this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
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The funny thing is, you don't own them.
Say what you will, every game I’ve bought—I can still play. And I’ve been buying Steam games for over a decade.
Meanwhile, none of my GameCube discs work on my Switch.
You can still play them on your GameCube or Wii though, or take copies of the discs and play them on anything that runs Dolphin
While you're not wrong, by that logic, it's actually fairly trivial to take my Steam downloads drive and run it on any computer even without my Steam account.
Does that work? I always assumed games with DRM wouldn't work if they couldn't authenticate to your Steam account.
It works in the same way that dumping your GameCube games and running them on Dolphin works... It's quick and easy, but it's against the ToS and requires breaking DRM.
Steam's DRM is weak, and in some interviews some Valve developers even gave hints that this is on purpose. Many Steam games will simply run without Steam if you just double click the .exe in the install folder, and the vast majority that only rely on Steam's DRM can be opened by running a free "Steam Emulator" software that pretends to be an active Steam account with a correct license.
A lot of Steam games don't have any DRM, and most of the rest are pretty easy to strip.
Give it a shot sometime. Completely quit out of Steam, turn off your internet, and try running some of your older Steam games directly from the Steam folder.
I do this somewhat often when my kids are on my other computer playing games on my account and I still want to play something. It's a little trickier on Linux since you need something to run the Proton/WINE layer, so I mostly stick to Linux-native games in that pretty rare case.
Family share is actually great for this now.
It used to be that if anyone in the group was playing any game it would lock you out of playing anything else on the main account without kicking them off.
But they eased up on it now so you can both play at the same time as long as you aren't playing the same game at the same time.
So just make a burner account for you or for your kids and family share the library to it and now you don't even have to go offline unless everyone in the house wants to play BG3 simultaneously.
Really? I haven't tried that since they revamped the sharing thing. I have three accounts, one for me, my wife, and one my kids share, and they're all linked. Most of the time my kids use my account, but I can easily change that if it'll allow simultaneous play (on different games).
Thanks for the tip, I'll try it out!
You can still play it but increasingly games are becoming very different from what you bought.
I've started noticing a disturbing trend. More and more games that are older being sold at steep discounts or "free to play" and simultaneously jampacked with invasive telemetry and/or ads/microtransactions. And since Steam won't let you play older versions, those games are effectively dead.
FYI if seems you can access older versions of Steam games, it's just a bit hacky
If I want hacky, I'll go pirate the game. I pay for them so I don't need a computer science degree to play them.
That is what firewalls and sinkholes are for. Stupid telemetry.
Yet I never noticed such a "trend" in direct combination with steam. The whole industry goes to shit, but it's not steam's fault.
That shouldn't be necessary and is beside the point.
Firewalls and especially sinkholes are VERY necessary, far beyond silly game telemetry.
They don't allow this for a good reason. Imagine 1 million clueless gamers running an older version of their game because they're too lazy too update. And, of course, then complain about a buggy game and the tech-support will drown even more and review would end up more badly. nothing worse than a fragmented game-world. how should online games work if every Joe and Jane got their "own" favorite version? the average user is a total clueless (pc-wise) person.
Also, you can install an older version. Just with more hassles. Also you could by GUI with many games IF the Dev wants you to be able to. Like a select few versions, if you'd prefer an older state. But, of course, only indie devs do that.
You misread my comment. I didn't say they weren't necessary.
Not talking about online games. Besides, the how or why do not matter, the point is the games are gone.
I pay Steam to deal with the hassles. I am not a software engineer.
Valve has the power to enforce this system-wide.
Gog does it, but Gog only offers a mere fraction of what Steam has. Also your example of BL2 is not on gog either. For that reason.
Sure, Valve could enforce that, but...as said....why? They already offer the option for different versions. If the devs don't use that, they will have their reasons. The biggest one i mentioned before: Fragmentation and the resulting nightmare of customer-support. On steam's AND the dev's side. Look at the Android or Windows-market. Someone complaining "my windows sucks", but still uses Windows Vista. Or people screaming for support because "my favourite app doesn't work" and use android 10.
Don't get me wrong, personally I'd value the freedom of choice. But the vast majority of people are clueless (and still use those devices) and need to be "guided". Every system gets dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. That's why apple does so well (besides the "brand"-shit ofc).
And that matters for the purposes of this conversation why?
I explained why in my first comment. It's why we're talking in the first place.
I don't see it. Neither of them have to support old versions.
No they don't. If people are clueless, they don't need to utilize this feature. It's call an "option".
They do if the dev makes it available, I'm looking at four different versions of Terraria in the beta menu right now that stretch back four major versions. I'm pretty sure a couple games in my library somewhere have their entire update history in there, though I can't think of one to name off the top of my head right now, that's not a feature I use very often. [Edit: Rift Wizard is one that does precisely this, I knew I had at least one in here]
This is not true of all games, but it could be, either directly by game devs without Valve even having to care, or via pressure by Valve by just making older versions available whether the devs want it or not. I think the latter option is probably the better move, but there's technically nothing stopping the former other than the game devs themselves.
There's also a valid argument that making downpatching very easy would be a huge boon to piracy. This is a reasonable talking point no matter which side of that fence you sit on. It would also probably benefit modding as well, which I think is a more objective good but some game developers or more likely publishers would probably disagree.
That shouldn't be their decision.
Literally never seen that before. I think I see if the dev pushing their 4th update that day and now I have to wait a half an hour to play the damn game.
Not my problem. Guess I'd better just pirate the game instead.
Out of the thousands of games I have, not once have I noticed anything like you describe.
Oh well if you haven't experienced it, it must not exist then 🤷
hmmm that doesn't ring a bell here either. Which games do this ?
The most recent ones I've noticed are Riders Republic and Borderlands 2. Helldivers also introduced a bunch of new microtransactions years after it's launch.
And what there is steam's doing? Borderland's a greedy IP from a greedy company. What do you expect?
So it's the fault of the delivery-device? Why didn't you make a backup of an older version just in case? Besides, last time I checked, you can. With a bit more hassle. All not the case for a "live" online-game. Which borderlands wants to be.
...yeah? Of course it is.
I pay Steam to do that.
Not interested.
That's exactly the problem.
If BL is "exactly the problem". And GOG does it better. Why is it still steam's fault? Use GOG then? Where is it the delivery-device's fault? As BL2 offers online-coop, and is also the major selling point of that game, a fragmented market is impossible.
Why would you think another company doing it better makes Valve not responsible? I don't understand the logic.
...no? It's not. You don't have to play it online.
I have to say I never played those. Do these microtransactions lock content that was previously available out of the box?
I mean, if it’s a trend, you’d think I would have noticed it by now.
And I suppose my experience doesn't count? Or you think I'm making this up?
I don’t know, you haven’t pointed out multiple examples.
But the vast majority can be played without steam. Mostly by force coughcough but still. I know, still no legal ownership.