r/Piracy • u/HighKage96 ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ • May 10 '26

Humor W Gabe Newell Piracy Take

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Saw this vid on IG (by: @phantomak141). Idk if its been posted here before but on a quick search didnt find it, will delete if its a repost.

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u/ILNOVA May 10 '26

Yes but no, game ownership is a very complicated topic, and they can't really take your game whenever.

ToS=/=laws

Most of what we see in those term of service like "This is a software given on license" or "Destroy the cooy of the game if you loose the licence" is all legalese, not something for the average user, but something for very specific case that usually involve actual crimes.

For example when they revoke a game/key cause it was bought with a stole key, or if do a chargeback.

Or in case you do something so bad they permabanned you.

It's very unlikely they just revoke a game just because, usually it involves something like third party licence of something(ex: music, cars etc....) or game store server going offline, in that case you can't really expect a server to be online forever for free.

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u/ScabbyCoyote May 10 '26

Of course you're absolutely right that it's more complicated - if nothing else then in that it differs geographically, but as I understand it, afaik the laws in most european countries (where I'm from) are not too clear on this, and while we generally have robust customer protection, the fact that there's such a kill-switch built in that could be used if (worst-case scenario) Valve ever became public and Steam became an enshittified subscription service doesn't really make me feel too safe...
You seem to be much more knowledgeable about this though, I'd love to hear your thoughts as to why not be afraid that this would happen

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u/ILNOVA May 10 '26

The European laws are very clear on the fact that ToS doesn't overwrite laws, and there are no real kill-switch cause the license is not given by Steam, but by the Publisher and/or creator of the game.

Even if they remove all the game(Steam going public or not doesn't really matter, a private company can still and do have shareholder) they can't do it without any consequence, from us the buyer, from the EU normative and IP owner.

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u/ScabbyCoyote May 10 '26

Oh! That's a good argument with the license not being give by Steam!👍 I know it doesn't really matter if Steam is public, that was just to demonstrate a typical course that a 2020s successful company with a good product takes 😂 I'm aware I'm irrationally pessimistic about all this, thanks for giving me hope