According to Steam's terms and conditions can they remove games from your library and are Steam emulators allowed?

This is in reference to a post titled https://leminal.space/post/1113224. The title is kind of self-explanatory and piracy was brought up in the comments. Someone mentioned GOG and Steam granting users indefinite licenses to users regardless of whether or not the game is still being sold.

While I could see that with GOG something tells me that’s probably not the case with Steam but I can’t find a specific quote to back it up. I can’t seem to find an instance of them removing a game from someone’s library even when a game was banned in a country like in the case of Disco Elysium and Rimworld being banned in Australia.

I couldn’t see Valve removing games from people’s libraries without a good reason due to the amount of backlash that would cause but maybe under specific circumstances they would.

On a similar note I was curious if anything in the terms and conditions talks about Steam emulators. There’s a section it that says:

“… host or provide matchmaking services for the Content and Services or emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Valve in any network feature of the Content and Services, through protocol emulation, tunneling, modifying or adding components to the Content and Services …”

But I am not sure if I am misunderstanding what it’s trying to get across.

I looked through a majority of the Steam Subscriber Agreement but it can be a bit hard to decipher. There could also be comments from Valve staff elsewhere like on Twitter or Reddit that may at least shown their thoughts on the matter.

This might be a bit boring for a lot of people but I am curious about the DRM behind Steam. I feel like people have placed a lot of trust and money into Valve and Steam so I am curious about potential worst case scenarios.

seaturtle,

Steam can definitely remove your access to games in your account. Though, to be fair, it generally doesn’t, as it has little incentive to do so (outside of such cases as credit card chargebacks). There are a few cases though.

(Note of course that games delisted from sale in the store are generally not removed from accounts.)

To be fair, other stores certainly could too. But something like GOG is limited in what it can do, if you’ve been properly backing up your files, since you can still access your own offline installers even if you completely lose access to your account.

That said, as far as dangers to your Steam account go, I’d say that individual games getting removed is probably less likely than one of the following:

  • you losing access due to not being able to login for whatever reason (e.g. forgot your stuff and also lost your phone but you had Steam’s 2FA going so you can’t login)
  • getting your account stolen by a hijacker (which there are TONS and there have been for years due to the profitability of virtual item fraud and account fraud and the synergies between these two activities). If Steam screws up their side of things, this might even happen through no fault of your own – for example, a bunch of people got hijacked several years ago when hijackers discovered that Steam’s password recovery page would accept a blank input.
  • having your account banned for whatever reason. Probably less likely if you’re well-behaved and don’t cheat and don’t talk about piracy on Steam, etc., but it’s worth noting that this could happen. Also, if you dabble in cheats and your account gets VAC banned, I’d imagine that having to use a new account ends up being kinda similar to being banned from your old one, due to the hassle of having to switch accounts.

There’s an old story about Gabe Newell saying that if Steam ever shuts down Valve will make sure players are able to access their games, but there’s a few problems with this:

  • It’s not actually in the Steam Subscriber Agreement.
  • This is old info anyway.
  • Given how big Steam is, it’s more likely to be sold off than to go dark if Valve finds itself in financial trouble. And even if GabeN has truly promised this, the new owners of Steam are not beholden to such a promise.

As for Steam emulators, like SmartSteamEmu, I’m pretty sure they’re not allowed but Valve just largely turns a blind eye to them and will do so unless they become a very significant issue in some way.

CorrodedCranium, (edited )
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

There’s an old story about Gabe Newell saying that if Steam ever shuts down Valve will make sure players are able to access their games, but there’s a few problems with this:

A little further down in the comments I commented about how it’s questionable if Gabe even said that to begin with. I vaguely remembered hearing the same story and wanted to check to see what the source was.

Rearsays,

There was a case I vaguely recall where a country was embargoed

Clearwater,

It’s exceedingly rare, but there’s one case where a game can disappear from your Steam library: keys.

Game developers/publishers have the ability to revoke keys at any point, and that can result in games disappearing from your library.

I’m yet to hear of Valve themselves making a purchase inaccessible, but I have had keys get revoked. For example, free Gleam keys that add shovelware to your library.

