• Einar@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    Another example of a company making clear that we don’t truly own the games we play on their platform.

    • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      A couple of years ago my gog exceeded my steam library. Pretty good considering I have around 500 on steam.

      … But wait till you find out how many of those I’ve actually played… 🙃😓😢

      • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        And to how many already played games you return to bcs not enough energy to start a brand new game (especially with rich/complex lore).

        Yeah.

  • Sparkles@fedia.io
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    6 months ago

    Yeah my kids basically took over my steam account already on the family gaming computer. Alas.

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      6 months ago

      I think they might start getting suspicious when the account age is double the average human lifespan and is still in use.

        • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          6 months ago

          I was referring more to the “Years of Service” badge you can find on your Steam profile, whose count begins when your account was created. It shows on the page when you look at the badge itself. Mine shows it was created on August 4, 2006.

        • Bob@feddit.nl
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          6 months ago

          Not many situations where you can use the phrase “I’ve often been born”.

            • Bob@feddit.nl
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              6 months ago

              Yeah after writing it I sort of realised I was pointing out the joke, but we’re here now.

              • MeetInPotatoes@lemmy.ml
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                6 months ago

                Naw I didn’t mean that, but hell yeah let’s be here anyway. To me, technically the joke is that none of us probably bother to put in our real birth month and date when Steam asks us to verify our age before viewing the next game suggestion in our discovery queue or wherever; just spin that wheel for the year lol. But the wording you pointed out is the only tipoff that it’s what I’m talking about, over-explaining would have made it boring, and if I go too subtle, then nobody gets it. I was genuinely thanking ye for the noticing the deliberate wording and I hope you got a chuckle :D

        • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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          6 months ago

          “Hey c’mahhhn it’s my birthday, you wouldn’t delete mah account on my birthday, I’m just’a lil’ birthday boi!”

      • juliebean@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        but by that point, whoever the inheritors of the account were have probably been paying money and adding new games to it for decades. why would valve destroy their relationship with that customer just because they might still technically have access to some hundred year old games that either don’t even run on modern systems, or might even be public domain by that point?

        • OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca
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          6 months ago

          Because eventually some dickhead like Huffman or Musk will get control and see nothing but dollar signs and completely ruin everything.

      • theneverfox@pawb.social
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        6 months ago

        Nah, because while it would be very easy to implement something like that, it would require specifically doing it. Programmers have 3 reasons for writing code

        It’s cool. It’s necessary. I was told to do it in exchange for money

        (And the secret fourth reason, it just kinda happened. I was building this related thing and I realized it’d be stupid easy to toss it in…I was in a fugue state and I have no idea what I wrote, but it’s some of my best code ever)

        Devs don’t generally care about this kind of thing, and most of the time neither do the business folk. This kind of unnecessary crackdown only comes up when consultants like McKinney, who I’ve recently learned are the reason everything sucks

        • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          6 months ago

          I was told to do it in exchange for money

          and most of the time neither do the business folk

          Allowing libraries to accrue over generations is something business folk keenly care about because it impacts profits over time.

          It’s literally why they have rules against transferring ownership.

          You can tell yourself it’s for other reasons, but you’d just be lying to yourself about Valve being more benevolent than they actually are. They actually are in it to make money. Being told to do it in exchange for money is pretty much why this will happen.

          Valve, at the end of the day, is still a company even if they’re marginally more consumer friendly than most. (Let’s not ignore that a lot of their “consumer friendly” decisions, like being able to return games, were literally because of laws saying they had to. They didn’t do it out of the “goodness of their hearts,” they did it because in some places they were being legally required to do so.)

      • Jaybob32@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        But will they care if the account continues buying games? Is it easier to let it slide, or force someone to make a new account, there by pissing them off?

      • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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        6 months ago

        I dunno if it’s “family sharing” or some other thing, but I can play games from my sister’s library through some means that I set up a couple of years ago.

      • MuffinHeeler@aussie.zone
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        6 months ago

        I don’t know how it works (I’m not the tech one in the relationship), but I’ve been using family sharing for years with my partner

    • bolexforsoup@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      6 months ago

      I cannot imagine they’re going to keep family sharing as is - currently a couple of buddies and I shared a family account and now we all have access to over 700 games. I only had to coordinate with one of them, we all basically chained off each other. The abuse must be massive.

      • herrcaptain@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        I was under the impression that if someone is playing a game from your library you can’t access it unless you boot them out (or you put steam in offline mode, meaning no updates or multiplayer for the duration). Is that no longer true?

        • bolexforsoup@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          6 months ago

          Yeah but that’s only a problem if both of you want to play the same game at the exact same time. It’s like sharing a physical copy of a game with your friend but it instantly transports to their computer/console.

          • herrcaptain@lemmy.ca
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            6 months ago

            I replied the same thing to another comment, but I had thought it locked down the whole library rather than just the one game being played. I could have sworn I ran into that issue but it’s been a long time since I tried it do I suppose I misremembered.

        • bolexforsoup@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          6 months ago

          Come on dude…are you kidding? You and I could do a family share without any risk to each other and share our entire libraries tonight. That is not the sameas handing off to your buddies. I love the family sharing program, I am currently using it. I am not against piracy. Let’s get all that out of the way.

          Surely you see the potential issue here if this is supposed to be a family sharing program?

          • Darkenfolk@dormi.zone
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            6 months ago

            Surely you see the potential issue here if this is supposed to be a family sharing program?

            Just my brother from another mother fam, no hating.

