Yup. I bought The Forest for $2 a year ago and I’m sure I’ll play it eventually.

If gaben decides tomorrow to shut it all down, everything is gone. They might have a lot of good will based on past behavior, but in the end it’s still a company and you have zero control over what they do. You don’t actually own any of those games.

Technically, uh no. Many of the games I haven’t loaded onto my PC would no longer be accessible, correct. But I have a copy of Goldberg emulator, in case Valve doesn’t hold up their end of the bargain.

It’s like gym membership or books. If everyone with gym membership would go regularly, the business won’t be profitable. Or if everyone only buys a new book after they finish what they have bought, the publishing industry would be in shambles.

These businesses play the probability game. They are actually just insurance by a different name.

So, you’re saying that Steam games are the stuffed animals that’re culturally acceptable for adults to display openly.

Then technically I am correct? If Valve just shuts down, it’s all gone. You might find a workaround for some of the stuff you happen to have downloaded right now, but in general, everything you “bought” is gone.

You best be glad these sailors are drunk and laying about on their hoard. Before Steam, those sailors were pirates. Do not tempt them to set sail again.

I wondered which studio would be bold enough to do blatantly insult an entire marketplace of potential customers, but it’s just some guy.

Chris Zukowski.

I am a game marketing consultant and strategist. I have helped Games-as-a-Service companies, indie publishers, and small to single-person teams understand their audience and communicate with them in a more personal way.

Funny way to communicate with your clients audience mate, calling us all “a bunch of drunken sailors”…

I specialize in optimizing your marketing for the Steam algorithm

Ah, so you’re part of the reason nothing has a soul any more. Got it.

I have bought games on steam that I already owned and played on other platforms, just because I wanted to support the dev and have a copy on a reliable platform. But with recent developements I do wonder more and more how long it will stay reliable.

What recent developments?

Bill Hicks evergreen marketing bit is as relevant now as it was in the 80s.

Probably supporting Linux and open source is now evil or so.

If steam shutdown it would probably mean PC gaming itself is dead and the industry is in really big trouble.

I do have a lot of games but most of them came from big bundles from Humble Bundle.

Technically it would be the same case for GOG too if that happened, since the average consimer doesn’t back up all the games they pay for.

In the end when it comes to digital most consumers rely on convenience and trust than taking the extra step to back up stuff so they remove the dependency.

That’s why the actual back up for lot of people is piracy as the final line of defense and archiving.

Play in VR if you can, amazing experience

He’s right

Some people have huge backlogs of games they will naver be able to play, some games alone will count for hundreds of hours of playtime.

You can’t manage all them, and that platform encourages overspending

Word. It’s not hoarding it’s “yeah I’d pay $16 dollars for that one game and I’ll give a couple of others a go”. I didn’t just never get around to Kane and Lynch, I never had any interest in it.

Barely bought anything this year because I am still finishing Factorio. 1600 hours on steam and countless more from the non steam version of the game.

The factory must grow. My SA deathworld save is up to around 3000 SPM.

Factorio is a game where I’ll spend so much time and getting pretty far. Then I’ll “refactor” some parts for efficiency. Then I get like a new science and I’ll be like, I can’t make this work and give up.

Then I’ll start again later thinking I’ll get it right the next time!

Although, if I had my robo flying stuff set up correctly then this wouldn’t be an issue.