Theft by Steam

[wanman]

Taking away the ability to play the games you paid for, on the platform that they were released on, is basically theft of your property. Why would I ever purchase another game from Steam again? Disgusting.

[Iron Knights]

Linux, I would love it, if more Linux developers supported gaming. They do not.
Meantime you have GoG Galaxy, you can download the installer files off the website or run their own Launcher. DRM Free Games, not tied to launcher, you can run your games without it, uninstall if you wish or never install it in the first place. Cheaper prices than on steam.
Keep a game on Wishlist on GoG, in about 2 weeks, you'll get a nice discount. The only downside is the availability of newly released games (or ones not distributing through them on purpose).

[Iron Knights]

Originally posted by 🦜Cloud Boy🦜:

Theft means stealing your property, in this case, Steam is not stealing anything from you, the games are (and will be) always in your library.
All you need to do is just install a more recent OS instead of some ancient one, and happily play your games.

When you lock someone's property in a vault you only have access to, it is STEALING, regardless if it has my name on it or not.
Win 10 has NOTHING new and NOTHING good on Win 7. It's not the same as the switch from 32bit to 64bit. At least learn about the technology you speak.

[_I_]

most games on steam do not even need steam to run
on the win7 pc you can browse to the games exe and run the game

[Iron Knights]

As for unlocking your games from Steam - Atom's Steamless, Goldberg's Steam Emulator.
No Guarantees, make copies of the games you will test, make sure they work, then uninstall the games from steam.

[r.linder]

Originally posted by Iron Knights:

Linux, I would love it, if more Linux developers supported gaming. They do not.
Meantime you have GoG Galaxy, you can download the installer files off the website or run their own Launcher. DRM Free Games, not tied to launcher, you can run your games without it, uninstall if you wish or never install it in the first place. Cheaper prices than on steam.
Keep a game on Wishlist on GoG, in about 2 weeks, you'll get a nice discount. The only downside is the availability of newly released games (or ones not distributing through them on purpose).

They kind of do. Plenty of distros like Pop!_OS and Drauger OS have heavy emphasis on gaming and come pre-loaded with things like Steam. Pop!_OS even has a version for NVIDIA users that automatically installs an ideal driver for NVIDIA GPUs and is set up for NVIDIA by default. The regular LTS version installs Radeon drivers.

Steam also has their own compatibility layer called Proton which is the lifeblood of their SteamOS for their Steam Deck, without it, it'd be running Windows. A large portion of games on Steam can run just fine with Proton, most of the ones that don't have an anti-cheat that blocks Proton and Wine/Lutris.

The Linux gaming situation is actually quite good, you just didn't try to look into it hard enough.

[skipper]

You just own the right to play it. The games are not yours when its digital. If they were yours you could lend or sell them but you cant and yes they can take them away as said you dont own them.

[lailaamell]

Hardware companies stole my games by not making them compadible with older hardware at 60fps should also be part of argument for you cant run the property if you dont pay for stronger hardware see how dumb this would look but all arguments used works same

[Lunar Fang]

You only own a license, think of it as, you pay them to rent the game from them, but you never truly own it.

[_I_]

steam store still lists winxp/vista/7 as min req on most games

[FurryDragonborn]

If you want to play any newer games you need a minimum of win 10. Regardless of whether you think it's stealing or not valve doesn't care. Blaming steam isn't going to help as it's just a platform, valve is the company you should go after. And with their lawyers, good luck trying to take them down for theft.

https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/#:~:text=The%20Content%20and%20Services%20are,a%20connection%20to%20the%20Internet.

Under Licenses:

"The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services. To make use of the Content and Services, you must have a Steam Account and you may be required to be running the Steam client and maintaining a connection to the Internet."

Good luck winning your argument.

[AmaiAmai]

Originally posted by wanman:

I will never buy digital copies of games again.

I only want physical copies of older games. I can digitize them myself with a CD burner or something if I want to. Speaking of older game...way better than the newer garbage out there anyway!

[AmaiAmai]

Originally posted by FurryDragonborn:

If you want to play any newer games you need a minimum of win 10. Regardless of whether you think it's stealing or not valve doesn't care. Blaming steam isn't going to help as it's just a platform, valve is the company you should go after. And with their lawyers, good luck trying to take them down for theft.

https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/#:~:text=The%20Content%20and%20Services%20are,a%20connection%20to%20the%20Internet.

Under Licenses:

"The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services. To make use of the Content and Services, you must have a Steam Account and you may be required to be running the Steam client and maintaining a connection to the Internet."

Good luck winning your argument.

Legal agreements mean nothing until a court of law enforces them.

[lailaamell]

Originally posted by AmaiAmai:

Originally posted by FurryDragonborn:

If you want to play any newer games you need a minimum of win 10. Regardless of whether you think it's stealing or not valve doesn't care. Blaming steam isn't going to help as it's just a platform, valve is the company you should go after. And with their lawyers, good luck trying to take them down for theft.

https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/#:~:text=The%20Content%20and%20Services%20are,a%20connection%20to%20the%20Internet.

Under Licenses:

"The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services. To make use of the Content and Services, you must have a Steam Account and you may be required to be running the Steam client and maintaining a connection to the Internet."

Good luck winning your argument.

Legal agreements mean nothing until a court of law enforces them.

when go ahead and sue if you are so confident you win if you win windows 7 will be required to be supported by law on every service and probly older operation systems aswell

[Betrayal]

Originally posted by wanman:

Taking away the ability to play the games you paid for, on the platform that they were released on, is basically theft of your property. Why would I ever purchase another game from Steam again? Disgusting.

So, how far do we need to go back? Win Xp? Win 2000? What about Win 95?
Time in IT moves on, has always been, will always be. Abandon your 15 years old OS and you're fine.

[Ice Robertson]

The operating system didn't matter when we had physical copies of our games because nothing needed updating or the need to be online, These days if you're worried about something like steam requiring an up-to-date OS you're better off going with GOG and downloading the offline back up copies and saving them to an external HDD.

When steam refuses to use windows 10 a lot of us are going to be forced to upgrade again, Then the same with windows 11, most people don't seem to mind.