Subj : The Disney+ price hike ha
To   : Nightfox
From : Accession
Date : Sat Oct 04 2025 20:55:14

Hey Nightfox!

On Sat, 04 Oct 2025 10:22:50 -0700, you wrote:

 > What do you mean by "play it on Steam"?  While you might need the Steam
 > softwarwe to install it, anything I've bought on Steam has downloaded
 > and installed on my PC and runs locally.

Sure, it installs on your PC and runs locally, but you still need Steam to launch the game, right? At least that's been the case for every single game I "own" on there. You do not own a physical copy of the game you bought on Steam, you only own a digital download/copy. I'm also not so sure you actually "own" it any more, since you don't have an actual physical media copy, nor will they give you one. If you delete the game, you need Steam to download/install it again. If you setup a desktop link for said game, while you may not see it, it still uses Steam to launch the game. The same goes for any game purchased from any company - which is why there are so many stupid game launchers these days.

 > Years ago, Steam had a way to let you make backups of your games so you
 > could more easily re-install them later. One of the options would have
 > it make CD-R or DVD-R images so you could burn your backups to optical
 > discs, though I imagine most people probably aren't doing that anymore..
 > It looks like Steam still has a way to create a backup of a game though.

I doubt they have anything like that now. You buy the game through Steam as a digital download/copy, the only way you can play the game is through Steam. You might be able to launch it from another game launcher (Ubisoft, Origin, EA app, or similar), but it still launches through Steam, no matter what.

The same goes for any other game you buy from any of the other companies. For example, I've been playing The Division 2 lately, which I originally bought from Ubisoft. The game requires their launcher to run the game. However, since I only keep one game launcher running in the background (Steam), I set it up so that I can launch the game from Steam. When I do that, it still loads up the Ubisoft launcher while the game is running, and then exits and closes the Ubisoft launcher when you exit the game.

At the end of the day, I'd imagine there's probably even something in each one of those companies' launchers EULAs where they can take the game from your library at any time as they see fit. I doubt they would, unless you're actually doing something to cause harm or whatever, but IMO you don't "own" the game. Instead, you paid to play the game exclusively through their services.

Regards,
Nick

.... Sarcasm: because beating people up is illegal.
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