Doing the rounds across the net right now is a small update to the Steam checkout process when you're making a purchase, to make it clear you don't own what you buy.
Valve added a note (I don't entirely know when), to mention how "A purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam" with a link to the Steam Subscriber Agreement. As you can see in my shot below taken today when testing a purchase:
Of course, there's already a lot of misinformation going around about this from people on social media. To remind everyone: this has always been the case. The Steam Subscriber Agreement says (if you bothered to read it, you all read agreements right?) "The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services".
So while this has always been the case, it is still somewhat buried because most people just quickly scroll through these things to get access to what they want. At least now, Valve has put it upfront every time you make a license purchase on Steam.
Why is all this happening now? You can likely thank a new California law on this (AB 2426) that is summarised as:
Existing law makes it unlawful for any person doing business in California and advertising to consumers in California to make any false or misleading advertising claim. Existing law makes a person who violates specified false advertising provisions liable for a civil penalty, as specified, and provides that a person who violates those false advertising provisions is guilty of a misdemeanor.
This bill would, subject to specified exceptions, additionally prohibit a seller of a digital good from advertising or offering for sale a digital good, as defined, to a purchaser with the terms buy, purchase, or any other term which a reasonable person would understand to confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good, or alongside an option for a time-limited rental, unless the seller receives at the time of each transaction an affirmative acknowledgment from the purchaser, or the seller provides to the consumer before executing each transaction a clear and conspicuous statement, as specified. By expanding the scope of a crime, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program.
GOG took the opportunity to jump into this as well on Twitter / X with a post suggesting they will be adding a note onto their checkout process too, to say that their offline installers they offer cannot be taken away from you:
The new law doesn't seem to actually affect GOG, since in the main bill text it does specifically note it does not apply if they have access to a permanent offline download. However, it should be noted GOG also sell you a license as per their own terms. So while the new bill may not apply to them, this little jibe only really properly works if people are backing up all of their GOG purchases. Since you only get a license, rights holders could still technically get GOG to entirely remove them.
I should also note that this situation is the same for most physical media too, it's not a digital distribution only issue for consumers. Much like GOG's offline installers, you have access to your physical media whenever you want, but you still only get a license for the media you have on disc - you do not own it.
Over to you in the comments, what are your thoughts?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
GOG - from what I recall - doesn't let you download content that has been removed from their storefront like how steam does, and they rely on the idea that their DRM-free policy is what makes the content always accessible to users even when they are no longer available on GOG.
Quoting: Mountain ManI honestly feel like a lot of this debate is moot, because there are always less than legitimate ways to reacquire any games you may have lost access to.is it tho? Can you download The Crew, because to be fair the whole point of this bill was to prevent something like the Crew fiasco from happening all over.
Which brings up an interesting legal and moral question: If I have paid for a license to download, install, and play a game on my computer, then does it really matter where I download it from?
Quoting: Mountain ManI honestly feel like a lot of this debate is moot, because there are always less than legitimate ways to reacquire any games you may have lost access to.In France there's a right for a private copy, which means if you paid for a copy of software that you can't find or isn't in working condition, you have the right to use whichever duplicate you want of said software. That includes your use case.
Which brings up an interesting legal and moral question: If I have paid for a license to download, install, and play a game on my computer, then does it really matter where I download it from?
That said, PC software isn't the same as console software: PC games become more difficult to run on modern hardware, and for some of them, impossible to run at all.
On the other hand, console physical copies do run indefinitely but their prices have just been skyrocketing, and the hardware will inevitably die one day.
Something that's not been talked about yet, is that when buying on Steam you support development of compatibility tools that may allow users to run titles they paid for in the future. Game licensing costs may be lost over time, but open source development that happens in the mean time thanks to Valve isn't going away.
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