If Steam were to go under aka shutdown. Will I lose all the money I spent on games?

[Cyber2B]

I have been on Steam for approx 6 years now, however I don't spend as much as some people since I'm quite skeptic that if Steam were to go under, I woould lose everything.

I like the sales that Steam offers but at the same time it seems companies are starting to move away and create sell their own game on their website or another platform, for example: Fallout 76 will be releasing on a Bethesda Launcher when it releases. Also Bo4 is not releasing on Steam but on the Battle.net client.

If Steam were to go under would I atleast get a refund for the games I bought? I do have $300+ worth of games over the years. It would suck to lose them and the money I spent on them.

Edit: After reading this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_license if valve were to go bankrupt, I should still be able to access their game or else thousands would sue the crap out of them for not fullfiling their end which is stated on the article I linked. However I would have to spend lots in order to actually send a case if Steam were to shutdown.

[Jaunitta 🌸]

Hi, According to Steam>We all own licences to play the games we purchase and If steam was to magically disappear all your games would work in offline mode.
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/7/541907867767701145/
How it works
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(software)
There should be no real reason why Valve would shutdown. By early 2018, the service had over 150 million registered accounts with a peak of 18.5 million concurrent users online

[I_Snort_Flour]

steam has esports and as long as streaming and esports are around steam will not be going anywhere. you might lose some major titles here and there due to them being designed with another engine thats optiomized for their games and only their games but cs go, rocket league and pubg are all esports and amoung all the platforms are in the top of the most played games titles. What they need to do is apply pressure to sony to get them to allow cross party like microsoft did and people can finaly play any game with their friends regardless of their prefered platform of choice along with bugdet builds that can be built at console prices which match or exceed counsel caopabilities with thier igpu at extremly low costs, no yearly subscription fees, more than just 3 years of support for games, anytime upgrades along with things like the steam market its kind of a no brainer and we should start seing a huge increase in computer gamers with the new gpu's launching soon making it more affordable to game and next gen igpu's which will improve integrated performance and stability quite a bit compared to the v1. This whole situation has been done before and was known as counsel exclusives. Either they push out 1 game every 5 years until they go belly up or their contract runs out and they immediatly go cross plaform as they are losing huge amounts of market share only being available to a small demographic. vr could also take off and there is just no way a counsel will be able to pull off a good vr experience any time soon.

[Jaunitta 🌸]

Originally posted by I_Snort_Flour:

steam has esports and as long as streaming and esports are around steam will not be going anywhere. you might lose some major titles here and there due to them being designed with another engine thats optiomized for their games and only their games but cs go, rocket league and pubg are all esports and amoung all the platforms are in the top of the most played games titles. What they need to do is apply pressure to sony to get them to allow cross party like microsoft did and people can finaly play any game with their friends regardless of their prefered platform of choice along with bugded builds that can be built at console prices which match or exceed counsel caopabilities with thier igpu at extremly low costs, no yearly subscription fees, more than just 3 years of support for games, anytime upgrades along with things like the steam market its kind of a no brainer and we should start seing a huge increase in computer gamers with the new gpu's launching soon making it more affordable to game and next gen igpu's which will improve integrated performance and stability quite a bit compared to the v1.

1+
Valve is working hard to to update and improve members Libraries privacy
Quote
Changes coming to Steam mean that users’ libraries will now be kept private and out of the data sluice that fed Steam Spy, a third-party site that tracked game ownership, concurrent users and other trends on Steam.
https://www.polygon.com/2018/4/12/17229752/steam-spy-charts-new-privacy-rules-valve

Adding :
we now have Blog button just to the left of the emal notifications.
This is a good place to readup on the latest.

[I_Snort_Flour]

Originally posted by Jaunitta:

Hi, According to Steam>We all own licences to play the games we purchase and If steam was to magically disappear all your games would work in offline mode.
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/7/541907867767701145/
How it works
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(software)

your negecting just 1 thing. when you purchased the game digitally (dont matter what client it was whether it was steam, amazon, cd keys or any other place) you purchased the drm which is registered to you and not controlled by steam so you will always own the rights to your content and would have to be provided a way to use them in the event of a company going out of business and if that wasn't a possibiliy they would have to refund everybody's money or face a class action lawsuit. well in the usa anyways as other countries do not have a drm they are only protected by their local laws and the limited power they would have holding the company resposible. drm digital rights media hence the reason you can not sell a digital game to anybody else after you have purchased and registered the game to your account.

[Seraphita]

Doomsday people are foreseeing the end of steam. I wish to know more about it. (Not really)

[I_Snort_Flour]

Originally posted by Zero:

Doomsday people are foreseeing the end of steam. I wish to know more about it. (Not really)

Yeah they already looted all of the KB\s from all of the stores and it's only a matter of time before we meet our makers and see the green screen of death before our very own eyes.

[Cyber2B]

Originally posted by Zero:

Doomsday people are foreseeing the end of steam. I wish to know more about it. (Not really)

Well if you spent 1k on steam (Some people have) then wouldn't you be pissed to lose it all just becuase the company shutsdown? Its like that time Gamespy shutdown for Arma 2 and now its a dead game in my SteamLibrary.

[Radene]

Even if Steam went under, that would leave a hugeass hole in the market. Someone else would step in.

[Jaunitta 🌸]

Originally posted by Radene:

Even if Steam went under, that would leave a hugeass hole in the market. Someone else would step in.

Agree with millions of menbers

[Falsus Te Deum]

At some point in time they might fail, fold, getting sold, closed, overtaken by a competitor. We might also be hit with a meteor or why not a zombie plauge. Why worry, for things you have no idea will come or for that matter can control.
If they release a fix to be able to play, they do, if not it's not the end of the world.
Spread your chances between different platforms and the impact will not be so sever, IF it is a total failure.

And yes, i have much more value put into steam than 1K, and if something happens, it happens.

[Faolchu]

You don't own games anyway, you only have a license to play them. Steam also makes too much money at the moment to go away, nobody knows what the future will bring with everybody making their own launchers for games but it's fair to assume that for the next decade steam is safe.

I'm more upset that the movie industry scammed me with dvd's and dvd rot than i would ever be about digital content.

[慈悲]

What if all the of the game clients went under? That's the true question

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by 慈悲:

What if all the of the game clients went under? That's the true question

What if there was a global electromagnetic disturbance that wrecks all our data storage devices ....I've never understood the point of these sorts of worst case scenario thought exercises. The sort of circumstances that would lead to those scenarios would ensure that you'll be busy worrying about far more important things than your games.

[慈悲]

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Originally posted by 慈悲:

What if all the of the game clients went under? That's the true question

What if there was a global electromagnetic disturbance that wrecks all our data storage devices ....I've never understood the point of these sorts of worst case scenario thought exercises. The sort of circumstances that would lead to those scenarios would ensure that you'll be busy worrying about far more important things than your games.

I was kind of leading up to that point, but yes. There's really more important things to worry about, say even in current times. It's digital. If anything crashes it's going to be money or society probably. Both of which would cause an end to these online fantasies lol

[CJ HUNTER]

Originally posted by TenzoG:

If Steam were to go under would I atleast get a refund for the games I bought? I do have $300+ worth of games over the years. It would suck to lose them and the money I spent on them.

It's like asking if you can still play your games if the zombie apocalypse comes.