I agree with most of this article.
- Steam is pretty awesome, but eventually any server will have to shut down.
- I can’t imagine any modern publisher supporting any of the retro games I still wish to play.
- Pirates don’t have to deal with any of this.
Solution-wise: there will always be pirate cracks out there to try and enjoy these games long after their activation servers have gone down. There may even be distros like GoG.com or Steam’s recent revival of indie and old games. But the point is: I shouldn’t have to crack or rebuy the game in order to play it. As the author puts it: All of my old cd based games like Baldur’s Gate that don’t require an online activation will always work. Throw together a VM or old computer, and you are good to go. Fans make patches to get games installed and running on modern systems.
What we buy today may not.
You know what, I hadn’t even thought of that…. if Steam goes belly-up, so does my PC gaming.
I own about 60 Steam-based games + various related expansions. About 20% of my games were retail purchases that I’ve registered with Steam, the rest are ones I’ve purchased directly from them (about half of which I bought in their crazy Xmas 2009 sales promotion!)
I do back up all my Steam gaming files to an external hard drive so I don’t have to download them again after moving PCs or after re-install, but that won’t help if Steam dies a death.
Perhaps I should set up another PC, install all my Steam games and activate them, and then never wipe the disk or uninstall them, and then I can play them, even in offline mode.
Alternatively, I could just not buy anything that needs online activation… or just give up PC gaming altogether, like I’ve tried to do in the past.