Thanks for the link! Just to clarify: the DRM issue is that Valve (or retailers in general) would have to disable DRM in order to let customers resell their games? And this would reopen the Pandora’s Box of piracy etc. that DRM was intended to resolve?
The Metro for Steam unofficial patch has been updated to support the new beta.
The opposite.
Part of the decision was that the original purchaser needed to be able to prove they no longer had access to the software after selling it. Once the decision got interpreted in practice, the bar for that proof was set really high. In practice the only way to meet it would be if it’s technically impossible to run the software again after transferring the license to someone else.
If the game has effective always-online DRM, that’d probably be enough to act as proof. Thus requiring that secondary sales be allowed. If it doesn’t have DRM, it’s basically impossible for a consumer to prove that they didn’t keep a copy, and Steam would be under no obligation to allow another account to download the game again using the same license.
Just to chime in with a point re: resale: back in the days of physical games, there was a difference between used and new games. New games came in nice boxes, with beautiful manuals etc. That’s why, as a kid, I preferred bargain bin games to used games. Also, you could be sure that the disc wasn’t scratched. The used game experience was inferior in these (somewhat insignificant) ways, and that made enough of a difference for me.
Obviously, in the digital realm, there’s zero difference between used and new games. And I also think this is where game companies may have to go: giving the user specific minor bonuses tied to their game accounts that cannot be transferred when selling the games. Until it’s challenged in court, at least, this may be a path for companies to keep new games more valuable than used ones.
We might even see a return of the online passes.
A bunch of PS3, Vita & Xbox games charged an extra 10$ to play them online. Codes were included with new copies, but they also expired after it was on the shelf for a year or two.
It would, and books and movies. But the French ruling apparently contradicts EU law, so unlikely to ever get enforced even by France so I am not losing any sleep over it.
https://www.isfe.eu/news/french-ruling-on-copyright-exhaustion-flies-in-face-of-established-eu-law/
Valve’s added a bunch of default touch-based configurations for remote play. Not that you should ever use touch based control emulation but… if you wanted to, you can.
Anyone had the client force itself to the “top” of your window stack since the update? It’s happened mysteriously to me twice today.
Steam appears to be down everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Wonder what’s up?
Time to play some games from the Epic Store! ;)
I was just wondering what the heck I did wrong. I was trying to fix another Steam issue, then I couldn’t connect at all. At least I know it is not just me.
Once the servers are back, any suggestions on how to fix my error? Steam won’t launch on the first attempt. It is not in the tray, I can’t alt tab to it, but it is in task manager. Eventually its tasks end on their own (or I end them earlier). Once it gets ended after the first attempt, Steam works. There are no error messages, it just sits in task manager until it kills itself or I do, then it works okay on the second try. This is after every boot. Suggestions?
Is Ubisoft down too? I just tried and it said services were unavailable.
Wow, I can’t even get offline mode to work, and I haven’t had that problem in like 5 years. And this right here is why any service-dependent launcher (Steam, EGS, Uplay, Origin, whatever) sucks ass. Time to go play some GOG games.
Playing Hearthstone in the meantime.
Web store is restored.
Offline doesn’t work for me either. It had a ‘start offline’ button there at first but when I clicked it, it waited for a while and came back to the same connect screen and now that option is missing. It only shows the reconnect button now. Same thing when I try to start a game. It doesn’t even have the start offline option now.
Useful to know that it’s not just me. This is particularly disappointing because I’d thought we were long past this kind of thing. Ugh.
Always the priority, sigh.
Edit: Though in fairness, everything else seems to have followed.
Yeah, I also hate this service dependent model. Will always love GOG for their approach to this.
No, probably just the first and easiest step to restoration, since it’s web networking server infrastructure only.
And everything is back up.
Steam down for anyone else?
:P