Koki on 7/6/2011 at 18:29
Quote Posted by lost_soul
Oh come on, that has *zero* to do with my point.
It's about as likely.
What you're saying is nonsense scaremongering. Shutting the servers down would be marketing suicide. Why the fuck would they do that, unless when they went bankrupt? Not that this line of thought holds much water, either - not only is Steam doing fantastically, if a service of this size was in danger of going down, another company would almost certainly buy it from Valve.
Okay, let me put it this way. Think of your favourite soda. Now what if producer of said soda told the employees to start pissing in every bottle? WHAT THEN?! HOW CAN YOU DRINK IT WITH THIS DANGER LOOMING OVER EVERY DROP?
That's about as much sense as you're making right now.
Brian The Dog on 7/6/2011 at 20:58
I think it's to do with data security - will Steam be running in 50 years time? Maybe. Will I want to play my games in 50 years time? Most no, but some yes, but I'd like it to be me that chooses. In a fast-moving business such as online services, companies that were huge 30 years ago may well be tiny or non-existant now, and this could well continue into the future.
I'm not against digital downloads myself, so long as they have no internet connection required to play or install, for precisely this reason. TDS is a good game with some major flaws, I'd pick it up for $5 if I didn't already have it.
lost_soul on 7/6/2011 at 22:49
It doesn't matter what Valve thinks or says. They could be purchased by another company and that company could decide to "restructure" the way things work. Just look at the guy in the article I posted. He basically washes his (and MS's) hands of any responsibility.
Like I'm going to put my ability to enjoy entertainment or compute on any company like that.
"we're sorry, service A didn't work out in the market place. We won't support our activation system for Service A after date X, but perhaps you would like to buy products chained to Service B?"
I want a fully functioning disk, or a download from Gog.