Even games that Valve banned from sale on Steam can be activated and added to your account using keys. I believe that people who purchased the game also get to keep their purchase even if it’s later banned from sale.

camr_on,
@camr_on@lemmy.world avatar

Damn they banned Disco and Rimworld in Oz?

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

You may want to check out the article I linked. I think it was temporary and was still available through sites like Steam

jelloeater85,
@jelloeater85@lemmy.world avatar

I mean, alot of content services suck, but Steam killed game piracy IMHO. 90% off sales and such.

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

Fair enough. You do see the Gabe Newell quote

“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue,”

quite often online.

angrymouse, (edited )

This is not true in developing countries tho. In Brasil diablo 4 released by 1/4 the minimum wage

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

I would be interested to see how regional pricing compares to the average wage.

IDeserveToBeLoved,

They’d rather loose genuine Brasil players than loose money from people using Brasil/Argentina vpn

neo,
@neo@lemmy.comfysnug.space avatar

In first world countries, piracy is a service issue. And steam offers regional pricing, but soydevs don’t actually care about not-america/not-eu

shneancy,

honestly, it’s not a pricing issue- until it is. I absolutely adore Starfield, but 300PLN is a lot of money in Poland

but the fact this is the only game I pirated in the last decade also says a lot

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

How does that scale to other things in Poland?

shneancy,

300PLN is a week and a half worth of groceries, and not bottom shelf groceries either

seaturtle,

Ironically, Steam being shit is a major reason I’ve come back to seeing the value in piracy.

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

What do you dislike about it?

kryostar,
@kryostar@lemmy.world avatar

Steam is the reason I don’t pirate games as much.

Jimbo,
@Jimbo@yiffit.net avatar

Fwiw the original GRID and FUEL games both published by Codemasters have been unavailable for purchase for some years now, and though there’s no longer a Steam page for them now I still have access to them in my library and have played both fairly recently.

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

Yeah a few people have mentioned it now. I think there have been a few big rushes of people buying games before they were taken off the store for some reason like the classic Grand Theft Auto games before they were replaced by the remasters.

I’m referring to people getting their games removed from their actual library.

Lojcs,

I read the agreement a while ago to look for this kind of thing and found that it contains a clause that said something to the effect of “steam won’t revoke the access of individuals but it can do so for groups of people”. Sounded like a clause for if they lose the licence to distribute a game and have to pull it from a region or something, but they could define the group however they want.

Chewy7324,

The full section G (except iii):

G. Restrictions on Use of Content and Services

You may not use the Content and Services for any purpose other than the permitted access to Steam and your Subscriptions, and to make personal, non-commercial use of your Subscriptions, except as otherwise permitted by this Agreement or applicable Subscription Terms. Except as otherwise permitted under this Agreement (including any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use), or under applicable law [1] notwithstanding these restrictions, you may not, in whole or in part, copy, photocopy, reproduce, publish, distribute, translate, reverse engineer, derive source code from, modify, disassemble, decompile, create derivative works based on, or remove any proprietary notices or labels from the Content and Services or any software accessed via Steam without the prior consent, in writing, of Valve.

You are entitled to use the Content and Services for your own personal use, but you are not entitled to: (i) sell, grant a security interest in or transfer reproductions of the Content and Services to other parties in any way, nor to rent, lease or license the Content and Services to others without the prior written consent of Valve, except to the extent expressly permitted elsewhere in this Agreement (including any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use); (ii) host or provide matchmaking services for the Content and Services or emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Valve in any network feature of the Content and Services, through protocol emulation [2], tunneling, modifying or adding components to the Content and Services, use of a utility program or any other techniques now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose including, but not limited to network play over the Internet, network play utilizing commercial or non-commercial gaming networks or as part of content aggregation networks, websites or services, without the prior written consent of Valve; […]

First of all I’m not a lawyer, so don’t take any of the following seriously.

[1] is interesting, because in many jurisdictions some of the mentioned restrictions are allowed, so they can be safely ignored. E.g. reverse engineering programs running on your own device is legal in the EU [3].

