The day I lost all my games to DRM

[CYZLAK]

Story time. I've been here a long time. Since day 1, you could say. It was 2004. I bought Half-Life 2 near enough to release day. I bought the Gordon box art, in case you were wondering. Anyway, amongst other things, on the discs came Counter-Strike: Source, and Steam. I wasn't really interested in Steam at first, I was focused on performance and didn't want it "hogging all my memory" because I had to keep it open to play. Anyway, I sucked it up when they introduced friends lists, because I could spam memes to friends as I head shot them in-game, and all was well.

Fast forward to today. Through a friend, an old computer from 2003 falls into my lap. I spent some time thinking for a use case, and retro being a thing now, researched the hardware/software used during it's era, turns out Windows XP was the way to go. So I got myself an era appropriate beastly Geforce 6800 GT, and got to work. Oh the nostalgia!

This is when the ugly face of DRM raised up and made itself known to me. You see, Half-Life 2 came out in 2004. I was using Steam. Steam got known for crazy sales early on. Games like FEAR, STALKER, absolutely heaps of other games started releasing. We all had broadband by then, so could download a game overnight. And I was young with a disposable income. Practically all of my Windows XP era games are in my Steam library. And guess what? Steam doesn't "support" Windows XP anymore. Well I mean, you can go and find an old version of the Steam client and Steam installs just fine on XP, but then you have to log in. Apparently they turned off the Steam login servers for XP some years ago. Why? Who knows really. End of the day, the cruel fact that all of my games are locked behind a login screen, even if i burn backups to CD, is the grim reality I now face.

Steam feels more like a rental service now more than than ever. You just don't think about this when you're always on the latest and greatest Operating System. How can you believe you "own" of of the games you spend your hard earned money on? One day this could happen to you, login server disabled or fails, being the specific DRM that Steam uses, and you can say goodbye to everything. Almost 20 years worth of game purchases. Astounding.

If anyone knows a way around this, please let me know, I don't know if these forums have PMs as I rarely have stories like this, but if they do, hit me up. The only thing I can think of, is dual boot to Steam OS. I found out SteamOS supports really old hardware, like Pentium 4 era hardware, which as it turns out, is early Windows XP era. But I don't know the first thing about installing SteamOS on a PC, so more research needed there.

Have fun with your Steam games everyone, but just remember: you don't own them!

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Correct me if I'm wrong... But Steam does have a backup feature. Can't you just backup a game you install on your normal gaming PC then bring that image to the old Windows XP computer?

Also, not like I want to be that guy but... If you want to get into retro then you know you're going to hit artificial walls like these. You need both the hardware and the media used way back when if you want this to work correctly...

[AmsterdamHeavy]

If you want to go that retro, you need to work for it.

[Crazy Tiger]

You lost nothing. Your account remains and when you have a machine that can run Steam, you have access to all your games.

Originally posted by Eagle_of_Fire:

Correct me if I'm wrong... But Steam does have a backup feature. Can't you just backup a game you install on your normal gaming PC then bring that image to the old Windows XP computer?

Even if you restore a backup, you likely still need to do the verification check, just as you do when you want to play a game in offline mode.

[Der Kaiser]

A: Why are you on a 23 year old OS

B: All the games you listed like STALKER, FEAR and so on work perfectly fine on Windows 11 and all versions before that.

So why the fixation on Windows XP?

This sounds more like a YOU problem. You could play all those games right now, the only requirement is to stop using a outdated and unsecured Windows thats over 20 years old.
This is entirely on you.

[Tom]

They turned off XP support because no one uses it seriously, people use it as rétro at best

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Originally posted by Crazy Tiger:

You lost nothing. Your account remains and when you have a machine that can run Steam, you have access to all your games.

Originally posted by Eagle_of_Fire:

Correct me if I'm wrong... But Steam does have a backup feature. Can't you just backup a game you install on your normal gaming PC then bring that image to the old Windows XP computer?

Even if you restore a backup, you likely still need to do the verification check, just as you do when you want to play a game in offline mode.

I play games in offline mode all lthe time and I have no check to pass whatsoever.

