Steam is the largest platform for video games on PC. But what if the lights go out at parent company Valve?
Many of us are the proud owners of a Steam account that has become more and more impressive over the years. You yourselves once told us how many games you have in your libraries: 75 percent of you had purchased more than 100 games on the platform by 2023, and these numbers have certainly risen even further by now.
But what would happen if Valve went bankrupt? What would become of Steam and our games? A user on Reddit asked this question, sparking a complex discussion.
“Will they just disappear?”
The Reddit user poses the open question in the Steam subreddit: “What happens to users’ game libraries if a company like Steam, Xbox, or PlayStation goes bankrupt? Will it just disappear?“
If a company like Steam, Xbox or PlayStation goes bankrupt, what happens to the user library of games? Does it just disappear?
by
u/drsamueldelatorremed in
Steam
He believes that nothing is stopping such companies (in this case Valve, Microsoft, and Sony) from simply shutting down their servers, which would make our game libraries inaccessible.
At the time of writing, the thread has attracted over 300 comments. In the Top Answer the user’s assumption is confirmed for the time being.
If your question is basically, “Can I be deprived of the right to download and install my games?”, then yes, that can happen. A service only exists as long as the company that offers it exists.
Essentially, he is addressing an issue that has been with us for years and has sparked repeated debate in recent years. Instead of acquiring ownership and possession of a physical game disc, when we purchase digital games, we only acquire a license—and that license can expire or be revoked.
Steam now points this out with every purchase, so you might slowly start to worry about your digital game collection. Fortunately, however, that’s not the end of the story.
A another commentator notes that something like Steam doesn’t just disappear: “If [Valve] goes bankrupt, someone will buy it and then continue running it.” The market for digital games is lucrative, and in such a case, the new company would most likely take over our libraries.
Valve could also implement a kind of offline mode so that we can continue to access our libraries even without servers. However, this would require the reduction of anti-piracy measures such as DRM, as these often require internet access.
Other platforms, such as GOG, do not use digital rights management. This means you can purchase games there without online activation and are not dependent on GOG’s servers. You can even play the games there right now install them offline using an offline installer. So technically, it would definitely be feasible.
Neither Valve nor Steam have made any concrete statements on this issue, even though it has been asked repeatedly for a long time. But at least the company has provided a few crumbs of information. A Steam user asked contacted support directly 13 years ago and received a response.
In the unlikely event that the Steam network is discontinued, we have taken steps to ensure that users will still be able to access their Steam games.
It is important to emphasize once again that it is highly unlikely that Valve, Microsoft, or Sony will actually go bankrupt in the foreseeable future.
Steam alone generates several billion US dollars in revenue for Valve each year, and the company is extremely efficient thanks to its small number of employees. As the company is also privately owned, it is not subject to external investment pressure and is therefore less vulnerable to market fluctuations.
