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A Steam purchase I have more confidence in than a physical game copy to survive. I trust Steam to honor its agreement with me more than I trust in myself and my

A Steam purchase I have more confidence in than a physical game copy to survive. I trust Steam to honor its agreement with me more than I trust in myself and my feline overlords to keep a game CD alive. In a previous timeline, this has led to me going on ebay to find CDs of a long lost game (EarthSiege 2), which I promptly uploaded to the Internet Archive as the one distributed by the current license-holder at the time had an older, unstable version with bugs and, more importantly, no audio and my own original copy got damaged to hell and beyond... [1] https://archive.org/details/sierra-earth-siege-2 https://archive.org/details/sierra-earth-siege-2

embedding-shape 6mo ago
Sure, I agree with all of those things, but the fact still stands, Steam is actively lying to customers as the store pages say "Buy" and "Purchase", not "Rent" or "Lease", which are more accurate. You don't actually own the product. Don't get me wrong, as mentioned, I use Steam and like Steam/Valve, but that move is a bit shitty regardless.
- bbddg 6mo ago
  I think it would be extremely confusing for customers if the steam “Buy” button was renamed to “Rent” or “Lease”.
  - account42 6mo ago
    It would only be confusing because customers are currently being misled and the new label would no longer match their faulty mental model.
  - embedding-shape 6mo ago
    How could it be confusing when that's actually what happens? Imagine HN showed "Delete comment" instead of "Reply" under the comment input, don't you agree that be misleading?
  - branon 6mo ago
    how about "Purchase License"
- wtetzner 6mo ago
  When I check out on Steam it displays this text to me: > A purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam.
  - embedding-shape 6mo ago
    This is what I see on the checkout page: https://i.imgur.com/diOkyCM.png https://i.imgur.com/diOkyCM.png There is a product in the cart, which is a game, and the button says "Purchase", no where does it say anywhere that it's a license (although that's obvious), nor that I don't actually "own" this game after I "purchase" it. Sure, minor detail perhaps, but I'd still argue that something Steam could do better, and since the industry is lacking self-regulation about this, I'd argue more regulations are needed for this even.
    - wtetzner 6mo ago
      It's on the cart page, before you check out. And I do agree that it should be much more front-and-center, rather than the sort of fine-print thing they have now. https://imgur.com/a/D1LKUUi https://imgur.com/a/D1LKUUi

embedding-shape 6mo ago

Sure, I agree with all of those things, but the fact still stands, Steam is actively lying to customers as the store pages say "Buy" and "Purchase", not "Rent" or "Lease", which are more accurate. You don't actually own the product. Don't get me wrong, as mentioned, I use Steam and like Steam/Valve, but that move is a bit shitty regardless.

bbddg 6mo ago
I think it would be extremely confusing for customers if the steam “Buy” button was renamed to “Rent” or “Lease”.
- account42 6mo ago
  It would only be confusing because customers are currently being misled and the new label would no longer match their faulty mental model.
- embedding-shape 6mo ago
  How could it be confusing when that's actually what happens? Imagine HN showed "Delete comment" instead of "Reply" under the comment input, don't you agree that be misleading?
- branon 6mo ago
  how about "Purchase License"
wtetzner 6mo ago
When I check out on Steam it displays this text to me: > A purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam.
- embedding-shape 6mo ago
  This is what I see on the checkout page: https://i.imgur.com/diOkyCM.png https://i.imgur.com/diOkyCM.png There is a product in the cart, which is a game, and the button says "Purchase", no where does it say anywhere that it's a license (although that's obvious), nor that I don't actually "own" this game after I "purchase" it. Sure, minor detail perhaps, but I'd still argue that something Steam could do better, and since the industry is lacking self-regulation about this, I'd argue more regulations are needed for this even.
  - wtetzner 6mo ago
    It's on the cart page, before you check out. And I do agree that it should be much more front-and-center, rather than the sort of fine-print thing they have now. https://imgur.com/a/D1LKUUi https://imgur.com/a/D1LKUUi