All these scenarios happen regularly to companies even bigger than Valve. In either case I don’t see how Valve would be able to provide means to continue using games as they would need to provide cracks to every game, which I doubt is even possible legally.

Several big DRM-music sellers already turned off their DRM servers or will do so in the future (Microsoft, Yahoo, Walmart to name a few). They all left it up to the user to ensure they can use their paid-for products in the future.

As for backups, they are worthless if Steam turns of their DRM servers. Point 1. of how to restore backups says “Install Steam and log in to your account…”. So, no DRM server no restoring your backups.

Buying games from Steam-like stores is nothing but renting games for an undetermined amount of time, from a players perspective. All the “developer friendly” talk with these DRM stores is nice and well, but they aren’t “customer friendly”. Still, people seem to accept Steam’s activation-DRM better than EA’s :D

Ok NOW I’m done. For real this time!

Cheers,

Nick the Ever-Rambling!

Now, the two potential exit strategies of concern regarding VALVe’s Steam from a player-perspective..

1. The company gets acquired by a larger company.

Chances are likely at this point that there’s enough value in the digital distribution model to make this the more likely possibility. If this model is successful, some of that value is actually CUMULATIVE. a.k.a. the more games you have, the more likely you are to return and see what’s new. Thus, the chances of an acquirer making this go away is not a huge possibility in my opinion. If the acquirer were one who own/operates a competitor digital distribution mechanism and is simply seeking more market share, then chances are still likely that existing games would be accommodated and available, though possibly through different software mechanisms. Again, the cumulative value of generating repeat visits to any store, online or otherwise, is larger than you might think.

2. Digital distribution fails entirely and VALVe decides to cease the Steam service altogether.

I would expect that this scenario would more likely be played out via an technology acquisition vs. simply going away, but if it were to go away it remains highly likely that some level of compensation would be provided to end users via alternative services… DVD offline copies of purchased software… etc. While possible, I find it very hard to believe that VALVe would want to generate the kind of ill-will with consumers by denying them access to the games they purchased with good faith and their hard-earned cash.. particularly if the company was to remain and continue to make new games. Of course, we’re talking a failure of the digital distribution model which would mean many folks aren’t buying their games via this mechanism in the first place. Thankfully, I don’t see that happening. In fact, quite the contrary.

The *only* scenario that is even a REMOTE possibility (and by remote I mean less than 0.00001%), VALVe could suddenly cease to exist or their servers could be rendered inoperable in some fashion, causing continued servicing of the downloading and use of purchased games to be impossible. With the whole idea of the “cloud” (implemented properly), this extremely remote possibility should be even LESS likely due to the decentralized failure-tolerant nature of the architecture.

I could probably go on further, but something about leaving a comment that’s longer than the original post has me wondering if I should step away from the computer for a while :)

Cheers,

Nick

That’s the flipside of digital distribution.

One of my biggest concerns is what would happen if they went out of business (or something else happened) and Steam could no longer function. Hopefully they would find a way to replace Steam with another system and let people continue to play their games.

However, Steam lets me play my games – even offline. They seem to be putting players high on their list of priorities and that is a good thing.

Jake – have you considered that by requesting a log you might be focusing on hours… when in the fact you could focus on the results? If artist wants to get paid “per 3d model”, then why not accept that?

You mention fixed prices and dishonesty, but think about it this way:
- if you want a fancy looking background graphics, and it costs you let’s say 500 bucks. Why would you care if the artist spends 2 hours or 50 hours doing it? If it’s 500 bucks value to you, why ask for the log?
- Also remember that people can be dishonest with logs: if they can “load their fixed prices” then of course they can “load their hourly amounts”…

Of course I’m biased towards logs, I keep one myself so I can see how long I spend on various aspects of each game, and it also helps to motivate me when I know I haven’t put in enough hours one day or week. Also it’s satisfying seeing more time logged if you know you are being paid by the hour for it, it’s very concrete.