Prima Official Strategy Guides officially gone from Steam

[SgtRedRock]

I noticed that I could not find any of my Steam purchased Prima Official Strategy Guides when looking for extras either by right clicking my library title or by downloading the game...the guides are nowhere to be found.

I messaged Steam support what was up and they replied:

"Hi there,
Steam no longer offers Prima guides, and has no further troubleshooting to offer regarding them.
Since there's not much more that I can say or do to be of help with this particular issue, I am going to close this help request.
If you have questions on an unrelated issue, please create a new help request and we will be happy to help you.
Steam Support
Mitch"

I then asked for a refund on the Guides that were purchased separately, not part of a bundle. I asked for 10 refunds. I receive 10 denials with the message:

"We will not be granting a refund at this time. The date of the purchase exceeds 2 weeks (our refund policy maximum)."

I guess Steam can remove any and all of the extras you paid for at any time without notifying you or refunding you, taking away your right to access what you paid for. This is truly the downside for using a service like Steam. This includes GOG and the rest of them.

My recommendation is if you have extras, guides, wallpapers, artbooks, soundtracks...download them before Steam removes them with no warning and no refund.

I've spent a lot of money, happily, on Steam over the years. Color me P.O. for the first time.

Note: I did find some of the guides at archive .org after doing a duckduckgo search. They may all be there, I just haven't had time to research that. Also, the Prima guides I own are not sold by Prima anymore.

[Snapjak]

https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app&q=prima&type=7&category=0

Can you install any of them via the install button on whichever ones you own?


Oh, you're the one that actually made the other thread. You were suggested what I suggested already.
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/6269546530802424841/

[SgtRedRock]

Right. Thanks for helping but the SteamDB links do not work. The guides are gone. Or stored somewhere else.

[Zekiran]

have you contacted Prima about it? I mean it's a long shot but perhaps they understand that you *bought* them, they should be available to you somehow.

[SgtRedRock]

I did leave a msg several days ago with their support. No response. Their website HTML CSS is a mess, Only option at this point seems to archive .org

[eram]

yes we are finding out that items can be removed and you have zero access to them.

Items should be stored for future download and valve even say you wont lose items on steam but we know that isnt always true.

[Brian9824]

Sounds like Steam support misunderstood the question, not surprising as guides are not commonly sold items.

I'd just re-open the question and clarify again that you are referring to accessing previously bought guides and not inquiring about buying them

[Brian9824]

Oh have you tried launching the game and then opening up the steam UI in game to see if there is a button to access it?

I never bought the guides so no idea how they worked. Did they open a file or a webpage? If the guides were sold by Prima and hosted by them then just like if a server goes down in a MMO your out of luck if Prima hosted them as there is nothing Steam can do.

eram님이 먼저 게시:

yes we are finding out that items can be removed and you have zero access to them.

Items should be stored for future download and valve even say you wont lose items on steam but we know that isnt always true.

Some content isn't hosted by Valve, you don't lose items on steam anymore then you lose items on amazon or any other site. If you bought access to a guide that was offered on Prima's website though and just used Steam to pay and Prima shuts it down then just like when a MMO server is shut down you can't access it anymore.

[SgtRedRock]

Brian9824, thanks for suggestions and theories. One of the Prima guides I purchased was for Dungeon Siege III. I just down loaded.and hit shift+tab...nada. No Prima guide anywhere. Your theory on maybe Prima hosting the guides rings true. If they were hosting and decided to stop for whatever reason. Then yeah, it makes sense we can't access through Steam. But there should have been a warning so that we could DL before we lost access.

Thanks

[Brian9824]

SgtRedRock님이 먼저 게시:

Brian9824, thanks for suggestions and theories. One of the Prima guides I purchased was for Dungeon Siege III. I just down loaded.and hit shift+tab...nada. No Prima guide anywhere. Your theory on maybe Prima hosting the guides rings true. If they were hosting and decided to stop for whatever reason. Then yeah, it makes sense we can't access through Steam. But there should have been a warning so that we could DL before we lost access.

Thanks

Do you remember how the guides opened when you used them? I never bought one so don't really know.

[SgtRedRock]

From the Prima support page, they have stopped selling Eguides and there is no way to d/l old ones. They are also not producing any guides for the foreseeable future. SOL.

[Brian9824]

So sounds like the issue is on Prima's end, not Steams. That sucks

[SgtRedRock]

Interestingly, Shadow Tactics, which I did buy the extras including artbook/guide is still downloaded when the game installs.I just tested that now. The artbook/guide is produced by Daedalic, not Prima. So that is telling.

[Snapjak]

Those are DLC extras included with the game though. Not a separate download.

[SgtRedRock]

Looks like the Brady Strategy Guides are gone, too. Just dl Total War: Shogun 2 and no Brady stategy guide that I paid for.

[Snapjak]

Was that also something you viewed through whatever Brady offered?