Why do I play all these games? Because it’s important that they’re played.
Because every game is a story, a world, a moment in time crafted by someone who cared enough to create it.
Because each one teaches me something new—about design, about culture, about myself.
Because in a sea of pixels, there’s magic waiting to be found.
And because, honestly? Sometimes I just want to escape, explore, and lose myself in different worlds.
So yeah. I own thousands of games, and I’ll keep playing them.
Why do I play all these games? Because it’s important that they’re played.
Well, evidently not since you’re actively ignoring about 77% of them 😂 And who boasts about their hyperconsumerism on fucking Lemmy of all platforms 😂
Wrong. Not ignored—not played yet.
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My completion rate is obviously much lower, but I’ve played at least two hours of 628/788 games in my 19 year old Steam account. I guess I’m a bit pickier with accepting freebies or buying on sales.
That is the result of a deliberate effort. Two year long project to play at least 2 hours of every game in my backlog minimum before I can uninstall it. Until there’s nothing let but the dregs. A YouTuber inspired me, except he had a time limit deadline for the video.
Backlog was 258 games, now 160. Really there’s about 30 left worth at least looking at. A lot of old crap from the very first Steam sale in there.
Most recent from the backlog was Alpha Protocol with some pcgamingwiki fixes. Yep that’s been sitting in there a long long time. Loved it so much I finished it!
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Hey, I’ve played every game I purchased between 2012-15.
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I actually own
The funny thing is, you don’t own them.
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Say what you will, every game I’ve bought—I can still play. And I’ve been buying Steam games for over a decade.
Meanwhile, none of my GameCube discs work on my Switch.
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While you’re not wrong, by that logic, it’s actually fairly trivial to take my Steam downloads drive and run it on any computer even without my Steam account.
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It works in the same way that dumping your GameCube games and running them on Dolphin works… It’s quick and easy, but it’s against the ToS and requires breaking DRM.
Steam’s DRM is weak, and in some interviews some Valve developers even gave hints that this is on purpose. Many Steam games will simply run without Steam if you just double click the .exe in the install folder, and the vast majority that only rely on Steam’s DRM can be opened by running a free “Steam Emulator” software that pretends to be an active Steam account with a correct license.
A lot of Steam games don’t have any DRM, and most of the rest are pretty easy to strip.
Give it a shot sometime. Completely quit out of Steam, turn off your internet, and try running some of your older Steam games directly from the Steam folder.
I do this somewhat often when my kids are on my other computer playing games on my account and I still want to play something. It’s a little trickier on Linux since you need something to run the Proton/WINE layer, so I mostly stick to Linux-native games in that pretty rare case.
You can still play it but increasingly games are becoming very different from what you bought.
I’ve started noticing a disturbing trend. More and more games that are older being sold at steep discounts or “free to play” and simultaneously jampacked with invasive telemetry and/or ads/microtransactions. And since Steam won’t let you play older versions, those games are effectively dead.
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That is what firewalls and sinkholes are for. Stupid telemetry.
That shouldn’t be necessary and is beside the point.
The whole industry goes to shit, but it’s not steam’s fault.
- Steam has the clout to fight back against this
- As I already mentioned, it is partially because they don’t allow you to run older versions of games.
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Firewalls and especially sinkholes are VERY necessary
You misread my comment. I didn’t say they weren’t necessary.
Imagine 1 million clueless gamers running an older version of their game because they’re too lazy too update.
- GOG already does this and it’s not a problem.
- It updates automatically but you can choose to roll it back at any time.
how should online games work if every Joe and Jane got their “own” favorite version?
Not talking about online games. Besides, the how or why do not matter, the point is the games are gone.
Also, you can install an older version. Just with more hassles.
I pay Steam to deal with the hassles. I am not a software engineer.
But, of course, only indie devs do that.
Valve has the power to enforce this system-wide.
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Out of the thousands of games I have, not once have I noticed anything like you describe.
Oh well if you haven’t experienced it, it must not exist then 🤷
hmmm that doesn’t ring a bell here either. Which games do this ?
The most recent ones I’ve noticed are Riders Republic and Borderlands 2. Helldivers also introduced a bunch of new microtransactions years after it’s launch.
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