- cross-posted to:
- gaming@lemmy.ml
- games@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- gaming@lemmy.ml
- games@lemmy.world
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They are gonna remove games in future like they did with the movies
They already have lol.
If buying is not owning, piracy is not stealing
This is such a great quote.
But if you read the fine print, you are not buying these games, you are entering into a subscription to them. Paying a one-time fee to subscribe to the games indefinitely. That’s why it feels like buying.
That’s how they getcha.
So it’s almost like buying is not owning?
Almost, but not exactly.
And look, I’m not saying its defensible, I’m just saying that they technically trick us into subscribing, and thus we can’t technically say we’re buying these games. So, GOG ❤️
The fact that it’s legal to have a purchase flow that looks like you’re buying things without the seller being legally obliged to have a disclaimer in big fat letters that says something like “THIS IS NOT A PURCHASE, IT’S A LICENSING AGREEMENT. LICENSING AGREEMENTS CAN BE REVOKED AT ANY TIME AND YOU WILL LOSE ACCESS TO THIS MEDIA YOU ARE LICENSING” is the actual problem.
IMHO, Corruption amongst Lawmakers and Regulators is the actual problem.
People should be avoiding like the plague any stores whose media they can’t actually download and keep in an open DRM-free format in their own devices, but they don’t because they’re not aware of it as the whole thing is one big bloody mess of expert legal domain and the fraud of misportraying a sale to be one things whilst it is a different thing being totally legal when it comes to digital media.
Can’t blame people for not understanding this and thus not navigating it in an informed way, but I sure can blame Politicians and Regulators for not doing their jobs which is to make sure that sales are fair and the consumer can make an informed choice when evaluating a potential a purchase.
I mean… They ask you to agree to the Steam subscriber agreement for each purchase. Pretty sure Epic has a similar disclaimer on each purchase as well.
People just don’t read. 🤷♂️ But yeah, it should be like a TikTok format video for all the inattentive people I guess. More people deserve to be aware of it.
Long document full of legal language than can only be truly comprehended by those with Legal Training isn’t at all the same as BIG FAT TEXT INDICATING IN A SIMPLE WAY THAT THIS IS NOT A PURCHASE.
Absolutely, in the absence of actual Pro-Consumer Regulatory Obligations, the whole “Agreement” is a valid way for sellers of digital media such as Steam to legally cover their asses and not actually saying to prospective buyers the true nature of what they’re buying.
It is, however, not a means to help a purchaser make an informed purchase, rather it’s a way for Steam and other such stores to, in the current legal and regulatory environment, legally get away with doing the very opposite and obfuscate the true nature of what the purchaser is purchasing.
Think about it this way: if the intention of Steam was to be honest and make sure purchasers were making informed purchases, then why not inform purchasers upfront in the product page in a simple way that what they would be buying was a REVOCABLE LICENSE rather than ownership of a PRODUCT, and even explain the difference, rather than hide it in a long document that requires Law training to fully understand?
why not inform purchasers upfront in the product page in a simple way that what they would be buying was a REVOCABLE LICENSE
But yeah, I definitely agree with you in general. You have perfectly valid points.
Honestly, if I have to go digital, my money is going to Valve
Valve and GOG.
GOG - the ones who recently sent out a newsletter ad with Nazi symbols on it? That GOG?
Can you think logically instead of making misinformed emotional statements?
Yes they were using AI assisted headers for their emails because they were short staffed for a bank holiday in their country.
Which is Poland btw. Famously extremely anti Nazi.
They apologized and explained what happened so I am not going to hold it against them. Now had they not apologized or had an explanation, that would be different.
If anything its a good case study on why AI is only good for very limited use cases and almost never to replace an actual human being
You know they’re polish right? The ones that were attacked by the nazis?
Context is everything.
Better to Gog, atleast you own what you buy
Fun fact: Some Steam games are also DRM-free
Stop spreading this lie.
https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632089-GOG-User-Agreement?product=gog
2.1 We give you and other GOG users the personal right (known legally as a ‘license’) to use GOG services and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content. This license is for your personal use. We can stop or suspend this license in some situations, which are explained later on.
This refers to downloading, after you donwload the DRM Free Game from Gog there is no license or online check forever, the game is just yours.
You can also do that on Steam, that doesn’t make it any less piracy.
Not that there is anything wrong with that, but let’s stop pretending that GOG is somehow better than Steam.
Nobody is saying you cannot do on Steam, the big difference is that you can do that on 100% of Gog games, on Steam only on a very small percentage.
And there are other noticeable difference, on Steam you have to go through the file and backup them, on Gog you get the drm free installer for the last version of the game and any previous version that you want.
Is clear to me that on this regard Gog is much better than Steam, would be crazy to say otherwise.
on Steam only on a very small percentage.
citation needed
Actually, FYI, you can do that for a large percentage of Steam games, maybe even most, if you use the Goldberg Emulator that replaces the steamapi DLL.
Steam DRM is one of the easiest to bypass around, and I like to think that’s very much a purposeful choice.
However, the entire thing is designed for it not to be easy to do for somebody with the technical know-how of the average gamer, plus it’s not reliably possible and there’s no way to know upfront if it will work or not when making a purchasing decision on a game in Steam.
