Kelefane: I see a lot of folks state that you need to be backing your games up to spare hard drives and whatnot. Well, a lot of folks aren't going to have the wherewithal to do that because its not something that certain people do.
It's not something that
Steam / EA / Ubisoft gamers do because for 94% of stuff they can't. GOG's two main target markets though are disproportionately more likely to do precisely because
1. People who grew up with 90s games are generally more tech savvy (and capable of extreme displays of intelligence such as... downloading a couple of installer files...) and
2. DRM-Free proponents are here precisely because they can back stuff up. If they couldn't, there'd be little reason beyond a few old GOG exclusives to buy most things here vs Steam.
Kelefane: Whether you believe him or not, Gabe Newell has stated in the past that, should Steam be taken permanently offline, a patch would be made available that would allow users to continue to play all their games without the service needing to be active. It would probably work as a perpetual Offline Mode. But you wouldn't need to back anything up. Your entire library would still be present and you can download and uninstall games at your own leisure.
Wrong. "Gabe's promise" (tm) simply isn't true at all. Here's his actual quote:- "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" - Gabe Newell
https://i.imgur.com/VEJwY38.jpg - First that's an unofficial post merely "guessing" what "might" happen, not any "promise" or guarantee of continued service.
- Second, if Steam went offline / closed up shop permanently, the download & store-front servers will inevitably go offline along with the authentication servers, ie, you won't be able to re-download / play / backup anything that you didn't already have installed locally. When Gabe said
you can back up the files yourself, he's talking about Steam games you
already have installed locally prior to server's going down. If you're someone who installs the whole lot at once, then yes you may get to keep most if they change the client and you back them all up. But if like many Steam gamers, you're someone who only downloads a few games at a time and leaves most "in the cloud", you'd be royally screwed.
- Third, it applies only to patching the client to bypass basic "Steamworks" DRM on a client level. They can't remove 3rd party Denuvo (many AAA games). And if the CEG authentication servers got pulled, you wouldn't be able to re-download the custom game's .exe for new hardware (CEG is in each game .exe itself not just the steam_api.dll files), so even if you did have those games backed up, the next time you changed motherboard all CEG protected games still locked to the old board would stop working.
- Fourth, if each game still needs Steam client running to launch them (even with a local bypass), then what happens in 10-15 years time when due to long-term OS changes, that client becomes incompatible with newer future Windows (same way that Steam & Galaxy no longer run on XP)? You'll lose all games not on
this list long-term anyway...
- Fifth, even if Steam kept the download servers running for say 30 days prior to going out of business for you to download their games, their server's would be so massively overloaded by hundreds of millions of gamers all trying to download everything they own that download speeds would plummet and it's doubtful most people would manage to grab even a fraction of what they "own".
In short, the only real thing "Uncle Gabe" ever said was -
We could alter the Steam client to skip the basic online Steamworks check but that won't work for Denuvo protected games (possibly CEG too), but that's not any promise that we will, nor does it change games to not need the Steam client (which may stop working on new Windows in years to come), nor do we promise that the download servers won't be pulled at the same time and that you'll even be able to download the games you don't already have installed. Everything else is people putting words into his mouth due to wanting to believe he made a 'promise' that he didn't to feel their Steam collection is less fragile than it is if the only copy of most of their games is in the cloud and not even installed locally, let alone backed up.