Steam now displays a message to customers stating that they are purchasing a license when making a purchase in the store, rather than outright ownership. The change was implemented internationally in response to modern California legislation that is expected to go into effect next year.
When viewing a game in your Steam Cart, a message appears under the “Continue Payment” button. “Purchase of a digital product grants you a license to the product on Steam,” it says. The link below takes you to the Steam Subscriber Agreement, which explains the license terms in more detail.
New California Legislation, AB 2426which came into force in September, aims to warn customers about the potentially transient nature of digital purchases. Terms such as “purchase” or “purchase” cannot be used in store windows without sufficient disclaimers explaining the nature of the contract to customers.
Certain digital game purchases are excluded, e.g. where the game can be downloaded and played continuously offline. For example, GOG, which offers downloadable executables for all DRM-free games it sells, does not have to offer any such disclaimers.
This prompted the store to do some grave trolling today. “Since checkout banners are popular, we are considering hanging them ourselves. What do you think about this? they wrote on Twitter. The proposed banner at checkout reads: “When you purchase a digital product on GOG, you receive offline installers that cannot be taken away from you.”
Typically, when a game is removed from sale on Steam, it remains available to play in the libraries of people who previously purchased it. However, other storefronts have removed games from their libraries completely. Earlier this year, Ubisoft shut down The Crew, rendering the online racing game completely unplayable, after which some players reported that it had disappeared from their Ubisoft Connect libraries.
