Sometimes they’re not on gog and I want to play them. Other times it’s 4$ on steam and 50$ on gog. I’ll buy it for 4 on steam so I can play it, then wait for the sale on gog down the road.
That’s games that you can and do buy of Steam. Delisting changes nothing except that you won’t be able to give them money in exchange for not owning the games.
No, you need to install them as well. It’ll work as long as it’s installed, but after they’re delisted, I don’t think steam can even distribute them.
I know I have at least one game “grid: race driver” that was delisted from steam, at some point I must have uninstalled it, and now I can’t download it, it doesn’t even show up in my library. I’ve been trying like hell to find a way to play it, but even pirated versions are being difficult.
Edit: judging from comments and downvotes, apparently this is rare? But it does definitely happen, I’m not making this example up. And I don’t know how you could predict whether a game will just be unavailable for purchase or totally disappear…
It’s extremely rare for a delisted game to be removed from your library, and they only do it in cases where, for instance, the game would literally be unplayable because the server isn’t there anymore. Often times they won’t remove the game from your library in that situation either. Having the game in your library is, in fact, enough.
This is not the case with the sega games we’re talking about. The announcement specifically mentions the games will still be available to download if you bought them before the delisting.
Removing games from player inventory is very rare; I’ve only seen it happen when malware is uploaded to Steam as a game.
I have a few games that can’t be played anymore, like Super Bomberman R Online and The Crew. I still can download their files from Steam; but I can’t play them.
But now I’m curious too, what could’ve happened that got that game removed from the people who bought the game
I’m a bit curious too. My theory is that it may have come down to licensing and trademark issue. Since the game used actual car brands and their logos and such, they may have had some agreement over their usage and perhaps the period of that agreement ended. It’s worth noting that the game was available from several different stores, and it became unavailable everywhere as far as I know.
Even when that agreement expires (see blur as a race game example), the game typically isn’t removed from libraries.
As for your game I think archive.org has a copy listed ( archive.org/details/race-driver-grid_202112 ), it says it’s a GOG copy so it shouldn’t give any issues, does it give any? (Do not click the spam comments, check the download options and pick either zip or torrent)
That’s the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive Classics collection. I have it myself (bought several years ago). It’s just an official emulator/GUI wrapper (styled like a bedroom with a CRT) that comes with the games. If you have the collection you can find all the ROMs in the collection’s folder and play them with whatever emulator you want. If Steam ever threatens to take them away I strongly recommend backing that folder up somewhere.
It's likely just meaning new compilations coming down the line as there is zero cost and zero maintenance for them to keep the games up otherwise and is entirely passive income.
I'm talking purely about the work needed to be done on the Steam backend and such. Also in this case, most of these old games - minus Crazy Taxi and perhaps one or two other Dreamcast games - don't have licensed music.
Which is a bit ironic, considering all of these are in two compilation packs.
They’re probably going to have a new compilation pack that costs about the same price and has a few additional games…but they didn’t want to just sell DLC/standalone games for the Collections that already exist.
And actually, a lot of these games that are getting delisted can be purchased separately. And maybe even have ROMs that are easily extracted. So maybe they just want to lock things down into an all-or-nothing ROMs-hidden collection or 10.
Exactly, they announced earlier this year that they were working on reviving a bunch of licences, including Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, Shinobi, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, and hinting at a longer list. We don’t know yet eactly how many titles that includes, and which of them will get remakes, remasters, or brand new games, but it was hinting brand new. Early dev footage was leaked at some point for Crazy Taxi and Shinobi.
They already did this with the classic Sonic games (Sonic Origins) and removed them from any new Steam copies of the Genesis/Mega Drive Classics collection. I doubt they’re working on all the games in their library, but it may be enough of them that they just decided to pull the whole collection rather than leave it so gutted out. Sucks, but yeah, that’s the way it goes. That said, Shining Force remaster please? That would be awesome.
I wonder if it's a licensing thing. I know a few of these games had heavy use of licensed music, like Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxy. At least, the original versions did, I'm not sure if that's the case for the Steam ports.
I bought them ages ago and let me tell you, crazy taxi without the offspring is just not the same. Borrowing the original versions for free from the internet is the only way to go.
I am pretty sure I picked up the Android version for free a few years ago and it had The Offspring but I installed it just now and it’s gone. It’s also now talking about ads and data collection so I assume the original build has been unavailable for a while.
Eh, I don’t blame the solo developer. Official Linux support would be nice, but it’s still only used by 2% of Steam customers, most of which are on the Steam Deck:
There is a non-trivial amount of work involved in creating and supporting Linux binaries. Based on what other developers have reported, despite the small number of Linux users, they can be responsible for a disproportionate number of support tickets. I think part of the reason for this is has to be the enormous number of Linux distributions out there. While most users are using a small handful of distros and their derivatives, there’s just too much variety within a very small portion of the market (plus the whole issue of poor GPU driver support on top), which can lead to all sorts of unexpected and difficult to replicate compatibility and stability issues.
Not to mention, this game is playable on the Steam Deck. It seems to work just fine on Linux (or at least Arch) through Proton, so why complain?
arstechnica.com
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