Many steam games are DRM free and would work even if Steam shuts down. It’s been like this at least since 2011 or so (that’s when I discovered this, it could be earlier).
I guess the impact would depend on the types of game which one buys on Steam.
I haven’t pirated games in a very long time, but this seems like a fair thing to do in such a situation. If the game is cheap and/or I like the studio, I would probably just rebuy on GOG.
Same here. Steam is the last “digital library” I’m ever really going to use or trust. I’ve been screwed over by everything else, so if that shuts down too, I’m basically just done, and will buy a NAS or something to hold all my games from GOG.
Pretty expensive though, given the prices on storage. And many of them will be out of date in a few months. Face it, we can download from the high seas at any time, the only reason most of us are buying on steam is convenience. Whatever we could backup on steam today we could just retrieve from elsewhere at any time.
Probably depends on your definition of drm free. You could start steam in offline mode and the vast majority of games would work forever. Their drm is also a known quantity and easily bypassed.
Yeah, I suspect if Steam shut down, not only would we see a bunch of cracks released for games that now have no way to update to try to kill the cracks, but we’d probably see something like emulation of steam to get around it without even needing individual cracks.
Heck, there’s at least one opensource generic steam emulator that you just drop into the game files. I used it before when messing around with modding a multiplayer game, to run multiple copies at once.
Many steam games are DRM free and would work even if Steam shuts down. It’s been like this at least since 2011 or so (that’s when I discovered this, it could be earlier).
I guess the impact would depend on the types of game which one buys on Steam.
If you had them downloaded yes. But if you didn’t and they disappeared?
I would just a get pirated copy.
I haven’t pirated games in a very long time, but this seems like a fair thing to do in such a situation. If the game is cheap and/or I like the studio, I would probably just rebuy on GOG.
Same here. Steam is the last “digital library” I’m ever really going to use or trust. I’ve been screwed over by everything else, so if that shuts down too, I’m basically just done, and will buy a NAS or something to hold all my games from GOG.
yep. the game exists somewhere. I’ve bought it. I have no issues pirating it to get access to it again. nobody has been hurt by this.
Steam has a back up feature I have my steam games backed up on my NAS
And, friendly nudge:
It’s not hard to back up games from Steam. Especially those with no DRM. Just keep them on a drive somewhere.
Pretty expensive though, given the prices on storage. And many of them will be out of date in a few months. Face it, we can download from the high seas at any time, the only reason most of us are buying on steam is convenience. Whatever we could backup on steam today we could just retrieve from elsewhere at any time.
Only 4.2% of games on Steam are DRM-free. It’s not as many as people think.
It looks like this list is manually curated, so there’s probably more that just aren’t documented as such.
Probably depends on your definition of drm free. You could start steam in offline mode and the vast majority of games would work forever. Their drm is also a known quantity and easily bypassed.
Didn’t know it was that low, I knew it was a smaller share, but I thought it would be double digit percentages.
That being said, many critically acclaimed games are indeed DRM free on Steam.
Steam Offline mode is your best friend for archiving games forever.
Yeah, I suspect if Steam shut down, not only would we see a bunch of cracks released for games that now have no way to update to try to kill the cracks, but we’d probably see something like emulation of steam to get around it without even needing individual cracks.
Generic stream emulators already exist and is how a vast number of games are “cracked”
I should’ve guessed, honestly.
Heck, there’s at least one opensource generic steam emulator that you just drop into the game files. I used it before when messing around with modding a multiplayer game, to run multiple copies at once.