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Re:Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth o... by 3np on Monday December 27, 2021 @02:18AM (#29700271)
> Personally I always get kind of nervous around buying things on PSN, Xbox, Stadia, Steam, Oculus, etc. If they ban me, do I lose my thousands of dollars of games?

You didn’t buy any games. You paid for access, but as you note you don’t actually own any of these games. Please stop giving in to the doublespeak BS of these companies.

Other than the false marketing (using words like “buy”) and that DRM is toxic, I don’t see what’s really not right - it’s a terrible deal but you’re free to not partake. As long as people keep giving companies money for this kind of thing it will continue.

It’s not like being able to play the very latest AAA game is something that is hard to give up, unlike a lot of other essential software. Just say no.

(BTW, is this really the case with Steam? Last time I checked you could always make a local offline backup of a downloaded game and bring it with you; any connectivity/license check would have to be made in the game itself)

Re:Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth o... by jimmydorry on Monday December 27, 2021 @02:45AM (#29700396)
You can only be offline for a set amount of time with Steam (last I used it), and the check is made before you go offline.
Re:Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth o... by j_4 on Monday December 27, 2021 @05:02AM (#29701124)
That's a different thing from what OP is saying, they're right that Steam doesn't automatically enforce any DRM. It does provide the mechanisms but it's up to the devs whether they use them or not. In lots of cases you can just directly run the executable, especially for indie games.

Source: am indie game dev

Re:Ubisoft deleted account with hundreds of dollars’ worth o... by jimmydorry on Friday December 31, 2021 @12:40PM (#29750351)
Steam can work as a dumb CDN for executables, but a substantial number of games do use the out-of-the-box Steam DRM, especially the AAA games GP referenced.

Source: Have used Steam pretty much since it was released and also worked with SteamKit for a project or two.