway3699 5y ago
      Almost all Steam games do use achievements and other stuff though (which works offline, but not forever). The reason I mention it is because you have to go out of the way to fail gracefully.
  - poisonborz 5y ago
    There are projects providing replacement Steam dll-s so these requests wouldn't crash the game (note, this isn't "cracking" the game, it just removes Steam dependency for games that were coded as such)
ajross 5y ago
> Stop paying, or just anger the Stadia gods in some way, and all your games go away. People get banned on Steam and lose access to games too. I know Valve promised you that they aren't renting those games, but if you look at the contract you'll find all you have is a license. And there have been multiple circumstances already where Valve has kicked users and/or lost licenses to its content.

csunbird 5y ago

Actually, after a while being in the offline mode, Steam will ask you to go online, as far as I know.

fragileone 5y ago
Asks or forces? Because as far as I'm aware you can play offline indefinitely.
- csunbird 5y ago
  Depends on the game. Some games with DRM wants (requires) to call back home after a while.

kevingadd 5y ago

It's technically possible for Valve to pull access to your entire library and games that use Steamworks DRM will no longer work in that circumstance, but as far as I know it's very rare for them to do it at this point. They used to do it if you issued a chargeback, but they had to stop doing that since it was in violation of various government and payment processor policies.

tokai 5y ago

Haven't tried a game on steam that couldn't be opened without steam running. Just go to the games folder and run the executable.

throwaway3699 5y ago
Those apps (assuming they aren't indie) will almost always try to communicate with the Steam client. There are hooks which automatically run Steam if it's not available.
- creshal 5y ago
  Steam API integration is entirely optional, so it's not just indie games that ignore them or fail gracefully. Obviously you can't access Steam's online services in the game, but that's not a stopper for many games.
  - throwaway3699 5y ago
    Almost all Steam games do use achievements and other stuff though (which works offline, but not forever). The reason I mention it is because you have to go out of the way to fail gracefully.
- poisonborz 5y ago
  There are projects providing replacement Steam dll-s so these requests wouldn't crash the game (note, this isn't "cracking" the game, it just removes Steam dependency for games that were coded as such)

ajross 5y ago

> Stop paying, or just anger the Stadia gods in some way, and all your games go away. People get banned on Steam and lose access to games too. I know Valve promised you that they aren't renting those games, but if you look at the contract you'll find all you have is a license. And there have been multiple circumstances already where Valve has kicked users and/or lost licenses to its content.