You Should Own The Games You Buy

If you’ve ever looked at the Steam Subscriber Agreement, you probably know that by purchasing any game on Steam, you are not actually buying the game itself: you’re paying for a “non-exclusive licence and right, to use the Content and Services for your personal, non-commercial use”. Basically, what this means is that you don’t own this copy of the game; you are only granted a right to use it — the product you purchased is not the game files, but the ability and permission to use them.

Now, this isn’t exclusive to Steam at all: any other online store and launcher only sells you a license and not a copy of the game you get to own. Even GOG, a site of which the entire appeal is that there are no DRMs in the titles they sell, legally only sells a licence. That practice has been standard ever since online videogame stores became mainstream, and honestly, I really hate it.

Let’s start off with a bit more history: before online stores became the mainstream way of obtaining videogames, people used to go to physical stores and buy physical discs or cartridges of the games they wanted to play (and anyone that’s my age probably has the same thought I had when I learnt about it, which is “what the fuck”). These discs were actual copies of the game, which you got to own, and even after Steam took off, physical copies were still popular in the console marketplace. Since online gaming and purchasing became the most common way of obtaining videogames, physical discs also became just glorified licence keys — putting a game disc inside a PlayStation 5 only activates a licence to download and play the title. Today, almost everyone except collectors buys digitally, which makes sense because it’s quicker, there’s no worry about stock, and it’s a lot less effort. 

This digital purchasing phenomenon has one problem, though — you no longer own the things you purchase. Looking at the Steam Subscriber Agreement again, it goes on to say: “This license ends upon termination of (a) this Agreement or (b) a Subscription that includes the license.”, what that basically means is that Valve can change the agreement to include any clause they want, no matter how preposterous, as long as it’s legal — and you have to accept it if you want to retain access to your games. I don’t think I need to explain why this is a problem — I paid for a product, and it makes no sense that Valve could just take it away from me on a whim. 

Some of you are probably saying that Valve is never going to do that — taking away everyone’s games would be business suicide. And you’d be correct: if any company just decides to randomly take away people’s collection of games, they won’t survive a few months of business after that, but what about just one or two games? That has happened — the original Overwatch was just taken away from everyone’s library and replaced by the (in my humble opinion) worse sequel. Which is free to play, meaning the game I bought in 2016 for £40 is now gone forever, and that is completely legal!

Sure, it’s been five years of fun I got out of that money, but I want to ask you: would you be fine with someone breaking into your house and stealing an old football? Why should it be okay if the thing I paid for isn’t physical? That’s not the first time a company just took away access to a game because hey, what can you do about it? You don’t own anything; you’re just paying for permission to use what they own. A very incomplete list of games that were killed is hosted by the Stop Killing Games community, and I say very incomplete because the only titles listed there are ones enough people realised have been lost forever. Think of how many niche games could have been killed and forever lost just because their player base was too small. What if your favourite game is only known by a handful of people, and one day, it just goes away, to remain nothing more than a memory? Would you be fine with that?

So, it’s obviously an issue for games to just stop existing and stop being playable. But what can be done about this? Is there really anything we can do about it? Well, it’s complicated, but yes. There were some steps in the right direction lately — a new law in California now requires digital stores to admit you’re buying a licence somewhere obvious that people actually look, and not just in the ToS no one reads. The biggest ongoing effort to change the situation is the Stop Killing Games campaign, which I’ve talked about in the past. Unfortunately, the European Citizens Initiative that the Stop Killing Games campaign started has hit a bit of a snag lately, so if you’re a European citizen or know anyone who is, go sign it and share it with anyone that you can think of. I’m sure your family won’t mind signing a quick thing for you online, even if they personally don’t care about videogames.

The best thing non-Europeans can do right now, though, is try to buy from GOG as much as possible — while legally, GOG still only sells you a licence — their DRM-free requirement means that practically, you own the game as long as it’s installed on your computer. If you want to, you can copy it to a USB stick and have what is, basically, a modern videogame disc. Buying from GOG will show companies that their “you will own nothing and be happy” approach to gaming will not work. Not only will it tell them we refuse to buy something that can be taken away from us at their discretion, but it will also tell them that we refuse to even buy games on a platform that allows DRMs and will accept nothing less than having our games be ours.

But even these solutions are only treating a symptom of the problem — the only reason we need them is that what people are being sold is a licence and not the game. In an ideal scenario, there will be a global campaign with the goal of making digital stores sell you a copy of the game you buy and not a licence. I want to hope that will happen eventually, but no matter how optimistic you are, it’s impossible to think the battle will be easy. The US is the most important place for the gaming industry, and companies would lobby the hell out of everyone to make sure a law like that doesn’t pass. But it still could — votes matter, too. And other places in the world can still influence it — if the EU passes a law requiring digital stores to sell a copy, I don’t imagine Steam would pull out of there. It’ll be a long and hard battle, but it’s possible and definitely worth it. All the solutions like Stop Killing Games are fine, but you can make a game playable after end-of-life, and you can be more transparent about what the customer is buying, but the only way to truly own something is to truly own it. And to leave you with one last question: if buying isn’t owning, is piracy really stealing?