forknknife
Banned
nexen said:
Well, in my opinion that really sucks. Is it the same way with Origin and other platforms?
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What would happen to our games if Steam goes out of business?
- Thread starter forknknife
- Start date
Well, in my opinion that really sucks. Is it the same way with Origin and other platforms?
It's a completely different situation. Steam's death would have to be a drawn out thing over time, and it's running costs are tied to it's user base, the closer it gets to death, the lower it costs to keep it running.ZealousD said:
I'm not saying it'll literally be around forever, but the day it dies, you will not care.
Anyone remember when GoG pulled their games for a publicity stunt? That was funny.Unconditional said:
In fact this has been going on longer than download services. Read some EULAs for older games. Same shit. You have a license to run the software, nothing more.bytesized said:
What magic ball do you possess here? Valve is privately owned. If the owners decide it is time to close they can do it without notice and without delay. I certainly do not know their operating costs and I certainly do not know what deals they've worked behind the scenes that could be eating them alive (or filling pools with money). My bet is that they are extremely healthy and going nowhere for the very short term but there is no way to know these things for certain.StuBurns said:
Also I still want to be able to play these games in 20 years. I would bet solid money that I will not be able to through Steam in that timeframe unless the laws change dramatically.
forknknife
Banned
Unconditional said:
That would seriously suck, specially for their better clients with hundreds and hundreds of games, it would take ages to do and a fuckton of storage space.
scorpscarx
Member
bytesized said:
I'm out of here, this thread is just bad and it has been done over and over and over again.
Simply back-up your games right after you download them.
I'm one of those people that have a lot of games like you said, and guess what it doesn't take a 'fuckton' of storage space or time.
Most likely valve would release a tool to allow you to run all of your games without needing to login to Steam or enable offline mode. Any Valve or Steamworks games would be most likely to work with no problems.
You would of course need to download your games first, probably they would announce the shut down and you would have a set amount of time to download your games.
As far as non-valve games go, I'm not sure. Many have their own DRM solution, some would get patches. I bet some games would just no longer work and you would be out of luck.
You would of course need to download your games first, probably they would announce the shut down and you would have a set amount of time to download your games.
As far as non-valve games go, I'm not sure. Many have their own DRM solution, some would get patches. I bet some games would just no longer work and you would be out of luck.
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
Where does it say that in the TOS?StuBurns said:
nexen said:
That's exactly why we have nothing to worry about. Publicly owned companies are controlled by shareholders who don't care about the business.
Valve is controlled by Gabe, and Gabe would never shut down his baby. He loves gaming and he's going to nurture his baby and only hand it over to a chosen successor that has the same passion for Steam and PC gaming as himself.
Valve is super well run. They have a really tiny team and make tons of money and have tons of cash in reserve. The costs of operating Steam are tied to the amount of people using it, so if the userbase went down, it would be cheaper to run, and not have to go out of business.
I think Sony has more a chance of going under than Valve, and I think Sony is going to be fine.
Open Source
Banned
If Valve went bankrupt, their assets would be sold off, either as a prelude to bankruptcy, by creditors, or by a bankruptcy court. Some other company would acquire the Steam stuff and continue to operate the service.
Valve is way too good with money to go brankrupt. They're better run than just about any developer/publisher in terms of revenue/employee. They have managed to stay incredible small because it's safer than to staff up like some of those stupid Facebook game companies with 1500 employees.
TheRagnCajun
Member
My greater concern is if Valve ever went public.
We don't have good consumer rights with Steam, and up till now it hasn't mattered because Valve has earned so much good will with consumers. Its a 1-way trust relationship.
Valve going public could change all of that as shareholders care more about profitability than good will.
If valve were ever in financial trouble, it would probably be aquired by somebody and accounts would be honoured by the new stakeholder. Steam isn't ever going to dissapear along with our accounts.
We don't have good consumer rights with Steam, and up till now it hasn't mattered because Valve has earned so much good will with consumers. Its a 1-way trust relationship.
Valve going public could change all of that as shareholders care more about profitability than good will.
If valve were ever in financial trouble, it would probably be aquired by somebody and accounts would be honoured by the new stakeholder. Steam isn't ever going to dissapear along with our accounts.
Blizzard said:
Was asking SpaceDrake specifically- some games can run outside of Steam- Mount and Blade series, Dredmor, a few others.
If Valve is in risk of going under- we would get plenty of heads up- like a string of bombs, mass layoffs, etc. We'd also see some smaller services go under before Steam. While I won't say valve going under will never happen- it won't happen in the next 10 years no matter what, so I'd say we have nothing to worry about.
Impulse, with a much smaller market share, was Stardock's most profitable unit. Steam probably does nine-digit profit on its own.
Joseph Merrick
Member
you think an asteroid destroying valve's offices is unlikely eh? bwahahahaStuBurns said:
OldJadedGamer
Banned
Psi said:
Is it really piracy to download a game you already paid for?
StuBurns said:
Again, I'm not saying that it's even possible for Valve to go down the same way Enron did.
I'm just saying shit happens. There's always the chance that Valve will go out of business. Yes, they're really successful right now. Yes, they don't have any meaningful competition at this time. Yes, they're privately-owned at present and so they don't have to constantly risk their long term goals with constant short term gains in order to please shareholders.
But that doesn't mean that their business is bulletproof. Nobody's is. Things can change. And you'd be surprised how quickly things can change. Steam's rise happened in less than 10 years and it could crash and burn just as quickly if the circumstances were right. And if Steam crashed in 10 years, I would absolutely be concerned about the games I bought in these years. I still have my decade plus old Diablo II and Starcraft disks hanging around and I intend to keep them for even longer.
