Preservation is a joke. Sure, for super old games sold on cartridges it works. But for anything around… 1998 to 2010 or so? Forget it.
Even when you owned the original PC CDs with the box, the game updates are no longer available (Developer might not even exist anymore, site is shutdown). And if you get the wrong DRM like SecuROM you can’t start your game at all. Valid CD key or not (I tried it with Sacred 2, couldn’t get it to run due to the DRM servers being gone. Support from the shop I bought it years ago just gave me a Steam key afterwards, lol). And of course even if you get things to run, the online servers are no longer available, so that limits it to singleplayer games mostly.
Looking back at all the games I bought right now Steam is doing the best job when it comes to actually keep them running. GOG is a good second place. Hell, my PC doesn’t even have a DVD drive anymore, it’s simply not necessary.
Having played on PC for the last ~27 years I really don’t understand the nostalgia. PC gaming back then was a major hassle between physical media, manual game patching (version 1.01a to 1.01b to 1.02 to 1.1 to …) and shitty DRM that barely worked. We can only hope Steam isn’t going down the gutter, but for now they rake in tons of cash and it’s a privately held company so it should be fine.
wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one 10 months ago
Well, hold on. Why shouldnt we rely on pirates for preservation?
Valve is the only major PC game store that isnt public. Possibly the only PC store period, tho I dont know that for a fact for the smaller distributors. The private nature is why they currently operate as the best option for users, and the odds of the other stores going private is basically zero. So when valve shifts winds, they will be the end of an era.
Do you expect us to be able to request or rely on public companies to ever do better for game preservation and user to user trade than a private company does? You already arent pleased with valves stance, and there is no indication anyone will ever do better than them.
Who else would ever do better? Pirates are the best option.
mammut@lemmy.world 10 months ago
wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one 10 months ago
Ok, but thats still also not about steam. Steam is a store, but they dont make much product. Game devs do that.
Game devs are the ones no longer making physical copies of their games. We should be pushing for the producers of games to be offering these.