what you mean steam have exactly the same problem the only client that works without drm is gog
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only client that works without drm is gog
Service*
the client is GOG Galaxy and it's not needed to play the games at all.
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Where we could download our DRM-free games if GOG dies?
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As they are simple executible files, literally everyone who downloaded the installers can rehost them anywhere.
(Topic is about having playeable games downloaded games, not source of games.)
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Not entirely true. GOG is the only platform which is 100% DRM free, but it doesn't mean everything on Steam is DRM protected. Quite a few games from Steam are DRM free and can be launched without client.
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yes, but if steam servers are down, you can't download it.
same for gog servers.
edit: i see you clarified and said the same thing below.. sorry, i just hadn't gotten there yet. xD
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yeah, but that goes for even totally DRM free things, not just platforms with incorporated game-clients like ones we mentioned here. Even if you buy a fully DRM free game from developer directly, or any of hundreds of stores worldwide, if store goes down you lose access ;) The difference is that DRM-free stuff you managed to download and keep on your storage will remain to be playable, while DRM-protected stuff, even downloaded one, will be useless (unless you download a crack, but then again it would be basically the same as pirating whole game + crack ;p)
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Actually, even the DRM-protected stuff on Steam - if it's already downloaded and installed - may work for months even after Steam goes down. For privacy reasons I usually block my Steam client with a firewall and run it in offline mode. I only go online for farming cards or installing new games. In my experience, you can stay offline for months and the games still work fine. Of course, in the long run, the only thing that guarantees that you can keep what you downloaded is DRM-free. Also, I don't play online games.
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Offline mode is not a long-term soluttion. After some time it will require online validation, some games (even single player ones) will nopt launch in offline mode at all, also the moment you reinstall your OS / change some hardware, install new drivers offline mode will no longer recognize your machine and will require you to go online and validate again. Been there, done that - after I moved to new apt I waited almost half a year for internet connection and played in offline mode, only validated using shared mobile internet. Anyway these are all problems with offline mode which will prevent it working for long-term, while DRM free have none of these problems.
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I never said it's a long term solution. I just think it's good to know, that even when Steam breaks down for a week or even a month, it's not that you're completely cut off from playing your stuff from one moment to another. Off course, DRM free is better. But when it's not available, I try not to spend more on a game than I would on a cinema ticket. That way, if things go south, at least, I'm not worse off, as if I'd spent the money on a bad movie.
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depends on cinema ticket prices in your location ;) Tickets are cheap in PL plus I usually go to cinema on "cheap mondays" and I pay like 11-12PLN for a movie, so it's like 2.5-3EUR, if I had to buy just games for the cost of cinema tickets a lot of games I would never get to buy at all ;p
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Yeah, it's more like €10 to €15 for a ticket over here, the price also seems to increase a bit every year. Consequently, I don't go to the movies as often as I used to, but it still works nicely as reference for how much I'm roughly willing to pay for a game. I can see, that you probably need a different reference in places where cinema tickets are as cheap as you say.
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I simply never buy a game unless it's 50% off. With rare exclusion of online titles I want to play wioth my friends - these I will buy even full prioce, because if I wait 1-2 years for release I may have noone to play with anymore ;p But in last few years there were just 3 titles I bought full price because of that - Guild Wars 2 and expansion, Diablo 3 and expansion, Starcraft 2 and expansions. And that's it ;p
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50% off on a $60 AAA title is still way too much in most cases, while, for example, 30% off on an already decently priced recent release around €20 may be tempting in some cases. As I said, I don't play online games, so I don't mind waiting so much. I don't think I ever bought a game at full price anymore since way back, when games were still sold in retail boxes exclusively.