[IFIYGD]

Steam does not support Windows XP for running Steam Client- which has nothing to do with individual games still working on Windows XP.
Microsoft ended support for Windows XP in April of 2009, with "extended" support from Microsoft ending in 2014. Which means Microsoft no longer publishes updates for OS security, bugs, and features.
And Steam dropped support for Windows XP in 2019- why are you bringing this up 4 years later?
Most retro games developed to work on Windows XP will work on much newer Operating Systems. Some you may need to use compatibility mode, some you may need to use compatibility mods published by the developers themselves or by third-party modders/modding websites.
And again- why 4 years after Steam dropped support for Windows XP and 14 years after Microsoft dropped support for Windows XP?

[Crazy Tiger]

Originally posted by Eagle_of_Fire:

Originally posted by Crazy Tiger:

You lost nothing. Your account remains and when you have a machine that can run Steam, you have access to all your games.


Even if you restore a backup, you likely still need to do the verification check, just as you do when you want to play a game in offline mode.

I play games in offline mode all lthe time and I have no check to pass whatsoever.

It's not a periodic check. It's just a check the first time after you install the game, you need to run it once in online mode and then you can play it in offline mode without issue. Doesn't go for all games, but most do. In my experience DRM-free games certainly don't, while for other games it varies.

It's also mentioned in the FAQ:
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/0E18-319B-E34B-B2C8

Initial game start-up
Most games require an initial start-up while connected to the Steam Network before they will work in offline mode. If your game's status is "100% - Ready", but you receive the message "This game cannot be started in Offline Mode" when attempting to play offline, the Steam client and/or game files need to be updated.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Originally posted by Crazy Tiger:

Originally posted by Eagle_of_Fire:

I play games in offline mode all lthe time and I have no check to pass whatsoever.

It's not a periodic check. It's just a check the first time after you install the game, you need to run it once in online mode and then you can play it in offline mode without issue. Doesn't go for all games, but most do. In my experience DRM-free games certainly don't, while for other games it varies.

It's also mentioned in the FAQ:
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/0E18-319B-E34B-B2C8

Initial game start-up
Most games require an initial start-up while connected to the Steam Network before they will work in offline mode. If your game's status is "100% - Ready", but you receive the message "This game cannot be started in Offline Mode" when attempting to play offline, the Steam client and/or game files need to be updated.

That's interesting... But since you are backing up a game already "checked" would that work or not? I think it's a fair question and a strange situation to ponder about.

[Crazy Tiger]

Originally posted by Eagle_of_Fire:

Originally posted by Crazy Tiger:

It's not a periodic check. It's just a check the first time after you install the game, you need to run it once in online mode and then you can play it in offline mode without issue. Doesn't go for all games, but most do. In my experience DRM-free games certainly don't, while for other games it varies.

It's also mentioned in the FAQ:
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/0E18-319B-E34B-B2C8

That's interesting... But since you are backing up a game already "checked" would that work or not? I think it's a fair question and a strange situation to ponder about.

Copying a backed up game to a different PC still requires additional installing, after all registry keys and such don't get moved and lots of games don't do that step on launching the game. So I reckon you still need to connect to the Steam network.

[**DeiRowtag]

People living in the past and complain past things doesn't work.

Update your os to w10 or w11 and problem fixed.

[WhiteKnight]

You except companies to keep their softwares and what's not working on old OS?. Like someone said it sound like "YOU" problem. Since you obviously don't research on getting those games to work on newer OS.

[Brian9824]

All those games listed do not require windows xp to run, so um yeah....

[IFIYGD]

Originally posted by Nomad:

But I don't know the first thing about installing SteamOS on a PC, so more research needed there.

Literally takes a few seconds to Google "Steam OS".
https://store.steampowered.com/steamos#:~:text=Although%20we%20have%20made%20SteamOS,read%20more%20in%20our%20FAQ).
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1/648814395741989999/
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1/

Have fun researching. I did the easy stuff for you. You can thank me later.

[Muppet among Puppets]

Xp was good for its grey etc colors.

Windows does not force white anymore in the new ones. So for everyone there is not much reason to want to use xp for something. As long as things run.

I wonder why it took so long until programms could be black. Suddenly everyone has it.
White makes no sense.