Steam Shuts Down and Refuses to Honor Any Purchases- All Libraries Deleted Forever

[Kalderus]

The year is 2050. Steam has failed to compete with gaming on Neural Link/The Metaverse. Asa result of 15 years of declining sales, Valve has become insolvent and is shutting down Steam permanently. They announce that as much as they would like to make all game purchases available for download, they simply cannot continue to run their servers any longer. As of January 1st, 2052, all Steam games will disappear forever and all libraries will disappear.

What do we as gamers do in this hypothetical future scenario if it were to occur?

[Wolfpig]

By that time the only way to play is trough a streaming subscription either way, so it would not matter if steam still exists or not in 15 years.

[rawWwRrr]

On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everything drops to zero.

[( ( < < <🤖> > > ) )]

Taco Bell will buy out steam and everything
will be working fine while you chow down
on burritos and wet cheese

Prince - The Future Remix

[Chika Ogiue]

Originally posted by Kalderus:

What do we as gamers do in this hypothetical future scenario if it were to occur?

Nothing. The SSA we all agree to every time we purchased a license on Steam specifically states that Valve do not guarantee perpetual access.

Besides, in 2050, there will a company out there ready to "rescue" Valve and absorb their player base (and all the data that comes with it), Just as Valve essentially absorbed Triton's player base when Triton went out of business.

[ReBoot]

In such a scenario, I'd buy 3 huge-ass HDDs, stripe them into RAID5 & download the games I care most about onto that array I'll be using as cold storage.

[Tito Shivan]

I guess you guys weren't around when Desura closed shop.

Originally posted by ReBoot:

In such a scenario, I'd buy 3 huge-ass HDDs, stripe them into RAID5 & download the games I care most about onto that array I'll be using as cold storage.

Minus the buying the huge ass HDDs and setting up a raid that's what I did when Desura closed. Backed up my games in an HDD to store it for the future.

[Haruspex]

I'll be pushing 70. If I'm even still alive, I'll just be happy if my hands still work well enough to manipulate the controls.

[Kenpoleon Bonaparte]

Originally posted by ragefifty50:

Taco Bell will buy out steam and everything
will be working fine while you chow down
on burritos and wet cheese

Sounds plausible, especially since Taco Bell won the fast food franchise wars.

[RiO]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

In such a scenario, I'd buy 3 huge-ass HDDs, stripe them into RAID5 & download the games I care most about onto that array I'll be using as cold storage.

More or less the same for me.
Probably I'd buy a dedicated small form factor NAS unit like from Synology and just plonk SSDs into it. As long as the unit keeps powered and the drives keep trimming, they're basically good forever. Unlike HDDs that can suffer mechanical failure, as long as you don't continuously write to SSDs they're pretty much good forever. Unless they suffer some kind of catastrophical outside damage, or the firmware ends up having bugs that screw over the drive.

[TWPanda77]

I will probably not care as I will be >50 years and unlikely to be gaming.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Originally posted by Haruspex:

I'll be pushing 70. If I'm even still alive, I'll just be happy if my hands still work well enough to manipulate the controls.

Hope we have VR with a neural link or something by then.

[Haruspex]

Originally posted by Spawn of Totoro:

Originally posted by Haruspex:

I'll be pushing 70. If I'm even still alive, I'll just be happy if my hands still work well enough to manipulate the controls.

Hope we have VR with a neural link or something by then.

Yeah. Live out my retirement in the Matrix.

[Pierce Dalton]

Originally posted by Kalderus:

The year is 2050. Steam has failed to compete with gaming on Neural Link/The Metaverse. Asa result of 15 years of declining sales, Valve has become insolvent and is shutting down Steam permanently. They announce that as much as they would like to make all game purchases available for download, they simply cannot continue to run their servers any longer. As of January 1st, 2052, all Steam games will disappear forever and all libraries will disappear.

What do we as gamers do in this hypothetical future scenario if it were to occur?

Are you saying that you don't have backup copies of the games you purchase?

[IFIYGD]

I'll be over 80 y/o.
I doubt that the status of my game licences on Steam are going to be of much concern to me then.
What flavor pudding the nursing home is serving for lunch is likely to be the thing that is on my mind.

[Start_Running]

2050. I'd be happy to say I'd lived to see such a day and that my insect overlords grant me enough leisure time to have such problems.