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Valve says Steam users don't own a thing, GOG says its games can't be taken away
- josephcsible 2y agoFull title (84 characters too long): Valve reminds Steam users they don't actually own a darn thing they buy, GOG pounces and says its games "cannot be taken away from you" thanks to offline installers
- benoau 2y agoGOG has actually gone further than that: > "In general, your GOG account and GOG content is not transferable. However, if you can obtain a copy of a court order that specifically entitles someone to your GOG personal account, the digital content attached to it taking into account the EULAs of specific games within it, and that specifically refers to your GOG username or at least email address used to create such an account, we'd do our best to make it happen. We're willing to handle such a situation and preserve your GOG library—but currently we can only do it with the help of the justice system." https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/gog-will-let-you-bequeath-your-game-library-to-someone-else-as-long-as-you-can-prove-youre-actually-dead/ https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/gog-will-let-you-beq...
- nosioptar 2y agoGog is pretty great in terms of how they treat customers. I've had to refund a few games, I've never had a problem.
- wordofx 2y agoThere was confusion around this?
- dmonitor 2y agoI'm sure some less knowledgeable people weren't aware of the distinction. There is a proposed California law to make the distinction more clear: don't use the word "purchase" unless you make clear that it is a license you are purchasing, not the game.
- Rebelgecko 2y agoNot just proposed, the CA law is going into effect in a few months
- wordofx 2y agoIf there is confusion then it’s a probably a good thing. Just kinda raised an eyebrow that there was confusion.
- the_gorilla 2y agoIt's not that the consumers weren't aware of the distinction between buy and rent, just that companies outright started to lie about the meaning of "purchase".
- happytoexplain 2y agoIt seems obvious that the distinction between buying a game digitally and buying a license to play a game digitally could be confusing to the average person looking at a digital storefront. Are you being facetious? (honestly asking - like, "gee, who would have thought there could be confusion?")
- benoau 2y agoA lot of Steam customers simply haven't thought very far ahead: what happens when they die? As a twenty-year old company there is certainly a reckoning on the horizon as their users age-out and start passing in higher numbers. What happens when Gabe Newell dies is another very important question that adds some urgency - one or two decades - to establishing more balanced policies.
- OWMYT 2y agoWhat I can't understand is that CDPR is willing to confer legal rights to play their games in perpetuity in stark contrast to virtually every other similar platform, yet they don't bother to hire a few developers to maintain a Linux client, effectively forcing its users to be at the whim of Microsoft, which surely is going to have its users' best interests at heart.
- the_gorilla 2y ago[flagged]
- OWMYT 2y agoIsn't the whole point of DRM-free that people who don't pay don't pay and those measures hurt legitimate customers the most? Especially for PC games, piracy is extremely prevalent no matter which technology is used. Of course, Linux users might pirate the games, as do Windows users. I am purely talking about legal rights here. I have to imagine there are quite a few developers with a primary Linux PC who are much more inclined to purchase a game if it doesn't require pulling out a special purpose Windows machine or dealing with an unofficial hack that barely works. Maybe those potential revenues don't justify the high costs of changing some compiler flags to CDPR.
- the_gorilla 2y agoI'm not saying they pirate it, I'm saying they don't believe in making money off software through selling products, but instead through beggary. They're such a small market share (2-3% on most games) that it's just not worth the effort. Linux compatibility layers are actually getting pretty good anyway, and it's easier to get your game to run that way than to actually properly port it to linux.
- amarant 2y agoHey, Linux user with 5 software subscriptions, including all jetbrains products, here. Every Linux user I know has a similar amount of paid software, even the ones that keep talking about how everything should be OSS in an ideal world. Can we please for the love of all that is logic stop repeating this cartoonishly inaccurate stereotype?
- AdmiralAsshat 2y agoIsn't this just Valve implementing the new law required in California? https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24254922/california-digital-purchase-disclosure-law-ab-2426 https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24254922/california-digit...
- metadat 2y ago(1) Helpful context, thanks! Discussed 2 weeks ago: California new law forces digital stores to admit you're just licensing content https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41663432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41663432 - Sep 2024 (11 comments) (2) There is also a submission from today related to this article (though TFA and this other article are both rather light and shallow at ~1 paragraph each): Steam now tells gamers up front that they're buying a license, not a game (engadget.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41809193 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41809193 (15 comments) (3) Finally, a marginally more informative article from Ars: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/10/steam-now-reminds-you-that-it-really-sells-a-license-for-a-digital-product/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/10/steam-now-reminds-you...
