Having your collection managed digitally offers lasting benefits.
Having your collection managed digitally offers lasting benefits.
Hello, I’m a passionate gamer, especially into PC gaming from a young age. At 35, my first gaming PC was a 386 running at 16MHz with 640KB of RAM. Back then, games came in thick cardboard boxes containing manuals, artwork, and floppy disks. Now my collection spans Steam, Uplay, and Origin. I own over 1000 games and around 500 DLC pieces. It makes me wonder—am I really keeping my own collection? All the games are hosted on servers owned by those companies, which means they’re part of their catalogs. What if a game is removed from the servers? How will that affect my collection in ten years? Is it secure? It’s a thought I often reflect on. Cheers!
I’m still processing this. It’s hard to know where to start—please let me know when you’re ready to put it into words.
You hold the rights to play the games. Even when purchasing a physical copy, you typically need to enable online activation, which undermines the value of owning physical media. The safest option is to get DRM-free games from GOG and save the downloaded files. Sadly, for most AAA titles, you won’t find them there. Valve has hinted at future plans to make games downloadable, but they haven’t provided details yet.
If you have the original and they restrict play, maybe it's just reasonable.
By the time steam origin and u play gets shit down those games won't matter anymore, and the internet will always be there for you to download it.
I sometimes adjust the DRM settings in single-player games I purchase that don’t receive frequent updates or lack a Steam Workshop. Beyond that, I’m confident Valve isn’t close to leaving the scene, and big companies like EA and Ubisoft are too large to fall behind. More concern would be about losing your account than losing the platform it links to.
GOG Galaxy stands out for removing DRM restrictions and encourages others to adopt similar solutions like Steam, uPlay, Origin, and Battle.net. As countries increasingly block pirate sites, piracy becomes more challenging. Paying for VPN services just to access free content is counterproductive. How can we rely on online providers? Consumers would appreciate having a physical copy of games that remain secure from hacking flaws or compromised devices. Sometimes traditional methods are more reliable.