At [2] Valve writes it is forbidden to:

emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Valve in any network feature of the Content and Services, through protocol emulation

I don’t know exactly what they mean with “Content and Services”, do they include the game itself with this statement? Steam games usually have a SDK from Valve in them, so probably yes.

Protocol redirection has to be allowed else they could go after routers etc. But they specifiy “protocol emulation”, which is how goldberg works if I understand correctly. The reverse engeering of the protocol is probably allowed, if it is done purely by observation.

I really have no idea if the restriction on emulating protocols is legal. Though if it was illegal I bet Nintendo would have already gone after Switch emulators.

Luckily there aren’t any lawsuits against emulators since that could set a bad precedent for the entire software industry. A similar bad case was Oracle v. Google on Java, which luckily was in favor of Google (not sure I’d ever say that ;D).

And if someone doesn’t agree to the terms of service since they don’t use Steam, they might be in the clear. Obviously they’d have to obtain a copy of the game, which would most probably be illegal.

[3] vidstromlabs.com/…/the-legal-boundaries-of-revers…

Valve probably includes the clause about removing games from your library because of illegal games (for whatever reason, e.g. someone uploaded without being the rightholder) and malware. If a developer turns evil it makes sense to remove the game and the developer from the platform. Usually if a game is no longer sold because of licences running out (car games, …), Valve keeps the games in the library of people who already bought it, since the licence covers it.

I judge companies according to their (probable) track record. Valve has been great for the most part and I don’t see it changing for the forseeable future with GabeN in charge. If the company changes ownership (going public, getting bought etc) I’m definitly going to be more careful and backup the games. Thanks to Goldberg they can still be played even if Steam was shutting down.

Sorry for the big wall of text, I’m just reading and trying to collect my thoughts and understanding of the matter. It’s a great question though. If you’ve read it actually through I’m glad if you can point out any errors or add any thoughts. As I said, I’m a layman.

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

Sorry for the big wall of text, I’m just reading and trying to collect my thoughts and understanding of the matter.

No worries you made some good points. I was curious about the Content and Services myself. I felt like I kind of hit a wall when encountering that and trying to learn more.

Someone else stated the emulator protocol section might be referring to Valve’s functionality and network communications and if that’s the case I feel like projects like X Link Kai that allow you to remotely play LAN games on various consoles would fall under that. I do feel like it’s likely referring to things like the Goldberg emulator. I wonder if you talked about it enough in Steam forum threads if you would get banned or if it would be like all the guides out there for older games that require some kind of no-CD crack to run.

Morgikan,
@Morgikan@lemm.ee avatar

One interesting thing about Valve, especially when people start talking negatively about Epic in relation to Steam, is that they have attempted to argue in court that Steam is a subscription based service. It did not work out for them, but the end goal was them wanting to say that they did not have to provide access to purchased titles.

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

I did not know that. I wonder if it was argued to give them the freedom to do as they please to potentially cover their asses or if it was with a goal in mind like a rental service or a streaming service like Stadia.

I wonder if it was around the same time Steam Machines or Steam Link were really being pushed.

Morgikan,
@Morgikan@lemm.ee avatar

I’m not really sure why, but most people aren’t aware the extent that Valve has been litigated against. When they went into Australia, they basically disregarded numerous laws and we’re fined and called out on all of them. The subscription-based service idea they tried to pass was in a French court though. I think that was 2018. Here’s a link to more of it: engadget.com/2019-09-19-french-court-valve-steam-…

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

Thanks for the link.

Valve’s lawyers attempted to argue Steam was a subscription service, according to French publication Numerama. The court, however, rejected Valve’s defense, saying Steam doesn’t sell games as part of a subscription package. The court went on to say Valve’s policy on game reselling is against European Union laws that govern the free-flow of digital goods. In a statement to Polygon, Valve co-founder Doug Lombardi said the company plans to appeal the ruling. “The decision will have no effect on Steam while the case is on appeal,” Lombardi added. If the ruling is upheld, Valve will be forced to change its store policy or face stiff fines.

I wonder how long they plan on dragging this out for. I heard a bit about the debate regarding reselling games but I don’t recall hearing about Valve backing down.

blindsight, (edited )

I’m confused by your comment; are you saying Steam claimed they were a streaming service, or Epic claimed they were a streaming service, and what was the end goal? Do you by chance have an article about it? I’m interested in reading more.