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depends on title and on how much I want it ;p A sequel to a beloved franchise I will buy the moment it gets 50% off, even if it's 30$, a game that is intresting but I'm not really sure bout it even if it's 12$ on 30% off I will skip ;p But that's me, I have hundreds of games in backlog so I can wait, I used to only buy games for GAs anyway, and just waiting till I win all the good stuff, but with new steam gifting policy I no longer can buy gifts so I gotta spend all this wallet money somehow ;p
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Depends. If it just dies and get's closed - no you won't be able to play the games requiring it, even if you bought games on Steam. welcome to the DRM world :( Same way if Steam closes one day you will not be able to play all Steram games beside few which are DRM free and this is only if you DL them in the first place. BUT - much more possible thing is that if Uplay/Steam/Origin ever go into such big financial problems that they would be going to die that someone from the competitors buy them out, with their platforms, games and custopmers. In such case you would probably still have access to games on UPlay, they would simply no longer be managed by Ubisoft but by some other company.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/18mzcn/i_asked_steam_support_what_happens_to_my_games_if/
Just words though.
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i wonder what measures.. they gonna turn it into a peer-to-peer based download client before they shut the offiice & servers down or something?
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No measures, probably, just some PR talking so gamers won't stop buying digital games.
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sorry, but for me it is basically a PR-talking ;p "don't worry, we have you covered, the measures are in place etc". If they want to ensure customers they should say any details, not just very general without any specifics. Like for example "we have reserved money / insurance, that in case of bancrupcy will cover the cost of running servers for X years ahead managed by company we already paid for just in case something like this ever happens". Such general answer may as well mean that they will just modify the client to no longer require online validation and updates to run in offline mode, but it would only mean that you'd be able to play stuff you have already downloaded before servers went kaput ;p
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I am sure if steam would go down they give us some time to download everything, and remove the validation (making everything drm free). Be a hassle for people having a few thousand games though, but hey as long as they give us the opportunity.
I had 1200 games on desura, and downloaded them all (even with screenshots :x).
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you know - desura was mostly indie shovelware, many games weighted few MB, very very few over 1GB ;p I think for a lot of people here on SG backupping their Steam library would be impossible, not only because of internet connection but because of storage spce required. No matter how much time they would give us I won't magically create few (dozens?) terrabytes free space to DL all the stuff ;p Easy example - my Steam dedicated partition atm is 1.34 TB in size, I have only 270 games installed and they take 1.34TB. 270 games are 5.5% of my whole Steam library, so theorethically to DL and backup all stuff I have on Steam in case of bancrupcy I would have to use like +/- 25 terrabytes of space. Not gonna happen ;p Ofc this is not certain calculation - steam gauge is offline so I cannot check my actual library size ;p
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Acually half of Desura ended up getting on Steam too (and they often provided keys even), Desura didn't have AAA games but the indie games were mostly on both.
I got almost 5000 games, i know how much space it can take, but in the end would that really be Steam's problem or our own?
They provide a goods, they might let us keep the goods in the end, they never made a claim to as how long they will.
So I think it's ours, if Steam would have no other option but to go down and atleast offers to let us download and play everything vs losing everything, which one would you take?
Gog is the same, everything on there reaches well over 5tb (i had an exact number even but i forgot) that's still less then Steam, but some would say they don't even have the space for that either.
There is always this for $40,000 https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/08/seagate-unveils-60tb-ssd-the-worlds-largest-hard-drive/ xD
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That's quite optimistic version. More realistic one would be where Ubisoft would be cut into little pieces and auctioned "who wants Far Cry?", "who wants Warch Dogs", "who wants Uplay".
And that way all the games that would be not purchased by "Uplay Buyer" could disappear from that service. Could, not must, all would depend what sort of sale-deals and contracts between companies would happen and stuff like that.
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Who wants UPlay would probably come with all already released titles as well as platform itself, because platform without anything on it would be worthless. Who want's Far Cry would probably be meant who wan't license to devvelop new FC games, but not necessary pulling them out of UPlay. If anything new owner would probably be profiting from selling old games on UP and it is fine - old games are free profit. They don't generate a lot of profit, but theyt basically cost you nopthing to profit from. and modifying the game so it would require some new form of DRM instead of UPlay would actually require some investment - not really worth it for a few years old game ;p
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Who wants UPlay would probably come with all already released titles as well as platform itself, because platform without anything on it would be worthless.
