What does it even mean to “own” a video game?

[BraLoD]

Chrkeller said:

BraLoD said:

Have you ever read the terms of the license of games you are purchasing in Steam? BTW you are a subscriber of Steam, it is a service.

The Steam Subscriber Agreement says:

"This Steam Subscriber Agreement ("Agreement") is a legal document that explains your rights and obligations as a subscriber of Steam from Valve Corporation"

"Steam and your Subscription(s) require the download and installation of Content and Services onto your computer. Valve hereby grants, and you accept, a non-exclusive license and right, to use the Content and Services for your personal, non-commercial use (except where commercial use is expressly allowed herein or in the applicable Subscription Terms). This license ends upon termination of (a) this Agreement or (b) a Subscription that includes the license. The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services. To make use of the Content and Services, you must have a Steam Account and you may be required to be running the Steam client and maintaining a connection to the Internet."

"Valve may restrict or cancel your Account or any particular Subscription(s) at any time in the event that (a) Valve ceases providing such Subscriptions to similarly situated Subscribers generally".

"You are entitled to use the Content and Services for your own personal use, but you are not entitled to: (i) sell, grant a security interest in or transfer reproductions of the Content and Services to other parties in any way, nor to rent, lease or license the Content and Services to others without the prior written consent of Valve, except to the extent expressly permitted elsewhere in this Agreement (including any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use)"

And much, much more. Go give it a read. You own nothing and you agree with it.

It's funny that you are arguing against a fact, and usually you are the one being argued against by stating facts where others respond to your posts.

Again, the likelyhood of it is meaningless, what is important is that is it a fact, not a supposition. Silly is to try to argue against it.

We will have to agree to disagree.  I don't refute that the ownership is different, given it is a fact.  I just ask myself, is it a problem?  Will it be a problem?  The answer to both of those questions is "no."  I simply have better things to worry about than a 0.019% chance Steam takes my access away.  A quick google search says this has happened a couple dozen times over 125,000 games, which is 0.019%.

Sure, there is no need to worry about it right now. Valve is doing great and its in their best interest to keep doing exactly that.

Actually, even in the event it somehow goes under they could actually just allow anyone to run the games locally without the need of their client to work, it doesn't necessarily mean games would always just become unplayable, though we should really expect the worse outcome from money driven companies rather than the good one.

Valve is a privately owned company tho, it's as easy as someone willing to change it completely when Gabe is not there anymore for it to go terribly wrong, tho. We are seeing Epic right now letting go of 1000 people even when they have some of the most successful games ever. Despite all this success they started wasting a lot of money and losing players, and bad things are already happening. That's also a giant privately owned company, and literally anything could happen.