Latest Steam update forces you to give up your legal rights

[fastbilly1]

I will take you up on that. I am going to pull out my really old HTPC - a 600mhz K6 AMD processor, 198 megs of ram, 8 meg Rage Pro, running XP. Ill slap in a spare wificard, and I will install Steam and see how long it takes for it to connect to my neighbors 2 meg DSL connection (with their permission of course).

My old gaming computer was not up to snuff, but even from a cold boot I was able to have a game loading in less than a minute. Steam rarely takes more than a ten seconds to load on any of the computers I have used it on.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Don't have the option of slow internet, but took my PC approximately 5 seconds to open it, and made no real difference in responsiveness when I set it to launch at start up.

[nightrnr]

So there's this great thing called the internet. On the internet you can find ways to circumvent the copy protection of EVERYTHING. Even online-only games like MMOs will get private servers set up. All it takes is time.

Why pay for anything in the 1st place then? And why take ANY agreement seriously.

Because you want stuff to come out. If no money flows in then the content dries up.

Hmmm,

I can't pretend to be so saint-like on the matter (not saying you are pretending). While I do appreciate supporting the gaming cause, it's the quality of the product at hand that I am care about.
I have to like what I'm buying now (the way it's used just as much as the content). Future content is secondary.

Using that same way of thinking though, I'd just assume spend all of my Digital game money on GOG, Kickstarter, and certain, separate indie releases. Those are the guys that "get it" (IMO) and that's what I want to see more of.

I've been straying a little off topic here, I think. I have more issues with having to log on to access games in the first place than a silly lawsuit-scenario that may or may not ever happen.
I want a working product that I know I can back up and install at will in the future (with or without internet access).
But then, maybe that's why a lot of us are hesitant to give up an optional course of action against a digital provider that makes us DEPEND on them to even play the games.

[noiseredux]

@ J.T. - Good for you to stand the ground, hopefully Valve will give you a waiver, at least for the games you already bought.

why would they give him a waiver? You already saw the response he received from them. It said "agree to our terms or GTFO." Remember?

[CRTGAMER]

@ J.T. - Good for you to stand the ground, hopefully Valve will give you a waiver, at least for the games you already bought.

why would they give him a waiver? You already saw the response he received from them. It said "agree to our terms or GTFO." Remember?

I know, but it looks like J.T. has good rapport based on Valve's response and the fact that he has over 600 games showing a valuable customer. I saw another letter posted at Digital Press that did not get such a polite reply. Though unlikely, maybe followup letters may gain results.

@ J.T. - Good luck, hope you get this resolved. You could even point out how you support them in advertising such as your Steam Thread. If it were me, I would request a mod to delete it if Valve does not give in. You may have to click that Agree button to get all your games back, just don't support them with any more purchases.

[J T]

@ J.T. - Good luck, hope you get this resolved. You could even point out how you support them in advertising such as your Steam Thread. If it were me, I would request a mod to delete it if Valve does not give in. You may have to click that Agree button to get all your games back, just don't support them with any more purchases.

I've sent one more e-mail restating my request for an opt-out option, but if that's not successful, I will likely just begrudgingly click 'agree' so as not to lose my library of already purchased games. My fight is only partially with Valve in this issue. My real upset is the ruling from AT&T vs. Concepcion that made it so that companies can include these binding arbitration clauses and have them hold up in court. I know that there are consumer advocacy groups out there that are making a fight against this sort of thing, so I'm going to look into those and maybe get more involved.

I'm not going to delete my Steam deals thread, but I don't plan to post in it anymore. They are not getting any more free word-of-mouth advertising out of my mouth if this isn't resolved. I'm too wary of Valve now to actively recommend their service to others unless people are really aware of the fact that they do not own their games; Valve does. And access to your games can be shut off at Valve's discresion. I've always undestood that my account might get blocked for cheating or if it looked like my account was stolen, so I never worried about that very much in the past, but now I see that it can also be shut off for a company-consumer disagreement over a legitimately controversial issue. This has severely damaged my trust with them.

Valve's service has been exceptional for me outside of this one horrible moment, so I don't completely hate them enough for a full boycott, but this issue has really highlighted for me that you do not have ownership over your Steam games. I've always kind of known that, but it feels much more real to me now. I plan to give more business to GOG.com now than ever before and will pay a premium for DRM-free games. In other words, if it's $2 on Steam and $10 on GOG, I'll pay extra for the GOG version. It's worth it. Valve still has the biggest library and lowest prices though, so I am not willing to say that I will never do business with them again, but I now go in knowing it is a temporary rental and I am certainly going to pay more attention to other venues like GamersGate now. However, I also got burned with Direct2Drive when I lost a bunch of games with their change of ownership over to GameFly, and I haven't used Impulse since everything came under GameStop's ownership. So, I am approaching all digital sales with extra caution from now on. I'm losing games from these services faster than I can play them all, so I have to slow down on the spending unless I actually have a DRM-free copy.

[isiolia]

In other words, if it's $2 on Steam and $10 on GOG, I'll pay extra for the GOG version. It's worth it. Valve still has the biggest library and lowest prices though, so I am not willing to say that I will never do business with them again, but I now go in knowing it is a temporary rental and I am certainly going to pay more attention to other venues like GamersGate now.

Long as you make a backup of the GoG stuff. Their service agreement allows them to terminate your account at any time for any reason, and so on. Just like most anyone else's.

I tend to approach Steam like that anyway. The only full-priced games I've ever gotten on it are Steamworks titles that have no other PC version, and even then I bought the discs.

[J T]

Long as you make a backup of the GoG stuff. Their service agreement allows them to terminate your account at any time for any reason, and so on. Just like most anyone else's.

True. This is why I always immediately download my items from GOG after each purchase and put them on an external drive. It's just that GOG is the only service where you can actually do that with every purchase.

You can rarely do that on Steam (though some games can be backed up and played separately from the client, like Doom). You can occassionally do that with games from GamersGate that are listed as DRM-Free. You can often do that with games from Desura because the Desura client is not a form of DRM (like Steam's client is), but they do allow games that have DRM imbedded from the publisher (it just doesn't happen as often for small indie games). Indievania is similar to Desura and only has a small handful of games with any DRM.

[Hobie-wan]

Honestly, if this bothers you this much, you probably ought to never buy any video games again. Even with GOG and any other services, you still restricted by the operating system itself which is a whole other can of worms. About the only way you're going to avoid absolutely all of the nonsense is to stick to board games. I suppose old cartridge based consoles and offline disc based systems are sort of safe.

[CRTGAMER]

Honestly, if this bothers you this much, you probably ought to never buy any video games again. Even with GOG and any other services, you still restricted by the operating system itself which is a whole other can of worms. About the only way you're going to avoid absolutely all of the nonsense is to stick to board games. I suppose old cartridge based consoles and offline disc based systems are sort of safe.

Maybe eventually all games will have controls of some kind. At least the older and current non DRM games have a chance by keeping the computer with the compatible OS or using a newer PC and setting up Virtual PC and DOS Box. For the Mac, the same thing. I keep an iMac CRT G3 for nostalgia and also to play both OSX and OS9 games.