Can Steam take my games like Amazon can take Kindle books?

[Eccentric Gentleman]

Yesterday I found out that Amazon can remove purchased books form anyone's Kindle library and even remotely go into anyone's Kindle and remove any books contained on it. And they can do this at any time for any reason they want.

This was very concerning to me, Not only because I had just bought a Kindle (which I will now be returning) but also because I have been using steam for years and almost all my games are on it. What's more, some PC games are only available as Steam downloads. The only hard copies were for consoles, and I gave up being a console gamer because console games are often only compatible with that console, they stop making them eventually and don't always include backward compatibility for new models.

I've done some internet searching to find out if Steam is similar to Kindle.
Some people say it is, that we don't own what we buy and if Steam shut down we'd lose all our games. But I think that last part only applies to online multiplayer.
Others seem to say that Steam cares more then Amazon, that they promise to create a "permanent offline mode" if they go under.

But I couldn't find anything either way to answer the question, can Steam take my games remotely? So I put the question to you.

[kork]

probably, but why would they lol

[Ganger]

Valve can remove any game of your for any reason according to the eula's we all agree too. But it is very unlikely that valve will just remove any game for no reason at all.

It's does happen when you do fraud, get your license revoked (CD keys) or do charge backs. And if steam was ever to shut down, you would most likely lose access to all the content you have paid for.

[AgentRuby]

Never heard of that. I would suspect that as long as you obtain your content legally there should be no problem.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by WhitePhantom:

If you get a game from a third party site and it's later found to be stolen the game can be taken from your account

Only the dev/pub can revoke the game keys.

[Kargor]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Originally posted by WhitePhantom:

If you get a game from a third party site and it's later found to be stolen the game can be taken from your account

Only the dev/pub can revoke the game keys.

Yes, but from a more technical perspective, it's actually them asking Valve to revoke them, and Valve doing the actual deed.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by Kargor:

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Only the dev/pub can revoke the game keys.

Yes, but from a more technical perspective, it's actually them asking Valve to revoke them, and Valve doing the actual deed.

Valve pressing a button is not what I would call "doing the actual deed."

The game devs/pubs do all the work figuring out which batch to revoke.

[Eccentric Gentleman]

Originally posted by Ganger:

Valve can remove any game of your for any reason according to the eula's we all agree too. But it is very unlikely that valve will just remove any game for no reason at all.

It's does happen when you do fraud, get your license revoked (CD keys) or do charge backs. And if steam was ever to shut down, you would most likely lose access to all the content you have paid for.

But steam doesn't need to be online to play my games.

[Eccentric Gentleman]

Originally posted by AgentRuby:

Never heard of that. I would suspect that as long as you obtain your content legally there should be no problem.

Reasonable but could Steam remotely remove games from my PC?

[Aachen]

Originally posted by Eccentric Gentleman:

Reasonable but could Steam remotely remove games from my PC?

As in, “uninstall?” No.

[Ganger]

Originally posted by Eccentric Gentleman:

But steam doesn't need to be online to play my games.

Some games but if you were ever to log back online into steam, you would lose access to that game(s) unless it's totally DRM free. But people shouldn't worry about it really, its not like steam is a investment. Anyway we gave up our rights to own games (well the media format that game came on) along time ago.

This is why I wised up from buying games in sales, buying games for the sake of buying due to a sale is a bad mistake unless you plan on playing that game.

[Your Mom's Oshi]

Are you trying to defraud steam? That's what this thread sounds like. If any of the platforms that you mention actually recieve your money with no chargebacks then you have no worries about them removing the product. You have no need to return your kindle unless you plan on somehow defrauding Amazon out of books. This is how all digital media platforms work. They CAN block you from content but only will if they've been ripped off.

[Brian9824]

Originally posted by Eccentric Gentleman:

Yesterday I found out that Amazon can remove purchased books form anyone's Kindle library and even remotely go into anyone's Kindle and remove any books contained on it. And they can do this at any time for any reason they want.

This was very concerning to me, Not only because I had just bought a Kindle (which I will now be returning) but also because I have been using steam for years and almost all my games are on it. What's more, some PC games are only available as Steam downloads. The only hard copies were for consoles, and I gave up being a console gamer because console games are often only compatible with that console, they stop making them eventually and don't always include backward compatibility for new models.

I've done some internet searching to find out if Steam is similar to Kindle.
Some people say it is, that we don't own what we buy and if Steam shut down we'd lose all our games. But I think that last part only applies to online multiplayer.
Others seem to say that Steam cares more then Amazon, that they promise to create a "permanent offline mode" if they go under.

But I couldn't find anything either way to answer the question, can Steam take my games remotely? So I put the question to you.

Every gaming site or digital store has the ability to do that. They basically never do unless there is a case of fraud though.

Amazon, Steam, Epic, GoG, Sony, Microsoft, etc can all do that if there is fraud.

Amazon doesn't go around yanking people's purchases for no reason, so freaking out over their ability to do so is just hilarious.

[Bee🐝]

OP, Steam only pulls games in cases of fraud and they won't "delete" anything from your PC.

Back to the main issue though, instead of returning a perfectly good Kindle just download Calibre like everyone else and organise and store your books that way.

Edit: Also, things like the "Orwell" incident happens very rarely.

[Eccentric Gentleman]

Originally posted by Bee:

OP, Steam only pulls games in cases of fraud and they won't "delete" anything from your PC.

Back to the main issue though, instead of returning a perfectly good Kindle just download Calibre like everyone else and organise and store your books that way.

Edit: Also, things like the "Orwell" incident happens very rarely.

When you say "pull" do you mean off the Steam store or off my PC?
And what is Calibre? Some kind of e-reader app? How is that different from Kindle?

[Your Mom's Oshi]

Originally posted by Eccentric Gentleman:

Originally posted by Bee:

OP, Steam only pulls games in cases of fraud and they won't "delete" anything from your PC.

Back to the main issue though, instead of returning a perfectly good Kindle just download Calibre like everyone else and organise and store your books that way.

Edit: Also, things like the "Orwell" incident happens very rarely.

When you say "pull" do you mean off the Steam store or off my PC?
And what is Calibre? Some kind of e-reader app? How is that different from Kindle?

Pull from your library. It will remain on your pc but depending on the game it may or may not be playable due to steam drm.