this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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This is in reference to a post titled Amazon Prime Video is able to remove a video from your library after purchase.. 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.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (13 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (11 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

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

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