Question Download content systems(steam etc)

[old.Tohtori]

So here's a scenario;

Mister Barnacle has bought Half-life 2, Left 4 dead 2 and the great adventures of willy the waskaly whale from steam.

Mister Barnacle doesn't like CDs, but enjoys the games immensely.

One day Mister Barnacle can't log in to steam.

Mister Barnacle investigates and finds an email stating "Steam services have been put to the bin, the peolpe fired and the corporate head moved to jamaica for rum, fun and spend some cum."

"Oh well", says Mister Barnacle and keeps on trying to beat the great adventure of willy the waskaly whale on nanny level.

"Doom and despair!", he screams as his computer coughs, spews out a few cubics of smoke(not steam) and dies.

Off to the shops and to buy a new computer.

Back home, Mister Barnacle resets his gaming platform and all is well.

But wait, what's this? How is Mister Barnacle to get his beloved adventures of willy the waskaly whale when there's no service that held them?

Story aside; if a buy online service like steam or GFWL goes tits up, do you simply lose all your games and have to go on a shopping rampage to get them all? Again.

 

[fettoken]

Always save a cd key when you buy a game. That way you can warez later and still have a legit copy. Buying games on that you can only use on one gaming platform (such as Steam) is foolishness.

 

[Talyn]

Not sure about GFWL, but Steam allows you to backup copies of what you've purchased, so you can play them 'offline' as it were.

Go to Library, right-click the game in question, and the option is there (I think)

 

[old.Tohtori]

So it's bsically up to you to grab an offline copy and making a dvd of it?

I started thinking about this when considering fallout 3 add-ons.

GFWL -> 3600 live points(4 addons), which comes to a rough 50e.
Game of the year edition -> all 5 add-ons(which i have one already) and the game(which i already have) but it's the same amount of 50e

Only reason for not stacking it on my shelf is that GFWL versions might be more up to date regarding patching, but that's a non isuse really.

 

[Raven]

Steam isn't going anywhere for a long time but if you are worried do as mentioned, back the games up. You get a CD key with them anyway which you can export to a notepad file. Put this on the DVD or back up game folder.

 

[PLightstar]

Plus the fact that Valve have stated that if Steam was going to be shut down for whatever reason, release keys would be given out to everyone. Then it would be a case of Downloading the games and saving them, which is becoming more of a problem for me as I have 100+ games on Steam and I will have to get a meaty HD to store it all on.