      • SeducingCamel@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        I started elden ring from a family share recently, friend hasn’t gotten the dlc so I’m just getting to experience the main game for free before deciding if I actually want to spend 80 on the game and dlc

  • Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip
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    6 months ago

    That won’t work for long. With the way things are going, we may get expiring accounts after 100 years from your date of birth you registered with.

    • Evotech@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      That’s not gonna stick, steam can’t remember birthdays. And I’m pretty sure everyone told it multiple times we were born January 1 1901

        • firadin@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Why would you trust steam? Valve famously invented lootboxes and tried to do the NFT market thing before NFTs were big. They are the strongest DRM on the market. What makes you think they’re not just as greedy?

          • GoodEye8@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            Valve didn’t invent lootboxes. The concept has physically existed for decades, they’re called trading card packs or kinder eggs or gashapon. The latter is the inspiration for what became known as lootboxes. The first “lootbox” was actually in the Japanese version of MapleStory in 2004 and it spread in eastern markets (because pay to win is more normalized there) and in mobile games. It wasn’t until 2009 when EA added card packs to FIFA. Hard to say if they were inspired by the lootboxes from the east of the insane football trading card market in the west, or by both. It was only after a year and a half later in 2010 when Valve added loot boxes to TF2. So Valve definitely didn’t invent lootboxes, they weren’t even the first in the west to use them. You could argue that they popularized loot boxes but even there is an argument to be made that Overwatch was a much bigger cultural hit than TF2 or CSGO or EAs FIFA games and normalized lootboxes.

            I don’t mind the “Valve is bad” narrative, but at least keep your facts straight. The “strongest DRM” is also BS but others have already somewhat covered that part.

          • WIZARD POPE💫@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Because they are not publicly traded and line go up need jot always apply to them. They will not try and milk every last cent out of you.

          • force@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            They are the strongest DRM on the market.

            LMAO you have got to be shitting me. It is the bare minimum for DRM, it’s weak as fuck and games protected by Steamworks DRM are cracked almost immediately by casuals

  • AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    I think they said you can’t transfer the license between accounts, but they never said anything about turning over the account

        • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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          6 months ago

          I mean, it’s still against it. But I can’t see how they’d enforce it, unless valve starts demanding IDs. I’m afraid for a post-gaben era where Valve might just do that…

        • DNOS@lemmy.ml
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          6 months ago

          After 60 years they cut off your account … Why 60 ? Just because they need to find a way to screw people that still comply to the rules …

        • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          6 months ago

          Not right now. But in the future if companies keep getting away with everything they may introduce some kind of bio-identification: eye scan, face id or fingerprint. And lock your account only to that. Preventing from every form of sharing.

  • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    This policy is literally against the law in the EU… Wait… double checks notes In the… US? huh… normally it’s the European Union protecting us from big tech bullshit

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    6 months ago

    That’s how we’re still using my Dad’s account, it’s mostly used by my brother, but shared with the other gamers in the family

  • SinJab0n@mujico.org
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    6 months ago

    GOG being the absolute BOSS; u will be able to leave your library as your legacy for future generations.

    • stoy@lemmy.zip
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      6 months ago

      Well yeah, you just get the non DRM installer and dump it in your NAS, done

      • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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        6 months ago

        Their Galaxy client seems like it’ll never get there. Fortunately we have Heroic Launcher, and it pretty much rocks! I’m fully confident I can enjoy the vast majority of my games on Linux now.

          • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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            6 months ago

            Lutris is cool! It definitely streamlines the process of running things with WINE.

            It could have gone through some major changes since I’ve tried it, but I found Heroic to be just a bit more plug-and-play in the sense that it handled the fancy Galaxy stuff like auto-updates, play-time stats, achievements, and cloud saves.

            Literally just click install and go, like a drop-in replacement for Galaxy.

            I also like that you can choose a Linux build (if it exists) or a windows-with-Proton approach depending on the game.

            The only game issue I had was Undertale’s Linux build that had a bit of dependency hell and wouldn’t start…so flipping it to EXE-with-Proton worked like a charm.

            Coolest part though? You can totally have both.

            I’d personally use Lutris for things like old games that aren’t from digital platforms, or for RetroArch.

            I like Heroic for managing cloud saves and handling achievements with GoG titles.

            Either way, both are viable and you’ll get your games running somehow! Just different approaches. No harm in seeing which you like most!

            Random ProTip while we’re at it: If you couch game, you don’t need to give that up with Linux either! Steam Link can be its own separate program from Steam itself, so it runs a lot leaner. If you have an Nvidia card you can also check out Sunlight/Moonlight for game streaming.

            We truly live in exciting times. Happy gaming. :)

      • shneancy@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I think this is more of a defence against scammers honestly, with a convincing enough scam you could make valve belive an account holder was dead and you’re a family member wanting to transfer their account to yours.

        Hell, I saw my dead friend’s account message me in Russian, contacted support about it, and all they could do was remove the hacker’s access, not even lock or delete that account.

        And how could they? Unless you have your full name, address, and other identifying information somewhere on your account (strongly ill-advised, obviously) Valve can’t cross check it with a death certificate and take action, for all they know you could be cooperating with the hacker or submitting fake information to “prank” your friend by getting their account removed.

        Allowing account transfers would open a whole new can of worms.

        Just write down the password and login if you know you’re going to go. I don’t think Valve under Gabe would have issues with that. Though I do worry for its future

  • glitchdx@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I’ll never have kids.

    My niece though will have a thorough education on sailing the high seas when she’s old enough to choose media on her own.