Yup, which means there would be high possibility Uplay would die, because nobody would want it. Remember, buying whole Ubisoft would require large amounts of money, nobody had enough money to buy THQ, so no reason to think people would have even more money to buy whole Ubisoft.
If anything new owner would probably be profiting from selling old games on UP and it is fine
Or, they would decide there's no reason giving 30% to Uplay when they can sell it on Origin/BlizzardApp/R*SC/whatever-they-already-own.
modifying the game so it would require some new form of DRM instead of UPlay would actually require some investment - not really worth it for a few years old game ;p
On the other hand, quote "I will not buy FCX on Origin, Uplay still exist and I have FC7,8,9 there so I will not get second client for it" unquote :D
In the end, it's all guess-work here, no reason to really overthing it
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glad you brought upo THQ argument - after THQ bancrup[cy Ubisoft purchases rights to South Park. So explain me why did they finish the game and released it in it's original form aka opn Steam instead of re-developing it like you suggest anyone would do to make their usual UPlay release? ;p
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Because long story short it was Obsidian's game, not THQs.
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It has nothing to do with what we discussed earlier ;p No matter if Obsidian or THQ. What matters is that game was alkready developed for dertain platform, supporting certain things like achievements or DRM for example. Redeveloping it to support other platform would be a waste of money. Yet you argue that in Uplay case buyer would invest this money to redevelop Ubi titles (remember it's not only about DRM, most of modern Ubi titles also have UPlay integration, unlockable content for UPoints, achivs, scoreboards etc. My guess is most of purchasers would not bother investing quite some money to redevelop the game for their own platform, while they can invest nothing and still profit from it. And what is UPlay will get 30%? They will be getting 70% for no investment and it's still just soime bonus money, really big money lies in developing sequel, so they can develop new Far Cry on their own platform and earn a lot from it and it would be main reason to purchase Far Cry license, but if they can earn a little extra as a bonus selling old games without any investment they will likelly do so.
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It has everything with it.
South Park 1 was Obsidian's game. there already were various contracts signed. Ubisoft simply couldn't make it Uplay title.
Same way Ubisoft couldn't make Call of Juarez Gunslinger Uplay's title - it wasn't their game.
South Park 2 is fully made by Ubisoft, surprise surprise it's also Uplay's title.
Redeveloping it to support other platform would be a waste of money.
And yet, it is done to put DRM-full games on GOG. So, there's enough money to do it.
In the end, this is just a guesswork. You might be right, I might be right. We'll see in a decade or two :D
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As for SP2 that's exactly what I said - develop sequel on your own, because it will earn you more money, but do not waste money to redevelop previous project. Somehow in case of SP various contracts would not let them make it Uplay title, but same contracts in case of any other game would let anyone redevelop? You make no sense :> Also let's just hope we never gonna have to find out ;p I prefer to never know if I was right or wrong but just have access to my games ;p
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Somehow in case of SP various contracts would not let them make it Uplay title, but same contracts in case of any other game would let anyone redevelop?
But they are not the same contracts, aren't they? SP1 was not THQ/Ubisoft game, so they couldn't force Uplay.
SP2 is fully Ubisoft game, so they can force whatever they want.
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THQ had full publishing rights to SP game, obsidian was just a developer. Ubisoft purchased SP rightds from THQ, not from Obsidian. Also according to your logic if let's say EA buys rights to Far Cry to rephrase you "FarCry was not EA game, so they couldn't force Origin".
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No, EA wouldn't buy "Far Cry game". EA would buy whole IP, including games, movies, clothing, fidget spinners, everything.
Ubisoft didn't bought full IP, they didn't even bought SP1, they just bought whatever THQ's part in that game was (which was mostly distribution rights, unlike usual publisher deal). That's why they didn't used that one year of delay to put Uplay into it - they simply couldn't.
