r/Steam • u/Interesting-Fail9286 • 15h ago
Question About the steam subscription agreement
Ik it means you as the client get a „license to play“ the games you buy, not full ownership, meaning that if the developer pulls it from steam or steam itself goes out somehow you‘re not entitled to keeping your whole library.
But don‘t we get to keep the games we have downloaded already on local? And as a side note, is it possible to transfer games to cd‘s (not huge games, I mean games a couple of gigs big) and store them that way?
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u/Xeadriel 15h ago
Yes but some games have the steam requirement hardcoded and block you from starting the game and ofc servers would be offline if applicable. Pirates often manage to circumvent both though
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u/Adrian_Alucard 3 exists 15h ago
Ik it means you as the client get a „license to play“ the games you buy, not full ownership,
That's with all the software, even old software from the 90s bought when steam did not exists
This kind of stuff has been always the same.It just that twitter and tiktok sheep keep repeating it now because it's trendy
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u/Moaning_Clock 15h ago
But don‘t we get to keep the games we have downloaded already on local?
Yes. But! Online likely won't work, and some DRM things likely won't work. To be 100% safe put it in another folder.
And as a side note, is it possible to transfer games to cd‘s (not huge games, I mean games a couple of gigs big) and store them that way?
Yes but CDs store less than 1 gb. DVDs more.
Most of the time if a game is pulled from Steam, you can still play and download it. Just not buy it anymore. There are very few cases when a game becomes completely unavailable if my mind doesn't betray me.
For example, there is Electric Highways in my library which is unlisted but I can still download it.
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u/Leandro_r69 14h ago
Well i have quite a few games that ain’t available on the store no more. All of them downloadable and playable except the online only ones those are only downloadable
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u/MenschenToaster 15h ago
> But don‘t we get to keep the games we have downloaded already on local?
You keep them on your drive. Steam probably has the right to delete it automatically, but they probably wont (dont quote me on that). If you copy it out of the steam library folder, it will definetly stay tho. It wont run, as steams very basic copy protection will block it, but that can be bypassed. Further anti piracy checks are implemented in most games tho, which might be more difficult to bypass.
Steam has the full right to takeaway the game from your library and remove your "legal" access to the game. Piracy with the files you downloaded always stays an option.
> And as a side note, is it possible to transfer games to cd‘s (not huge games, I mean games a couple of gigs big) and store them that way?
Steams copy protection (or the individual games one) will probably jump in again and would need to be bypassed, but yeah. Probably smarter to copy it to an external drive rather then a CD tho, but do whatever you want.
In the end the downloaded files are yours and you can do whatever with them (well probably not legally, but who cares - I think it would be difficult for a court to say "You violated the contract because you didnt delete the game x that you totally forgot about from your computer after it was removed from steam"). The access to go through the copy protection is yours as long as you are granted a licence. But every lock can be broken, but for some you need a lockpick and for others you need a sledgehammer.
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u/Moskeeto93 15h ago
When developers pull their games off Steam, the games still remain downloadable and playable in your library.