ViolentOpposition said:
However, it's not like STEAM could ever lose ALL of its customers, OR anywhere near that.
It doesn't have to lost any customers - it just has to be unprofitable enough for a long enough period of time.
One could argue that this is even easier for STEAM as people who have bought games in the past are still a drain on the bottom line even if they are no longer buying games. Assuming STEAM keeps all accounts having access to all their games, this cost will just increase as time goes on, requiring STEAM to make
more sales to maintain the same profit margins.
STEAM is the dominant player in digital distribution, and will remain so in the foreseeable future. Even in a far off future, new forms of competition would still be unlikely to completely destroy them. Probability is on the side of STEAM never disappearing, unless they decide to pack their bags.
I would say that this is invalid unless you can make an argument as to
why new forms of competition (the form of which we do not know) are unlikely to destroy them. I would point out that major players in other fields have been destroyed in this way (Blockbuster, significantly - Hollywood Video completely).
In addition, this is not the only way a company can die. Corporate missteps can take currently profitable businesses and drive them into the ground - overreaching into new fields while ignoring the existing fields or just making poor choices in how the current field is being handled, for example.
They've already said they'd ensure your games will remain playable long after the unlikely event that they would disappear. Okay, it's not like they're obliged to uphold that claim, but it makes sense from a business perspective. In the world of business, upholding your reputation means everything; it's not like the people behind STEAM would just disappear off the face of the Earth if they decided to call it quits with STEAM. Those people would go on to other projects, and the better the reputation behind them, the better their prospects would be.
Except the reputation would only follow a few of the people and would only matter if they were entering a limited selection of fields. Depending on who makes the decisions, it may not even matter - after being bought out, the company buying them out may quietly drop that claim, or the situation may be such that there is simply not the time or money to make those changes.
One could argue that the fact that they are have such issues where they are unable to fully guarantee the games are playable when you want
now casts doubts on any claims that they will be playable in the future.
It would cost very little for them, and it would be entirely in their interests, if they ensured that your games were still playable if their servers went down permanently.
It would cost little for them? Maybe changes to the launcher would cost little, but what about maintaining the server to distribute the launcher? Depending on why they are closing, keeping such a server up and running may not even be an option they are given. This assumes the (probable) case that the change is in one place and not something that has to be done to every game individually.
Note: you can already play your games while STEAM is offline
I'm not sure how it is now, but previously you had to specifically enable that. If you didn't have it enabled and had suprise network downtime, you were out of luck.
(it can periodically ask you to reconnect to the internet if the client stays offline for a prolonged period though).
Is this a required reconnect or really just giving the option?
If they ever decide to close their doors (because I doubt they'll ever be forced to), then the most logical thing for them to do would be to release a final client which wouldn't check with the authorisation servers before allowing you to play a game (and it wouldn't ask you to periodically connect). A bit like one, big, final, ultimate 'offline mode.'
This would be the "right" thing to do, but companies don't always choose the right thing.
Any CD keys and other details tied to your games could easily be sent to your email. It's a very, very realistic possibility. It'd be their whole reputation at stake...
When companies are closing, there is often a lot more on their mind than the future reputation of the company that is closing. And individual reputations were addressed above.
2) But I won't be able to download the games anymore...
It's not like they're going to wake up one day and say, "Come on guys, let's pull the plug on the servers!" If they ever did come to the decision to pack up, then they would announce this well in advance (months, if not a year at least -- again, for PR's sake).
You seem to be basing a
lot of your argument on PR, but you haven't given any (to me) convincing argument that it actually would be a significant blow to their reputation, especially in a non-voluntary closure.
You'd have plenty of time to download all the games you have tied to your account. Then all you'd have to do is copy the STEAM game files to a DVD, or a hard drive, or such. Which, by the way, you can already do (to save having to download games from STEAM every time you format, for example). There you go, there's your physical copy you can use to reinstall the files at any time, even if you can't download them from the STEAM servers anymore.
Assuming you were monitoring the situation instead of coming back to a game you hadn't played in a while to find everything shut down already.
Again, all of this is damn unlikely in any kind of foreseeable future anyway. Don't refuse to use STEAM, thereby passing by on some good deals from time to time, just because there's an infinitely small chance they might not exist in 8 years. Most of your games would be practically worthless by then anyway.
Worthless in 8 years? With the quality of some games today that is a distinct possibility. But then again, I am still regularly playing games that I bought over 20 years ago (More than I am playing recent games, in fact), so this argument does not hold a lot of water for me.
In my case, I only buy games from them when they're really cheap, because those are the only real deals that are on STEAM anyway. I mostly buy new titles from retail, because in 90% of cases I can find them cheaper than on STEAM. So I wouldn't have much to lose anyway. In 5 to 8 years time, I could probably buy my entire STEAM collection for fifty bucks. Hardly a huge loss, and on the plus side, I am getting some nice deals on STEAM from time to time.
If you can still find them.
Personally, I now avoid Steam because I gave it a try and I have had a couple situations where my game is unplayable for a period of time - it has only happened a couple times, and the periods were never more than a day, but for me that is enough to not deal with them - game unavailability should be due to problems on my end or due to a poorly coded game, not due to some third party. Instead I stick to digital distributers that don't include DRM that can make my game unplayable when I choose to play it.
If other people want to use it, that is their choice and I'm not going to attack them for it. And I don't think STEAM is going anywhere any time soon, but I do not think that it is nearly as "safe" as you are claiming.