Meanwhile “No DRM and with downloadable Offline Installers” is literally the Unique Value Proposition of GOG as a games store - access to download offline installers is there in the games page after purchase and that installer is guaranteed to work forever and ever if you still have the hardware and OS version supported by the game.
I will be buying no more PlayStations then.
Same.
I will no longer be offering money to receive playstation games. 🤷♂️
If they could be trusted to treat digital copies as actual ownership, this wouldn’t be such a big deal.
I’ve been a PlayStation guy since 1998. Looks like the PS5 is my last PlayStation console.
Steam being all digital is fine because I’m buying games for 75-90% off… If I got told I was losing access to a game I played $2.50 for 6 years ago and played for 40 hours I would… actually I’d still be annoyed but less annoyed than losing hundreds of dollars.
Steam lets you play games that you bought, even if they’ve been delisted in the meantime.
Steam is the good guy (for now). GOG is even better though, since they let you save offline installers with no DRM.
Yep, Love GOG
So don’t buy a fucking Playstation.
This isn’t that hard to sort out.
Am not surprised given how large games today can be. You can have a disk to launch the game when you first get it, but chances are the Playstation will still have to “update” it with the full resources…
I don’t have a playstation, but FFS, I can’t even get the full Halo: Master Chief Collection onto my gaming PC - I just don’t have the drive space. Some game packages are huge today.
It’s this or go back to multi disc installs. Modern discs have 100GB capacity so Halo MCC would be on two. The largest games, like the modern Call of Duty amalgamation-launcher-thing and ARK, would push over 3 discs. I for one wouldn’t mind – it at least keeps the fantasy of owning game media alive, just a little bit – and I wish updates and patches weren’t so damn mandatory.
So that’s a console game setup, yes?
I use an older PC so everything is backed up on a storage drive but currently right now I’m stuck with a 500 GB SSD to run the games I’m actively playing. It’s nowhere near enough space for what I want to do. Ugh. Am waiting to see when I can get my mitts on a 4TB WD Gold drive (I have two on my MacPro systems) and slap that into the PC for the storage and then get a similar sized SSD (or an NVME drive in an adapter) to use.
I think when I get that sorted I’m also going to switch up to running Bazzite for the games and bail on the Win 10 Pro…
Personally I’ve got a mix - I have most Call of Duty games on Xbox, buying on the same platform as the ones I had in childhood, but have largely dropped the console for my PC running EndeavourOS. My biggest game is a bit of a cheat - Clone Hero - 550GB aha!
Good luck with the upgrade! I have a 4TB HDD, a WD Blue from 2017, and am hoping to upgrade to an NVME SSD before the drive dies of old age. looks at the component market Before I do.
I recommend Seagate Ironwolf Pro or any CMR/HAMR storage for the best balance of capacity, price and lifespan.
Ack! No one has the 4TB Ironwolf Pro drives!
This is bullshit.
F’ckin’ datacenter pricks.
Yeah I feel you. It’s hurting all of us, seeing parts at over double the price they’re worth or simply out of stock. I heard that after taking all the DDR5 RAM they went after HDDs.
These are my notes on components I was looking at, dated
Motherboard
ASRock Phantom Gaming X870E Nova WiFi (1.3x base)
- Base £250
- £320 in 02/2026
CPU
AMD Ryzen Zen 6 10700X3D?
AMD Ryzen 7 9700X (1.1x base)
- Base £250
- £280 in 03/2026
RAM
Corsair Vengeance / LPX - DDR5, 6800MT/s, CL32, 2x32GB (4.6x base)
- Base £230 / £3.60/GB
- £290 in 10/2025
- £1,050 in 03/2026
- £480 used
Depressing compromise RAM
Corsair Vengeance DDR5, 5600MT/s, CL40, 2x16GB
- £270 used
Note: RAM in current build was £170 for 2x16GB in Feb 2017, equivalent to £230 in Jan 2026
Games SSD
WD Black SN850X 8TB (2.4x base)
- Base £450
- £700 in 01/2026
- £1,060 in 03/2026
OR Samsung 9100 Pro 8TB
OS & Program SSD
Samsung 990 Pro 4TB (1.7x base)
- Base £260
- £315 in 01/2026
- £440 in 03/2026
Fans
Noctua 140mm x 8
- Base £264
- £264 in 02/2026
Case
NZXT H6 Flow (1.1x base)
- Base £80
- £90 in 02/2026
PSU
Corsair HX1200i Platinum (2025) (1.2x base)
- Base £210
- £245 in 03/2026
- Purchased for £200 new
GPU (1.3x base)
Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XT 20GB (1.3x base)
- Base £700
- £900 in 03/2026
- Purchased for £520 used
Hypothetical:
High Capacity HDD
Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB, 7200RPM, CMR (1.3x base)
- Base £480
- £510 in 02/2026
- ST20000NT001
Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB
Xbox Expansion SSD
- Seagate 2TB
- £200 in 02/2026 (for standard 2TB Seagate NVME)
- Purchased for £267 new
Notes
base = ~Sep/Oct 2025, just before hell
RAM eBay Sellers ~ 2x baseThis is very close to my exact PC build. I bought in December of 2024 because I was sure Trump with fuck everything up with his tariffs. While that ended up being true, AI bullshit made it far worse.