this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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I think that ship has unfortunately sailed.
Even if I buy a game on Steam I don't technically own it. If the game was ever deleted from their servers and then I lost my local copy either because I uninstalled it or because I got a new computer, I would have no way to get my game back, and I doubt that Valve would refund me.
But some games literally don't have physical releases, even if I did have an optical drive. So what option do I have?
The only real solution to all of this is a changing copyright law that says that once a piece of software no longer becomes commercially available through legitimate means it becomes legal to pirate it. But that would require politicians around the world to a, understand computers and b, not being 900,000 years old.
GOG exists you know, they let you have a local copy with no DRM.
But I still need the website to actually download the game my point is if GOG went down I would be in exactly the same situationm I have no way to get another copy of the game.
So it isn't any more convenient to me than Steam
You can back-up purchased games in any storage device for yourself offline, so you don't need to download it again after purchasing it, you fully own it.
And you'd have to go to the physical store if you damaged or lost your original disk back in the day. Your argument is a little weird and unlikely. Also if you are backing up your content you never have to "go back" for anything.
What about GOG?