Buying digital version of video games on digital platforms such as Steam, Uplay and more comes with a risk of you losing your game library in the event of the digital platform shutting down. This might be the case with your Steam Library if it ever shuts down.
Back in 2013, Reddit user Sir_Petus asked Valve what would happen to his/her Steam library if by any chance Steam shuts down in the future.
To this, the support assured the user that they have measures in place that will see that users are able to play their games in the event of the digital store shutting down.
However, 5 years after that the user followed-up with the question that how would it work with the measures in place as now we have DRMs that are tied to the Steam account as it would require a clean exe file to run the game.
This time around the Steam support replied with a vague answer that they don’t have any additional information about this topic as they don’t plan to shut down any features.
While it might not seem much but this can potentially create a problem for Steam users in the future in the unfortunate event if the platform shuts down and the thanks goes to the DRM.
As noted by the Reddit user, according to 9. C. of TOS(Termination of Service) Valve is not obligated to let you play games in your Steam library if its shuts down unless it is sued by the user.
This means that if one day Valve decides to shutdown Steam then you won’t be able to play your games especially those titles which use some form of DRM as they would then require a DRM free version of the game to play.
Judging from this reply, it seems that Valve has no measures in place in the case of Steam shutting down.
Speaking of Steam, Bethesda has announced that Fallout 76 won’t be coming to Steam but did assure that it won’t happen to its other titles.
However, Bethesda has noted that Doom Eternal on Steam is still doubtful as it hasn’t decided if the game would come to Steam or would be a Bethesda.net exclusive.
What do you think of Steam’s non-existent reliability in the event of the platform shutting down? Let us know your thoughts.
Source: Reddit
