Ever since the advent of digital distribution (which despite what some may think, does pre-date Steam), gamers have worried about ownership of their games. Time was that this sense of unease was mixed-up with an understandable nostalgia for physical media, that comforting sense of having the disc and always owning the game, but as the physical and retail side has become a smaller part of the picture, which is especially true on PC, our questions about the various digital storefronts and Steam's default status have become more pointed. And it feels like 2024 is the year when gamers en masse started to get serious about the erosion of their ownership of software they've paid good money for.
The arguments have been around forever, but they've been made concrete by the simple fact that, over the last decade in particular, we've seen more and more games simply disappear. And we're not talking about obscure hobbyist projects, but seriously big budget titles that companies have spent millions developing, and hundreds of devs have spent years of their careers on. 2024 even gave us the perfect poster boy: Concord, Sony's live service shooter that lasted all of 11 days before being taken out behind the sheds and unceremoniously shot in the head.
That seems incredible, doesn't it? Concord was a AAA shooter backed by PlayStation, one of the biggest and most-moneyed brands in gaming, and it didn't last two weeks. For the average punter, Concord may as well have never existed.
But Concord is just one high-profile example from dozens, and it feels like the combination of prominent games disappearing from storefronts and so many having online elements that will never work again has brought the issue to the fore of many more peoples' minds. Arguments about preservation for future generations may attract the wonks among us but, for the mainstream audience, it is now not uncommon to fork out $60 or whatever for a game that may well not be playable two years down the line, or at the
Ubisoft
UPS
Digital
Software
wellness
audience
rights
Rich Stanton