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ok, now I finally get what you mean, couldn't you speak like that sooner? ;p What you say may be true, yet we don't know for sure, I googled but neither Ubi nor Obsidian/THQ disclosed deal specifics, it's obvious they didn't have rights to show, toys, gadgets etc, but it is not known what rights they did and didn't have according to game. Also afair the delay was disclosed to be because they were unsatisfied with game quality and wanted it to be developed more. Considering how much Obsidian is known for putting out good but buggy and non-optimized games I can believe that explanation.
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It's far more likely that the various game IPs would be auctioned off subject to uPlay maintaining distribution rights. Then uPlay would still be valuable on its own.
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Auctioning it with "must be sold on Uplay" can mean IP itself would lose part of it's value, so it can go either way.
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No no, uplay retains the rights to also sell. I.E. the games can also be sold elsewhere, not that it must be uplay exclusuve. That should have a negligible effect on the purchase price
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steam and uplay will fall once world war V starts (the one that is so intense, it skips WWIII AND WWIV). That's when we won't care about video games.
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Moral of the story: don't buy games to any of those Abstergo Corp. subsidiary companies or Templars (leaded by Grand Master Gaben himself) will take over the world and start World War *(Insert your number of preference here)
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They'll probably do the same think with "Games for Windows". To play GfW(like GTA IV) you have to download a version of GfW(available in the microsoft site or something i think) and although the server is down, it allows you to play the game you own.
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Oh man! If Steam/Uplay/Origin/... will get closed i don't have enough space to archive all my game and not have enough time to search and download all the cr.ck files!
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In my opinion when the platform that is required to play the game "dies" the person who rightfully bought the game is entitled to run a pirated copy of that said game that removes the need for the then non functioning platform. Normally the platform should provide DRM free versions of the affected games or even a dummy client that emulates the need of the platform services before it becomes discontinued.
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If Uplay dies, I'll be sad I've lost my games, after the sadness has subsided, I'll probably be relieved that I'll never have to find another bloody radio tower. lol
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There is this browser add-on called Enhanced steam, I suggest you to get it, one of it's features is to show if a game uses 3rd DRM
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I've bought my first two Ubisoft games that require an Uplay account, and I had no idea you also have to run the program itself to play
it can't help him atm but he will notice if he is buying a 3rd DRM game in the future
it prevent him from this at least
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I'm pretty sure Enhanced Steam will not be of any help to him if Uplay ever shuts down.
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This has happened in the past, IIRC there were a handful of games that used GFWL which became unplayable but am struggling to come up with an example on the spot. Basically it's left upto the developers whether they go back and alter the game to work without the dead software.
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kinda like people who bought HD-DVDs instead of Blu-Ray, or Microsoft Zune instead of iPod, or Microsoft Phone instead of iphone
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Well, sorta, at least they're left with a working product. Digital products (and services) are still kinda a mess nobody seriously wants to regulate.
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the exact same thing that happens when steam dies. either someone buys them and the service continues under a different name, or you impotently yell, beg and finally cry at your screen because your games are gone forever.
but dont expect them to go drm free... if ubi was finally on the verge of bankruptcy (the only possible way uplay would die), i doubt their final thought would be the consumers... i mean they havent cared this far, cant imagine them caring at the end.
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What would happen if steam / origin / uplay etc etc get down ? well, people will upload and download the game they have somewhere else !
Should it be legal or not, pissed off people would be more encline to resort to those way to access games they have paid for.. well thats one of the scenario imo
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If your Uplay account dies you die in the real world.
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isn't the kicker of terms and conditions in the user agreement nowadays that you actually don't own the games but rather something closer to renting them and that Steam/other digital distributor at any time they see fit can terminate the agreement, for example if they go bankrupt and servers shuts down etc..?
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no, you own the license to play that game and in many country, you are able to sell that
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3 things are bothering me permanently:
- What is waiting us beyond death.
- What will happen with our Steam games after our death.
- Where our games will be gone, if Steam/Uplay/Origin dies.
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