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According to Steam's terms and conditions can they remove games from your library and are Steam emulators allowed? (leminal.space)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by CorrodedCranium@leminal.space to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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This is in reference to a post titled Amazon Prime Video is able to remove a video from your library after purchase.. The title is kind of self-explanatory and piracy was brought up in the comments. Someone mentioned GOG and Steam granting users indefinite licenses to users regardless of whether or not the game is still being sold.

While I could see that with GOG something tells me that's probably not the case with Steam but I can't find a specific quote to back it up. I can't seem to find an instance of them removing a game from someone's library even when a game was banned in a country like in the case of Disco Elysium and Rimworld being banned in Australia.

I couldn't see Valve removing games from people's libraries without a good reason due to the amount of backlash that would cause but maybe under specific circumstances they would.

On a similar note I was curious if anything in the terms and conditions talks about Steam emulators. There's a section it that says:

“… host or provide matchmaking services for the Content and Services or emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Valve in any network feature of the Content and Services, through protocol emulation, tunneling, modifying or adding components to the Content and Services …”

But I am not sure if I am misunderstanding what it's trying to get across.

I looked through a majority of the Steam Subscriber Agreement but it can be a bit hard to decipher. There could also be comments from Valve staff elsewhere like on Twitter or Reddit that may at least shown their thoughts on the matter.

This might be a bit boring for a lot of people but I am curious about the DRM behind Steam. I feel like people have placed a lot of trust and money into Valve and Steam so I am curious about potential worst case scenarios.

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[-] seaturtle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Steam can definitely remove your access to games in your account. Though, to be fair, it generally doesn't, as it has little incentive to do so (outside of such cases as credit card chargebacks). There are a few cases though.

(Note of course that games delisted from sale in the store are generally not removed from accounts.)

To be fair, other stores certainly could too. But something like GOG is limited in what it can do, if you've been properly backing up your files, since you can still access your own offline installers even if you completely lose access to your account.

That said, as far as dangers to your Steam account go, I'd say that individual games getting removed is probably less likely than one of the following:

you losing access due to not being able to login for whatever reason (e.g. forgot your stuff and also lost your phone but you had Steam's 2FA going so you can't login)
getting your account stolen by a hijacker (which there are TONS and there have been for years due to the profitability of virtual item fraud and account fraud and the synergies between these two activities). If Steam screws up their side of things, this might even happen through no fault of your own -- for example, a bunch of people got hijacked several years ago when hijackers discovered that Steam's password recovery page would accept a blank input.
having your account banned for whatever reason. Probably less likely if you're well-behaved and don't cheat and don't talk about piracy on Steam, etc., but it's worth noting that this could happen. Also, if you dabble in cheats and your account gets VAC banned, I'd imagine that having to use a new account ends up being kinda similar to being banned from your old one, due to the hassle of having to switch accounts.

There's an old story about Gabe Newell saying that if Steam ever shuts down Valve will make sure players are able to access their games, but there's a few problems with this:

It's not actually in the Steam Subscriber Agreement.
This is old info anyway.
Given how big Steam is, it's more likely to be sold off than to go dark if Valve finds itself in financial trouble. And even if GabeN has truly promised this, the new owners of Steam are not beholden to such a promise.

As for Steam emulators, like SmartSteamEmu, I'm pretty sure they're not allowed but Valve just largely turns a blind eye to them and will do so unless they become a very significant issue in some way.

[-] CorrodedCranium@leminal.space 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There’s an old story about Gabe Newell saying that if Steam ever shuts down Valve will make sure players are able to access their games, but there’s a few problems with this:

A little further down in the comments I commented about how it's questionable if Gabe even said that to begin with. I vaguely remembered hearing the same story and wanted to check to see what the source was.

[-] seaturtle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for looking into that.

Still something that's merely word-of-mouth promise, not in any sort of legal documentation, and easily ignored if Valve does go down or change ownership. And that's assuming the information is still current, which itself is questionable.

(Not your fault; I don't mean to sound like I'm arguing with you.)