I’d search myself but I don’t understand enough to know what to search for.

I tried throwing some keyword soup into Google and got nothing. “steam epic claim streaming service court legal”

XEAL,

network feature of the Content and Services, through protocol emulation, tunneling, modifying or adding components to the Content and Services

My interpretation is: “don’t fuck with Steam’s functionalities or network communications”

It has nothing to do with console emulators.

mateomaui,

As far as I can tell, every delisted Steam game I own is still in my account.

XEAL,

Same here with the original Metro: Last Light.

However, Valve has grabbed us by the balls by forcing use to use Steam to run purchased games. They could go out of business or whatever and people would the entire Steam games library.

I try to buy games via GOG instead if they have a similar offer for the same game.

coughrelief,
@coughrelief@lemmy.world avatar

I think Gabe said long ago that whenever steam died, you’d somehow be given all the games you owned still

db2,

And if you believe that you’ll believe anything.

Dettweiler42,

They’ve maintained a very pro-consumer stance so far; so yes, I do believe them for the time being.

runjun,

If they ever go public, panic.

Dettweiler42,

I certainly would. Going public is always the precursor to enshittification.

db2,

Reddit wasn’t evil once too and we all know how that turned out. Or Google if you need a bigger name.

seaturtle,

IMO Steam is only “pro-consumer” in comparison to some of the really nasty DRM schemes out there. In recent years they’ve done a bunch of annoying things, including:

  • making it harder to access older versions of games
  • gradually changing the fundamental operation of the Steam client to become browser-dependent for everything (it used to be a much lighter and faster application that ran using their own code before it became basically Chrome)
  • basically orphaning the Steam skins feature with update after update successively breaking more and more things (related to the above)
  • making it harder to use older versions of the Steam client (okay, this might be hard to avoid technically, but still)

And of course, it’s still basically DRM-agnostic for any additional layers of DRM, such as and including Denuvo. As well as having no convenient way to just turn off updates, which means that if you don’t take your own precautions and a bad update got installed, well, good luck.

To be fair, Steam’s own DRM is still relatively light (compared to some other schemes), and it sometimes does technically have DRM-free games (if Steam acting as a downloader doesn’t count as DRM), and it offers tons of cheap games, but all of these features (or better, such as DRM-free installers) are easily available from various competitors. Steam’s main attraction these days, frankly, is its selection, with a bunch of games that can’t be bought elsewhere. which is a sort of market dominance that it only maintains by virtue of already being big.

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

I don’t think Gabe actually said anything. It seems like a user, over ten years ago, asked a support staff about it. The Support Tech said

“… measures are in place to ensure that ll users will continue to have access to their Steam games.”

Someone on a Steam forum post said Gabe said

“If you right click on a game in Steam, you’ll see that you can back up the files yourself. Unless there was some situation I don’t understand, we would presumably disable authentication before any event that would preclude the authentication servers from being available.

We’ve tested disabling authentication and it works.”

but as far as I am aware that was just a post from a random user. It could be that they contacted Gabe himself through his email. It was 2009 and from what I recall he would frequently respond to users back then but there’s not much to back it up currently.

ninchuka,

Gabe seems to actually respond to emails, so maybe send one asking about this

WarmApplePieShrek,

Does anyone actually believe that shite?

Chimaeratorian,

Steam servers would have to blow up the same day it went out of business, I feel like Gabe’s dying breath would be spent hitting a killswitch for DRM before the service shut down. Maybe hyperbole and naive of me but I doubt the truth is far off.

XEAL,

We can only trust that Valve acts in good faith if the time ever comes…

doktorseven,

Not all games require Steam. Steam DRM exists for companies and individuals to use if they want, but it is in no way mandatory. Look for lists online of non-DRMed Steam games that can be ran completely without Steam.

Blame the maker of the game, not Valve.

XEAL,

Now I’m wondering if any team has released a game both on GOG and Steam and still enabled DRM on the Steam release…

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

Totally. A not-so-current mention would be Fallout 3. For the longest time the Steam release used Games For Windows Live which wasn’t really working for years but the GOG version was DRM free.

