valve has stated that if their servers go down or something bad happens, they will find a way for you too still play your games. even gabe said this. should I trust them?

also, how long does offline mode actually last?

as much as I love gog and buy everything here, we've got too accept that bigger developers won't ever release here. we can shill gog as much as we want but they won't budge.

I just want to know if should trust valve when they say "when these times come, we'll make it so you can still play your games"

dammit didn't mark this thread as a question

I've yet to see anyone provide an actual link to this supposed statement by Valve. While I doubt very much that Steam/Valve is going to go under any time soon, I also highly doubt they'll bother unlocking games if they're in dire trouble (which they will be if they're going under).

So, no, I would not trust that one iota.

https://i.imgur.com/4sa1Ln6.jpg

1) I could shop an image like this one saying whatever I want it to say in about one minute.

2) If you already have a strong opinion on the matter, why did you create this thread in the first place?

because I wanted to start a conversation?

So you have some unknown entity telling you that "measures are in place" and yet does not divulge how those work and how exactly will the measures be executed if Steam is in fact no more (i.e., no CDN, no satellite repositories, no access to data centers for account verification, etc.) -- and despite all this, you trust this statement?

*chuckles*

that's from a post from reddit, not me. just to clarify.

"I just want to know if should trust valve when they say "when these times come, we'll make it so you can still play your games""

I don't know.

With their move into online only games like Gwent and absolver, do you trust gog - exactly the same question. Remembering drm can be cracked, online only is far harder to get working once servers are gone.

This is what Gabe originally said:-

"If you right click on a game in Steam, you'll see that you can back up the files yourself. Unless there was some situation I don't understand, we would presumably disable authentication before any event that would preclude the authentication servers from being available. We've tested disabling authentication and it works"

[url=http://web.archive.org/web/20100108013432/http://forums.steampowered.com:80/forums/showpost.php?p=10642189&postcount=28]http://web.archive.org/web/20100108013432/http://forums.steampowered.com:80/forums/showpost.php?p=10642189&postcount=28[/url]

The 4 problems are:-

1. "Presumably" isn't some legal or official guarantee. Valve have zero legal obligation to do so for their "subscribers" when pulling the plug.

2. It refers to only authentication of existing installed games, not continued availability of re-installation via downloads. ie, if the Steam server's went down you wouldn't be able to re-install anything you didn't already have backup up offline since it wouldn't just be authentication server's going down but download servers too. Unlike GOG customers with a backup HDD full of backup installers, since 99.999% of Steam "subscribers" don't make off-line backups due to DRM in the first place, those who only install one game at a time and rely 100% on the cloud for every install / re-install would lose most of their games anyway if the plug suddenly gets pulled on download servers.

3. They can "promise" to fix SteamWorks or CEG but obviously 3rd party stuff like Denuvo or uPlay protected .exe's is beyond their reach both technical and legal.

4. There's no way they'll "fix" the issue by issuing individual .exe fixes for +20k games (eliminating the need for a client). Instead, it'll probably be done on a client level, ie, the games will still have the DRM code that refuses to start unless the client is called, and Valve simply replaces the Steam client's authentication code with a simple "auto-success" response without checking online anymore. But the client is still needed, so what happens if in 10 years time Windows changes enough that an abandoned Steam client stops working same way they've just dropped support for XP? In theory "there won't be a Windows 11", in practise stranger things have happened and for long-term game preservation purposes, there's simply no substitute for not needing any client at all...

The only Steam games that will be truly guaranteed to be playable if Uncle Gabe pulls the plug on everything are those on this list that you've already backed up into a zip file. The rest is entirely "faith based".

Whilst your totally unbiased opinion is welcome, absolver is an online game with a demo offline part to excuse it being here. Just like goblins inc. gwent is also an online only game and there are plenty of excuses to that as well. In fact if cyberpunk came out with denuvo online only there would be excuses there as well.

We can only hope valve will do something to mitigate the issue but they have been doing a excellent job so far making sure that the content servers , matchmaking servers are located in the furthest places possible , for example a few years ago i had to manually set my download region to europe or us because of the slow speeds i used to get while downloading huge games, some would outright fail to even start download[aka unreachable].

Today there are a lot of content and matchmaking servers nearyby and the stats are there to check yourself

https://store.steampowered.com/stats/content/

Also i think its in their steam client update pipeline to provide a robust offline mode but following valvetime it might take forever to happen...

I don't trust Valve. I never did, I never will. I'm a Steam user, but I know that my games will fade away one day.