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- kleiba 2y agoIsn't that discussed in the article?
- S0y 2y agoYou didn't even read the article didn't you?
- m463 2y agoand so is GOG
- KomoD 2y ago
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- ChrisArchitect 2y ago[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41809193 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41809193
- chaoskitty 2y agoThere's something so much better about having physical cartridges :) While that wouldn't make sense these days, knowing the installer you downloaded will still work decades from now is great, and I hope to see more companies like GOG start doing this.
- niemandhier 2y agoMy switch cartridges work without Wi-Fi, so the games must be stored there in playable form.
- altairprime 2y agoGOG is still not “selling” the game, even though they offer offline installers, as one would with certainty face legal objections for setting up a resale marketplace website for games purchased from GOG. That your license is indefinite and your installer can be archived is excellent, but that’s still only a license with benefits.
- voxic11 2y agoThe California law that has driven these marketing copy changes only applies to selling of software with revocable access. If the access cannot be revoked then the law still allows you to say you are selling the software rather than renting it. The law does not require licenses be transferable to qualify for this exemption. > (b)(1) It shall be unlawful for a seller of a digital good to advertise or offer for sale a digital good to a purchaser with the terms buy, purchase, or any other term which a reasonable person would understand to confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good, or alongside an option for a time-limited rental... > (4)This section does not apply to any of the following: ...(C) Any digital good that is advertised or offered to a person that the seller cannot revoke access to after the transaction, which includes making the digital good available at the time of purchase for permanent offline download to an external storage source to be used without a connection to the internet. https://digitaldemocracy.calmatters.org/bills/ca_202320240ab2426 https://digitaldemocracy.calmatters.org/bills/ca_202320240ab...
- altairprime 2y agoYes, but they’re still selling a revocable license, whether California law compels them to declare so plainly or merely in their shrinkwrap terms: > 2.1 We give you and other GOG users the personal right (known legally as a 'license') to use GOG services and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content. This license is for your personal use. We can stop or suspend this license in some situations, which are explained later on. > 17.2. Our right to terminate the Agreement. If you materially breach this Agreement, we reserve the right to suspend or cancel your access to GOG services and GOG content. That they have provided you an installer is interesting but not legally relevant; if they revoke your license, your use of the installer is unlicensed and therefore, in theory, prosecutable. (This is of course difficult to enforce, but that’s only relevant if it’s theoretically prosecutable.)
- endigma 2y agoThis title is super weighted, Valve makes it quite clear that users do in fact own a thing, a license for a product on Steam. This is fundamental to games with online DRM.
- dualboot 2y agoIt's fundamental to all non-free software.
- xboxnolifes 2y agoIt's fundamental to all software. Even FOSS software is licensed, it's just incredibly permissive and doesn't cost money.
- somat 2y agoYou are correct of course, One exception to this is materials released into the public domain. Allow me a short incoherent essay on my thoughts on the subject. Public domain is a fascinating concept to me, My view is somewhat US centric, for example, some countries have no legal equivalent of the concept. but I think the idea that we the public can collectively own something is neat. Nothing wrong with copyright, I think copyright is a very important legal structure recognizing the effort to create something. but I also think it somewhat enlightened to say after a given amount of time the public owns this. Or the way the US government says "works created by the US government are for the good of all US citizens and as such are in the public domain". should a person be allowed to say "I made this for the public good and release any claim of ownership over it". sqlite infamously has trouble because some countries are legally unable to recognize a work put in the public domain. But all of nasa's software and papers are available under the same consideration.
- EMIRELADERO 2y agoThis is just wrong. They could just sell copies instead of licenses. Copyright law doesn't care about interaction with already-existing copies, so mere usage of a software (and making archival copies) doesn't need a license at all
- hggigg 2y agoI feel slightly less bad about stealing all my games now.
- Sniffnoy 2y agoI think it's worth once again linking the "Stop Killing Games" campaign, for those that don't know about it! https://www.stopkillinggames.com/ https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
- ryaniscool 2y agoA long time ago, I used Paypal to purchase a steam game. This was like 15 years ago. For some reason Paypal marked it as suspicious and immediately cancelled the transaction. Steam then locked me out of my account. I had several dozen games. I couldn't get anyone to reply to me from Steam. To this day, I'm locked out of that account and all of the games I had purchased. I started a new account but yeah it's scary.