OldJadedGamer said:
Yes. In much the same way that it's still illegal to download the ROM of a console game you already own. Whether you find it morally objectionable is another story.
Nothing is forever.
Honestly, I don't know. I have well over 200 games I don't play at the moment anyway. I could just continue pretending like I had access to them while continuing to not play them and nothing changes. Keep saying "I'll get around to playing Titan Quest someday."
If I did want to play one... I've purchased it already, I'd feel no sorrow if I had to use a crack to play it. That won't happen, though, I'm a lazy bastard.
Honestly, I don't know. I have well over 200 games I don't play at the moment anyway. I could just continue pretending like I had access to them while continuing to not play them and nothing changes. Keep saying "I'll get around to playing Titan Quest someday."
If I did want to play one... I've purchased it already, I'd feel no sorrow if I had to use a crack to play it. That won't happen, though, I'm a lazy bastard.
TheRagnCajun said:
Valve will not go public under Gabe's control. I assume that he'll try to write into his will that whomever inherits Valve won't be able to take it public. He has received many buyout offers but always refused because he wants to keep Valve privately owned and operated. Gabe knows that staying private has helped Valve become the success it is today, because they can do stuff to win consumer good will that shareholders would never let them do.
Will you care if you have your games already registered in various other services? Sure you might miss Steam itself, but it's unlikely you will be losing games I think.ZealousD said:
And I don't question Steam will see significant decline over the next decade. EA might seem to be alone in a serious publisher effort to compete, but they will all follow suit. When Steam has nothing but indie titles and Valve games, Valve are going to be less well off, but it's going to be a slow decline. They are not bulletproof of course, but for something to happen to your games, they'd have to be helmet proof with a sniper hunting them. It'd have to be really fast.
OldJadedGamer
Banned
MultiCore said:
But isn't that void once the company goes under?
echoshifting
Banned
It surprises me that people still genuinely worry about this. I'll be the first to admit that I could turn out to be the naïve one here, but it never even crosses my mind.
You can't control a company from the grave like that. There's plenty of businesses that have been founded by generous, idealistic men with pure intentions, that still ended up becoming big faceless conglomerates and/or run themselves into the ground. Could take a decade, could take several, but all it takes is a few bad breaks for things to start going sour, and every business makes some mistakes somewhere along the line.Zzoram said:
Dr. Zoidberg
Member
Zzoram said:
But Gabe could die from a heart attack tonight. Let's get real here. I hope Gabe (and I) live forever but we can't rely on his being there always. I hope the whole company is as smart and resistant to dump-trucks of money as Gabe apparently is.
Zzoram said:
Again, this is good in some ways, but really dangerous in others. A few people retire and the "heart" of the company that makes it so good is gone.
I love Steam, and I'm not suggesting people do anything about this, but I don't like to see people ignore or discount the danger that does exist and bury their heads in the sand.
jim-jam bongs
Member
In this context it's more circumvention than piracy, he just chose his words poorly.Dunlop said:
StuBurns said:
I actually disagree with this assessment. If something like this actually worked then Apple would've experienced it already. There isn't much difference between iTunes and Steam except that Apple makes profit on hardware like the iPad, iPhone, and iPod while Valve makes profit on games like Left 4 Dead. Now this isn't to say that Steam can't decline, but it would be because of a service that makes Steam obsolete. This is the thing both MySpace, AOL, Blockbuster, and Borders all experienced. Using Blockbuster as an example, it died not because of a competing retail service like it, but because of retail services that made them obsolete. Netflix and Redbox have completely different models from Blockbuster.
People will want all their media on one service, and no matter how much the gaming industry tries, they aren't going to convince most people to have a multitude of services. Steam's eventual death will not be due to service like Origin, but instead to services like Facebook games and the iTunes Store.
forknknife
Banned
scorpscarx said:
Ah! Okbyethanks!
How do you define a superior service? It's who has the best content right? We've had leaks that suggest Activision Blizzard will be opening up Battlenet to something closer to Steam, and selling non-ActiBlizz games. We see EA making a significant push with Origin.Game Guru said:
Once you have the first and second biggest publishers pulling Steam support, the second tier, Take Two, Ubisoft etc, are bound to follow suit, once the precedent has been set that consumers should be going to the specific publisher for that content.
This could of course not happen. If BF3 bombs EA would probably go back to supporting Steam, maybe that'd be enough to discourage Acti even trying, if not and they did, but their big titles were bombing on PC they'd probably stop trying to. But I don't think that's going to happen, I doubt anyone is going to really care that much beyond complaining online.
The way the industry is going, especially on PC, constant direct access to your player base is going to be a top priority for publishers.
There is 0 chance that Valve will go out of business in the next 5-10 years. If hypothetically they went out of business 15 years from now, I would not care about 90% of my steam collection, and would probably just re-buy the few games I wanted to replay on whatever the future equivalent of GOG is.
I apologize to StuBurns, but I was in the process of editing my post to clarify my position when he posted his response. Basically, a company can't beat Steam by being like Steam any more than an MMORPG can beat WoW by being like WoW. A company has to be different to subvert the established model and the closest things I see doing that to Steam at this time are Facebook games and the iTunes Store. The major publishers all pulling out of Steam will only serve to quicken that model's demise in general, not help either Steam or the major publishers to make money.
StuBurns said:
Really? I mean, I certainly wouldn't bet on Valve going out of business any time soon, but you're not being very realistic. Sometimes one or two risky ventures that don't pan out can bring a healthy company down. Or a lawsuit/lawsuits. Or malfeasance within the company. And so on. Saying they'll never never ever go out of business is absurd.
