How would the Death of Steam look like?

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

No one consider Steam bankrupcy possible scenario in a few following years but if it happens one day, what would it look like? What's your prediction?

Will Valve make enormous effort to remove DRM from every geam available?

First step will be to stop selling games but what about servers, for how long will they be available to downloand games?

For those who a hundreds or thousand games and some much of $$$$ spent - how will you prepare? Will you download thousand of gigabytes and storage it on external HDD's/SDD's, DVD's, Blue-Rays? Or do not give a shit, let it go and pirate things you bought bought when times comes with urge to play?

 

[Falksi]

It's definitely gonna end because...

NUKES!!

 

[rusty_shackleford]

censorship

 

[tritosine2k]

pre-eminence of gamepad support bc. steamdeck
30 new gamepad games a day
gabe newell hidden in new zealand bunker


oh wait

 

[Darkozric]

I nuked my account many years ago, never liked the platform and I always hated the overrated fatman. Can't wait to be nuked from orbit.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

It would be...

Spoiler

Epic. :^)

 

[Alphard]

a nightmare of gamepasses and streaming.

 

[Sarathiour]

censorship

Probably the right answer, it's part of those "too big to fail", it would be bought by (((a company))) in order to serve as a propaganda tool, curating the games to be in accordance with the party line. Money problem will just be resolved trough the usual mean, aka syphoning taxpayer money.
Might also be bought by epic which would offer a carryover of game available on both platform.

 

[Jasede]

Can't wait for having to install 50 different shop platforms and needing accounts with 2FA for each of them.

 

[.Pixote.]

I only have two purchased games, and a small handful of freebies on Steam, so no big loss for me. I never felt comfortable with the idea of keeping a library of games on a server somewhere, and at anytime someone could pull the plug.

The ladder of insanity -

https://steamladder.com/ladder/games/

 

[ADL]

Valve has always said there are "measures in place" to ensure you retain access to your library but I've always wondered what that actually means assuming they're not just saying it to cover their ass. Universal Steamworks DRM bypass along with hobbyists hosting the CDNs? This is their canned response every time someone asks.

 

[pickmeister]

Valve has always said there are "measures in place" to ensure you retain access to your library but I've always wondered what that actually means assuming they're not just saying it to cover their ass. Universal Steamworks DRM bypass along with hobbyists hosting the CDNs? This is their canned response every time someone asks.

Steam is going to transition into the greatest bideyo gayms torrent tracker of all time and it’s going to be glorious!

For real tho, I think everyone’s gonna get fucked.

 

[†††]

No one consider Steam bankrupcy possible scenario in a few following years but if it happens one day, what would it look like?

They would get bought out before that happens.

 

[Achiman]

It's a private company. They would be fucking swimming in money.
When Gaben dies/becomes senile it might be made public if no one steps up.

The 'subscription service' thing for the games probably has some fine print in it where they can dump the userbase.
You might as well think that itunes is going to fail as well though or google play if you think steam is at risk.

 

[Norfleet]

Steam Bankruptcy would be nigh impossible: What costs do they even have, considering that they are siphoning a sizeable take off of everyone else's work? They don't need to ship product to stay solvent anymore, that's why there's still no Halflife 3. They print money off the backs of everyone else.

Now if Steam were annihilated from space by a flying saucer from Mars, we'd just have to go back to PirateBay.

 

[JarlFrank]

For those who a hundreds or thousand games and some much of $$$$ spent - how will you prepare? Will you download thousand of gigabytes and storage it on external HDD's/SDD's, DVD's, Blue-Rays? Or do not give a shit, let it go and pirate things you bought bought when times comes with urge to play?

Download everything because I have games on Steam that exist nowhere else and are too obscure to be uploaded to pirate sites.

Indie games made by a single dude in his basement with MS Paint and DAZ 3D graphics.

 

[Gregz]

censorship

As fucked up as things are, this wouldn't surprise me actually.

 

[Pound Meat]

How can you pirate games when the internet ceases to exist?

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Poland would become rich?

 

[Sarathiour]

I only have two purchased games, and a small handful of freebies on Steam, so no big loss for me. I never felt comfortable with the idea of keeping a library of games on a server somewhere, and at anytime someone could pull the plug.

The ladder of insanity -

https://steamladder.com/ladder/games/

Those people have more game than hour spend playing them.

 

[Dadd]

We go back to CDs in DVD boxes

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

Gog, Epic, and Humble Bundle would just get the distro marketshare split up. I'm not a fan of Steam at all, but clearly there's no monopoly. Gamers are just lazy and go to where the easy meat is.

And I'm all for going back to physical. Let's pray GoGamer.com makes a proud return one day.

 

[J1M]

Steam could die if it is bought out and consolidated into, say, the Microsoft store.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

but clearly there's no monopoly.

They're a market leader, which is frequently confused with a monopoly.
A market leader isn't inherently bad. People who shout accusations of "monopoly" at Steam rarely, if ever, cite what negative effects Steam has on the market that wouldn't be present if the market share was evenly split especially when considering most alternatives have far worse features/policies. The consumer rejection of the epic store is proof of very few people caring about what size of a cut Valve takes and/or people find the cut to be fair for the services rendered.
Steam got its position because it was far superior than the alternatives, it maintains its position because it's still far superior to the alternatives.

Personally, I enjoy that Steam tends to put the gamers before the developers and frequently makes changes that developers dislike but benefit gamers.
Would any other platform have instituted such a liberal refund policy? I don't think so, maybe GOG, but I have a feeling that if I used the refund feature on GOG half as much as I use Steam's they'd have cut me off years ago. I've been told that Steam cuts your ability to refund games off after a while if you use it too much, but I've refunded a lot of games just to try them out leaving no reason at all for refund and it has never happened to me.

 

[Silverfish]