I can’t think of a recent release where this has happened but I imagine it was either because it was typical for the team behind a game to have a specific kind of DRM or because the GOG release was lightly later than the Steam release.

seaturtle,

For a while, Recettear and Chantelise were sold on GOG, but I don’t think the Steam versions ever stopped using Steam DRM. But the GOG versions appeared a good long while after the Steam releases.

Also some older Ys games had DRM when they first appeared on Steam, but I don’t remember whether the DRM was patched out by the time they were sold elsewhere (on GOG and formerly on GamersGate). I do know that pretty much all the games developed by Falcom are available DRM-free these days, and I know those that are published by XSEED are the same versions on GOG and Steam. Whether this is the case for the games published by other publishers (NISA, Aksys, and Mastiff) I’m not sure yet. A likely candidate worth checking in this regard is Gurumin. It’s on GOG, and it’s old, and it was published by someone other than XSEED (specifically, Mastiff); I vaguely remember Gurumin on Steam being unable to start without Steam.

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

Here is a list of DRM free Steam games for those interested

pcgamingwiki.com/…/List_of_DRM-free_games_on_Stea…

WarmSoda,

You can play the majority of steam games without Steam.

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

Do you mean utilizing tools like Steam emulators? Because there’s only a few hundred DRM-free games on Steam that I am aware of. I think it’s far from a majority.

junusdenised420,
@junusdenised420@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

DRM free games dont need steam emus, they have no DRM just copy and paste the files and your good to go. Almost all other games that only use Steam’s DRM can be cracked by replacing the dll and in some cases patching the exe. There are tools that to all the heavy lifting for you.

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

It’s not DRM free at that point though. That’s like making your own decoder wheel to crack an early 2000s game. You are still circumventing something designed to prevent you from redistributing the game.

You just aren’t dealing with things like Denovo is all.

seaturtle,

If you have to crack the DRM, it’s not DRM-free anymore.

The ones that are copy-and-paste-the-files-and-run-them, sure. But just because DRM is easy to crack doesn’t mean it’s not DRM.

(The one exceptions might be those super old forms of DRM which basically just need the manual and that’s it. Sometimes, those were actually done in creative ways that made narrative sense in the game, too. So those are like, obsolete DRM that’s auto-circumvented.)

WarmSoda,

All you have to do for the most part is make a shortcut from the exe.

And yeah, a few hundred games.

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

I’m pretty sure a majority of the time that still causes Steam to at least try to launch.

There are a lot of cases of people forgetting to crack their games and trying to launch the executable just to be greeted with Steam you can find in piracy support communities.

And yeah, a few hundred games.

That’s still a drop in the bucket.

seaturtle,

I know to keep the Task Manager handy when I do my testing!

CorrodedCranium, (edited )
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

I think there are very few accounts of them actually removing games from people’s libraries so far. When looking around I found Codename: Gordon and Order of War. Both were done for good reasons and with the permission from the developers from what I can tell.

mateomaui,

Only times I’ve had games removed so far was because of activating a duplicate key from a keyshop, and the message I got from Valve was reasonable and non-threatening about it. Just got a replacement key to activate and nothing since.

I even activated keys I bought from keyshops for the original GTA trilogy after it was already delisted. They didn’t complain, I still have the install option.

CorrodedCranium,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

A few people have mentioned similar things and it’s a bit of a different situation. For all Steam knows you got that code in a Humble Bundle and are just now getting around to activating it. A bit more of an extreme example would be Prey (2006) which was removed from Steam I think in 2009 (oddly enough because they ran out of keys) but yet you can still find and buy keys for the game.

What I am talking about would be more like Afro Samurai 2, Alan Awake, or Star Control where games were explicitly removed due to some kind of special circumstance and not replaced. Would there be a point where Steam simply has to remove a game from a users library?

mateomaui,

Likely the only time you’ll have that happen are due to copyright infringement assets, finding extremely objectionable things in it, etc. Even if something was delisted because of expired licensing (see Deadpool, etc), any copies bought before then should still be installable. Like you said, pretty sure any full removal has to be under exceptional circumstances.

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