this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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The author of this article reflexively and illogically defends Steam (like usual):
He literally completely misses the modder's point. Steam itself will not run on the original machine you purchased KOTOR 2 on. You can buy a gaming machine, purchase a game through steam and 6 years later, one random day you're suddenly no longer able to play your game, simply because Valve has decided that the version of Steam that you bought the game through is no longer ok and now you need to upgrade your hardware and OS to play the same game you've been playing for years.
In my opinion, that's not on Steam to support their client on a long past EOL operating system. Not withstanding the added development workload and costs, there is also significantly more risk associated with supporting an OS that isn't receiving security patches.
Not to mention the modder's example Windows fucking 98. Steam still supports Windows 7, which was released in 2009. Your 6 year old PC will be fine.
It is on them since they "sold" you a game. They didn't have to build a business model that popularized always checking in DRM, that meant that they were deceiving you when they sold you a game, but it was more profitable for them to do so.
I'm not sure valve deceived you. It's not fair that we can't run purchased old games on the OS they were built for. they could really show instructions on how to make them run on that OS, maybe even make a simple but official lightweight client that can download it for you, on that old OS.
but if you are on windows 10, what can they do with a game they sold you that won't work correctly on anything beyond XP?
yes, the above things they could, and should. but even today you are not locked out: copy the game files to USB, drop in the goldberg emu, and play the game on your XP machine. It's a single file, not eben needs internet.
if the game had DRM? I am not sure that's the fault of valve. didn't the devs put it there?
and if you accept the "solution" to drop steam, and start renting your games? you won't be able to do even this (edit: because they have real drm, not measly steamdrm that's easily stripped out). you are literally locked out both if you stop paying, and if the service stops making that game available because their license expired, politics, or whatever. and you literally can do nothing about that.
but wait a minute. when, and how did exactly valve popularize always online DRM?
you know that they have nothing to do with denuvo, and steamdrm is not always online, right?
Steamdrm requires periodic online check-ins, which is the same thing for the purpose of this discussion about them forcing system upgrades.
yeah, you're right: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/how-steam-employs-drm-what-that-means-for-your-game