I’m not sure valve deceived you. It’s not fair that we can’t run purchased old games on the OS they were built for. they could really show instructions on how to make them run on that OS, maybe even make a simple but official lightweight client that can download it for you, on that old OS.
but if you are on windows 10, what can they do with a game they sold you that won’t work correctly on anything beyond XP?
yes, the above things they could, and should. but even today you are not locked out: copy the game files to USB, drop in the goldberg emu, and play the game on your XP machine. It’s a single file, not eben needs internet.
if the game had DRM? I am not sure that’s the fault of valve. didn’t the devs put it there?
and if you accept the “solution” to drop steam, and start renting your games? you won’t be able to do even this (edit: because they have real drm, not measly steamdrm that’s easily stripped out). you are literally locked out both if you stop paying, and if the service stops making that game available because their license expired, politics, or whatever. and you literally can do nothing about that.
Steam updating those system requirements for newer hardware makes those games MORE accessible,
I think they mean modifying the minimum requirements, because their electron based abomination of a client does not support older systems
so unless you know to use the goldberg emu, it will possibly make those games different, or at worst unplayable. I know of games that glitch with modern hardware, in one instance because it is so old the dev never thought about graphics hardware with 2 GB VRAM or more, and it was never patched either.
its suprising that such a high profile person does not know about goldberg emu (or various other solutions), so they rather recommend subscription services that are multiple orxers of magnitude worse.
Enter Monthly Subscription Game Libraries and DRM-free → Exit Steam
In lieu of even the simplest commitment by Valve to keep their DRM client free of system requirement creep, business models like Ubisoft+, EA Access and Game Pass represent far greater value to consumers. The claim is often made that you “do not own the game” with these services, but you do not own them on Steam either; Valve stops pretending to care if their store’s software breaks your game after you have played it for two hours.
I would rather pay a fraction of the price to play a game for one month than pretend digitally distributed games have the lifespan of a boxed physical product. You can consume the entirety of a game within one month and pay an appropriate amount of money for the ephemeral service offered.
this person is extremely misguided. the a copy if the game files, drop in the goldberg emu dll, and done. works forever, in as many copies as you feel like. DRMs can stand in the way, but that’s exactly what makes it even worse on subscription platforms. and online only, or strictly multiplayer games? these won’t work whatever you do, but that’s not valve’s fault.
valve is careless but today other than GOG, it’s still the best (read: least bad) popular storefront, and subscription based systems are simply just the worst.
after sending that comment I noticed that I can also just browse by platform, but those lists are limited to 6 pages :/ see the notice at the bottom below the page switcher: www.mobygames.com/platform/win3x/…/page:5/
well I actually know neither. I have very slight memories of it. I think I was using windows XP at the time. the game, as I remember, was a bit like those physical fidget games today, in that there was no story (or I didn’t understand it yet) or any kind of goals (that I could understand?). there were multiple different locations in the game, one of them us a kitchen similar to this one, but I’m not sure if I could regularly walk across them, or just click on doors or something to move to another location.
given that I couldn’t yet read at the time (I think), I have no memories of its title or the desktop icon, or at least I wasn’t able to recall it in any degree for a long time.
I expect that back then there were much fewer games released in a given timespan than today, but I don’t even know where could I see even a list of them that I could go through.
edit: just checked mobygames, now I see this is a database like I mentioned. I’ll check this, thanks!
edit 2: oh well, it requires a registration and a subscription to browse the games database…
this kitchen reminds me of a game that I played relatively lot as a little kid, around 2005 or so, probably even before I learnt to read because I don’t remember its name at all.
I have been using IPS displays for many years, and I had to look up what is IPS glow. now I see it, but it doesn’t bother me. what bothers me is that my dell monitor is absolutely garbage on reproducing dark colors, while my much older cheap LG is very good in that. like, the black background of the terminal shows a very visible difference