Recently, the US state of California signed into law a valuable consumer protection for digital content. The law there doesn't go into effect until 2025, but Valve has already released it on the Steam, as highlighted by Engadget.
See related: Five new games on Steam that you might not have noticed!
Now, when you go to your cart for checkout, you will receive the following message:
“A digital product purchase grants a license for the product on Steam.”
We're in the UK and lo and behold, if we go to our Steam cart, we now see the message before we commit to paying. It's particularly positive that Valve hasn't just limited this to where they're legally required to and has made it available to all their customers.
This all came to a head with Ubisoft, with the company shutting down the servers for The Crew, leaving every player who had purchased the game with no way to play it. With no offline mode, when the servers went down, so did the game, lost to the sands of time.
Read more: Where can you pre-order Lego Horizon Adventures?
The backlash was real, and it made it clear to the public that they simply no longer own their games. In the case of The Crew, even those who own a physical copy now have more than just a keepsake. Ubisoft has at least learned a valuable lesson and will be putting offline features in newer games in the series, so this won't happen again.
But it's a different world we live in now than when they started playing games over 30 years ago. Back then, you bought a game, online gaming didn't exist, and you could play it indefinitely (or until an 8-year-old broke the tape). In the digital age, we don't own our music, games, movies, and TV, it's all just a rental agreement for as long as the provider wants to keep providing it.
See also: Nintendo: Has it shut down the Switch emulator Ryujinx?
It's sad. At least Steam has made the right move, and it's now clear what it offers. Let's move on to the rest of the audience now.
Source: windowscentral
