Valve Confirms What Was Already Obvious: You Don’t Own Your Steam Games

What do you own when you buy a digital game? Think about a Steam game. Unlike the physical games of the past, which were discs you put into a console and played, with Steam, there’s nothing tangible—you own nothing. You see a game, pay for it, download it, and play it. But do you own the game? No. You have a license to access it, and it’s different.

Valve has started to make changes to cover its back in the face of a new law that will go into effect in California in 2025. Going forward, stores won’t be able to use terms like “buy” and “purchase” unless they inform users that they’re not buying a product but purchasing a license to access it. Stores can also revoke that license.

As such, you’re not buying a game, you are buying a license to access that game. If the publisher decides to withdraw the title tomorrow, the user loses access to it. This is nothing new. It has always been this way (with some exceptions), but due to this law, the user will be more informed.

Steam is making a move. From now on, Steam will display a notice, as seen in the image above. This message states, “A purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam.” The Steam Subscriber Agreement, which all users accept when using the platform, clearly states, “The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services.” In other words, users don’t own the game. They’re simply paying for access to it.

You can find similar clauses in other stores, such as the Epic Games Store, Ubisoft Store, Electronic Arts’ EA App, and Blizzard. Nearly all digital video game stores operate this way. However, one store has quickly taken advantage of the situation: Good Old Games (GOG), owned by CD Projekt Red.

Your installer is yours. The law mentioned earlier doesn’t apply in cases where the store offers an offline installer that they can’t take away from the user. GOG does just that. When you buy a game from that store, you get an offline installer that you can use as many times as you want, regardless of what happens to the game for GOG purposes. If you have the installer, you have the game.

This isn’t the first time GOG has bragged about this, and it has had to occasionally clarify its words. And that’s why GOG, beyond its policies, sells licenses. So when California passed this law, GOG had to explain that “When we said we let you ‘own’ your games, we meant that no matter what happens—whether it’s licensing issues, storefronts shutting down, or even a zombie apocalypse cutting off your Internet—you’ll still be able to play them thanks to our offline installers. We want to ensure your gaming legacy is always in your hands, not ours.”

Image | Kelly Sikkema (Unsplash) | Xataka En