what is buy to own after i purchase a game
PC game ownership in the digital historic period: what exercise you practise in a postal service-ownership historic period?
Do you buy a lot of PC games on Steam, the Epic Games Store and perhaps fifty-fifty Origin or Battle.Cyberspace? We do too, and we often discover ourselves struggling with the idea that we don't own any of the games nosotros're dropping so much money on.
Unless you buy a game on a platform like GOG (Good OId Games) or Humble, you likely won't take a manner to keep the game if the licensing falls through or the store goes under. We know its hard to believe that Valve will be shutting downwards Steam any fourth dimension in the near time to come, but what would happen if Steam merely didn't be anymore?
Because the games sold on Steam aren't kept on any kind of physical media, information technology's unlikely that you lot'd be able to keep your games if the service ever goes under. So, should nosotros go back to hoarding giant collections of CDs? Or practice we just take the current way of doing things and move on?
But, Valve has said ...
If y'all search online for "what will happen if Steam goes nether" y'all'll run into all kinds (opens in new tab) of forum (opens in new tab) posts where people are proverb that Steam has systems in place to make certain that in the unlikely scenario where it ceases to exist, your games would be updated to not require Steam to run anymore. That'south a overnice idea, and it may even be true. But, the Steam Subscriber Agreement (opens in new tab) says differently.
According to the agreement that yous hold to every single time yous buy a game on Steam, "the Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services." Y'all're not buying the games, you're buying the license to apply them.
Information technology is still possible that Valve would release a patch that would permit games be run without Steam in the instance that the gigantic storefront ever goes belly-up, simply information technology'due south likely this would only apply to its own games. Y'all would be able to play Half-Life 2, but maybe non Nighttime Souls 3. This all comes downwards to one thing: licensing. We really don't encounter Square Enix, for instance, being cool with the DRM being stripped from something like Final Fantasy XV (or whatever the most recent one is when this theoretical Steam shutdown would happen.)
And, this isn't fifty-fifty unique. In EA'due south terms of use for Origin (opens in new tab), information technology says "The EA Services are licensed to you, not sold. EA grants y'all a personal, limited, non-transferable, revocable and not-exclusive license to use the EA Services to which yous have access for your non-commercial use, subject to your compliance with this Agreement." Epic Games Store (opens in new tab) says something similar, besides.
Then, there'southward Good Old Games. Non but is its EULA (End User License Agreement) (opens in new tab) way more accessible than other platforms, but it doesn't explicitly say you don't ain the games you're buying. And, because games sold on GOG are DRM-gratuitous, if the platform goes under, you should be able to download all your games and back them up on an external hard drive, or even CDs.
Either way, it's been a while since we've seen someone walking downwardly the street carrying a binder of PC games on CD-ROM, and we don't think that's e'er going to go chic ever once again. Just, who knows? The cassette is back (opens in new tab).
What practice we practice now?
Information technology'due south unfortunate that these licensing agreements that say nosotros tin can buy games without owning them are the good old days, merely it's kind of true. Now that we're starting to see all kinds of game companies launching subscription services similar EA's Origin Access or Microsoft's Xbox Games Laissez passer, we won't be buying games anymore, merely like we're not buying albums or movies.
And, so there'south the game streaming services similar Google Stadia looming on the horizon, and we won't even own our gaming hardware anymore - that is if the limited bandwidth a lot of folks have doesn't hold game streaming back from attaining mainstream domination .
It'southward hard to actually think of a solution, and maybe there actually isn't one. This all-digital age means that information technology's unlikely we'll ever encounter the best PC games being marketed as concrete things ever again. The best matter anyone tin do, then, is to be aware of what y'all're getting when you buy that new PC game y'all've had your eyes on.
And, if you only desire to play the latest PC games, without really thinking most where they'll be a decade down the line, you probably don't accept anything to worry about. Simply don't expect that digital download of The Outer Worlds to become a collectors item, even if French lawmakers did say you tin resell your games (opens in new tab) on Steam (but only in France).
Source: https://www.techradar.com/news/pc-game-ownership-in-the-digital-age-what-do-you-do-in-a-post-ownership-age
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