Re: Re: Steam
By: Nightfox to Arelor on Sun May 18 2025 05:40 pm

How is that a "pseudo" backup? It sounds like it achieves the intent.

A backup strategy needs two main components: a way to replicate the data to safe storage, and a way to use the data you have in safe storage.

If you store your games but then you lack the means to play them your backup is not a real backup. Therefore if your backup strategy does not include a way to operate without the assistance of the Steam ecosystem it is not a full solution at all. Steam's availability is not granted.

If you count on Steam existing forever you may as well not backup your games since you believe you will be able to grab them from their library anyway.

And yeah I guess mocking DRM via library injection or whatever they are doing these days can be considered ugly and whatever have you, but I think DRM is even uglier. I wrote a small article about videogame preservation recently while I decided to create backups of all my retail copies, and DRM is an anger inducing technique which would be a serious risk for videogame preservation if it wasn't so easily defeatable.

Lots of Spectrum games are still available today only because some people took the time to copy the tapes over. So yay for sketchy preservation techniques.


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Re: Re: Steam
By: Al to Arelor on Sun May 18 2025 04:04 pm

It still leaves me cold as an alternative because your copies of the games are still linked to Steam and so far this pseudo-backup functionality is clearly less complete

No, it is a complete backup.

Related to the subject:

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/2793871682815169598/

Quotes:

"1. Why does Steam have to be in Online Mode in order to restore a backup?

[...]

It has to be in online mode to verify ownership and cache of game files you backup, and then it'll download any files that weren't verified from cache. "

"Yes, I also tried installing from game backups and the games completely redownloaded instead. "

So I guess the official approach gives you a backup copy of the stuff you already have in your hard drive, which happens to be a semi-backup that relies on Steam to work. So yeah, not thrilled.


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Re: Re: Steam
By: Arelor to Nightfox on Mon May 19 2025 02:48 pm

If you count on Steam existing forever you may as well not backup your games since you believe you will be able to grab them from their library anyway.

Yeah, I guess that's a potential problem. I believe Steam is developed and maintained by Valve, and if they ever go out of business, hopefully they'll release customers' games in a way they can play them without Steam.

Nightfox
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If you store your games but then you lack the means to play them your backup is not a real backup. Therefore if your backup strategy does not include a way to operate without the assistance of the Steam ecosystem
it is not a full solution at all. Steam's availability is not granted.

For this simple reason GOG is better to purchase titles as they are not DRMed and can be stashed locally and work still under the assumption that GOG is gone.

with Steam I believe the only way to go around that is cracking.

-h1

... Xerox Alto was the thing. Anything after we use is just a mere copy.

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