- nerdix 2y agoThat's scary. I use PayPal to pay for steam games just out of convenience. My account is almost 20 years old (I signed up because you had to in order to play HL2) and I've purchased a lot of games over the years.
- ileonichwiesz 2y agoOut of curiosity, what convenience? How is using Paypal easier than just inputting your card info once?
- nerdix 2y agoIt's only convenient because I already use Paypal. I only buy maybe 2-3 games a year from Steam directly. Most of the games in my library are from humble bundle (or similar sites). It's just been easier to click the Paypal button for the occasional impulse buy than to track down my wallet. I'll probably go ahead and put my CC details in now that I know Paypal carries risk.
- squigz 2y agoIt's been several years since I used a card on Steam, but IIRC I had to regularly re-input the card details, whereas I rarely have to re-log into PayPal.
- RunningDroid 2y agoAs someone who currently uses a card on Steam, I can confirm Steam asks for the card security code every time I make a purchase.
- dpc_01234 2y agoIf you don't have the source code, you don't really "own" the software anyway. Any closed source software will eventually stop working due to technological changes, etc. I treat games as mostly consumption items. I play them for a while, and then I might as well throw them to trash if they were physical items. If it wasn't for that I wouldn't accept lack of source code anyway, just like with the OS and important personal computing software.
- edgarvaldes 2y agoOTOH I have been installing and playing _some_ games for almost 20 years on several computers using the same installer.
- benoau 2y agoEmulation and virtualization have solved the longevity problem and continue to do so better than ever. There is no doubt at all that games will still work in the future, and other software, as long as they don't have a hard-dependency on a dead online system.
- deepsun 2y agoAnyway it's better to have at least closed binary. Same thing with open code -- one may say that depending on its license you also may not own it. But I say it's one step better.
- TheAceOfHearts 2y agoThere are teams of dedicated fans and developers that have fully reverse engineered older games' source code to allow byte for byte recompilation. If this process could be accelerated or boosted with better tooling I think that would be a huge boon for game preservation and enhancements. I'm really hopeful that long-term advancements in AI tooling will help enable faster reverse engineering of games from binary to source code.
- throwaway48476 2y agoThe goal should be getting source code released or 'leaked'.
- archsurface 2y agoI didn't know about GOG. Symptoms of getting older. I need similar for films. I don't want to stream, I don't want to rip, and I'm too out of touch with torrent things to feel comfortable; not that I ever dared in simpler times, of course.
- mrandish 2y agoA couple years ago I opted out of the new game release rat race because I realized they're costing more and I'm getting less and I don't find recent AAA games any more fun than older games (and often quite a bit less fun). I was also just sick of all the bullshit like many games being released in a buggy state, content being held back for the inevitable DLC, and having to sign up for an online account on some publisher's site after buying the game from another online service. I've switched to retro gaming and find I enjoy it more. For example, exploring 90s Japanese games that never saw wide release in the US. Recently I've found some real winners exploring the X360 and PS3 back catalog of indie games via emulation. I'd never seen many of these because they were only released on their respective online services. Of course, with the shutdown of those stores, these titles would be lost to time were it not for the preservation and emulation communities archiving them. This is why I'm a fan of publishers like GOG who're at least making an effort toward perpetual availability.
- AtlasBarfed 2y agoAs games push the limits of gambling ratio addiction mechanics, social and psychological coercion, sunk cost fallacy, and a host of other tactics as best exemplified by pay to win games made by machine zone aand others, Games are getting definitively worse. You are a revenue stream, not a customer or a person to app Al to in any way but the most lazy and base ways possible. Each successive graphic generation places additional production cost to build models and world's, arguably to the artistic detriment of any game: first, since there is so much labor, corners are cut and artistic vision can't be applied everywhere to an army of graphic artists, many outsourced. Second, the overall production costs, much like movie production, makes producers conservative and cookie cutter in pursuit of a reliable return on investment. The emulation community is preserving not just games, but an entirely different culture of gaming. Perhaps AI can help with better mass generation of artistic assets, but really an AI is a mass averager of it's inputs: artistic vision is fundamentally a deviation from a norm, and large AI models are anything but
- leetcrew 2y agofor better or for worse, gaming has gone mainstream. there are now a lot of dollars chasing easy wins. even a computer graphics enthusiast, it is really sad to see that they have optimized for incredible rendering pipelines and utterly forgettable assets, mechanics, and stories. but if you rewind your render quality expectations by about ten years, there are still great games being made for way under $100mm. I'll plug two of my current favorites: * factorio ($20). if you don't already know what it is, I can't really summarize it here. the entire team is < 10 people, but it's rare example of engineering excellence combined with a carefully curated user experience. I try to get all the devs and PMs I work with to read their blog. * zero k (free). a bit more wacky, but one of the best rts of all time. they also have an interesting dev blog, and for a nice cherry on top, it's open source. some feature requests on the forums get the reply "great idea, I look forward to your PR", which I find pretty funny.
