Yes, I know DRM-free means you can still physically play the games. Thats not what I’m asking.
Sparked by a recent discussion about DRM, I’m wondering what happens legally when different game stores close. For example, if Steam shuts down, are licences presumed to presist or are they revoked? What about GOG, Itch.io or Epic? I couldn’t find anything in the terms of service specifying.
These two things are not the same.
With GOG you’re buying the license to freely download a reusable and unlocked installer - with steam your game state is managed by steam in a generally intricate manner that relies on steam being running to run the game. Some games do install stand alone executables but it is vanishingly rare to find a game with an installer included in the game files.
In theory with steam games if there are no other dependencies (like dlls or registry entries) you can copy the game directory to a new computer wholesale but often times even that won’t be worth much if the steam executable isn’t running.
Please note, a lot of this knowledge came from me tinkering with the overlay a few years back, it’s possible steam changed things to make the overlay and client dll more optional but those are usually hard dependencies baked into the game executable files.
As I said in the post, I understand the technical side. Its the legal aspect I’m asking about. For example, yes, you can freely download a reuseable launcher from GOG, but as its only granting you a licence to the game, that licence can’t be transfered (without GOG’s permission), resold, ect. and if the licence is revoked, continuing to use the installer would be piracy. I’m asking what happens if any of these stores shut down legally. Would licences be revoked/invalidated, or how would that work?