- shirro 2y agoNeither GOG or Steam are selling games. Both are selling licenses. The only people who own copyright works are the rights holders. You can't take a GOG licensed game and sell copies or make a derivative work so you don't own it but it is close to what people mean when they say they "own" a book or other physical media. Games that are only usable with online license checks are more fragile than DRM free games from GOG but practically there isn't much practical difference for the majority of users. I enjoy the convenience and added features of Steam but GOG serves an important role as a piracy alternative for those demanding fully functional stand alone, offline copies of games.
- bscphil 2y ago> Neither GOG or Steam are selling games. Both are selling licenses. The only people who own copyright works are the rights holders. You can't take a GOG licensed game and sell copies or make a derivative work so you don't own it Isn't this not the usual way we talk about ownership? If I buy a book at the bookstore, I own the book. I can put the physical object on my bookshelf. If someone breaks into my house and takes the book, they have stolen the book from me. I have the right to give or resell the book to someone else. I have the right to read it when and how I want to. I have the right to bequeath it when I die. That's "ownership" for all intents and purposes, even if the rights to do certain things with the book are reserved to someone else. I can't, for instance, place the book on a photocopier, press the copy button for each page, and give the copies to someone else. I can't read from it into a microphone at a public event. I don't see how ownership in the digital realm is so different. I don't have a physical artifact, and copies of a digital work are exactly identical, rather than distinguishable. But that doesn't change very much about what ownership ought to mean. It basically means that I'm not limited in my rights to use the (digital) book however I'd like for private use, although certain things I might want to do with the work are illegal. I can't make a copy and give it to someone else. The fact that copying is "easier" doesn't change the fundamental nature of that restriction. When Steam got in hot water recently for saying that you couldn't give your account to someone else (e.g. through a will), I think the reason people were mad about that because it meant that having a game in your Steam account is definitively not owning the game. On the other hand, having a game on CD-ROM or purchased on GOG might count as ownership.
- djmips 2y agoCan you sell you GOG game on to another person?
- t0bia_s 2y ago"If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing" https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/ https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/ Also, Steam should not offer buying games. Renting games would be more accurate.
- smarklefunf 2y agothen what dafuq do you buy when you spend money on steam?
- jasomill 2y agoThis is the result I expected when I first read about the new California law. With a bit of luck, this story will get wide enough distribution that GOG will gain a bit of market share. Sadly, if GOG gains enough new market share to have a material effect on Valve's bottom line, I imagine Valve's initial response will be a "most favored nation" clause in future publisher contracts allowing Steam to introduce offline, DRM-free installers for the subset of Steam games also available on GOG, diluting GOG's unique value proposition with a move that will nevertheless be hailed as a victory for consumers.
- JackMorgan 2y agoOne day in the future, there will be more "dead" software than "alive". All software is kept "alive" by human effort. As hardware, operating systems, drivers, and runtimes change, all software is kept running by additional human intervention. Even physical media like DVDs and cartridges will degrade at varying speeds. Bits containing an unlocked installer must be stored somewhere. Consoles stop working and need components replaced. Software is the music that we play, it just takes a few decades for the echo to stop reverberating. Websites are the worst. How many versions of gmail.com have been discarded for us to get to the current version? I'm sure Google currently has them backed up, which will survive until Google goes away and the millions of versions will likely disappear like vapor in the sun. Software with a required public API will likely end soonest. If it needs an old architecture or hardware, that is a risk. If you have an unlocked installer, what OS dependencies does it have? Someone in this chain said they only feel like they own software if they have the source code. Which is another way of saying, if they have the sheet music, they can play the song themselves. But it isn't "permanent" it's just another song in the wind.
- marenkay 2y agoSoftware licensing for games, or other media is the corporate way of stealing from people. Removal of ownership from the working class is what has been silently forced upon all of us. And not just that, license usually also greatly reduces liability for the provider.