Why I Deleted My Steam Account After 20 Years

valve_delete.md

Why I Deleted My Steam Account After 20 Years

Some may know me from over a decade worth of modding broken, under-performing or otherwise inconvenient aspects of PC ports. Dedicated users of Special K also know that I have spent as much time battling problems caused by Steam as I have defects in the games themselves.

My experience with PC gaming goes back a further two decades, to the days of shareware, dialing into a BBS to get game patches / user generated content and tedious DRM fetch-quests involving physical game manuals. I was irritated when Half-Life 2 shipped on PC and required a dedicated piece of software to satisfy DRM and patch the game, but at the time these were minor inconveniences. Valve tried to quell concerns of software preservation with the first of a long series of lies wherein they claimed to have a contingency plan for the DRM scheme reaching end-of-life.

   Steam's DRM scheme has reached end-of-life multiple times without the promised parachute.

In 2002, the client ran on Windows 98. Over the years, they bloated the living hell out of the DRM client with all kinds of unnecessary and undefeatable features that hinder software compatibility. Games you purchased on a Windows 98 machine later had their system requirements bumped up to Windows XP, then to Windows 7, then to Windows 10...

Because the Steam client patches itself and because Valve was lying about contingency plans, their DRM prevents running Windows 98-era games on original hardware. Requirements go up post-purchase without the developer doing anything. Neither the game's publisher, nor its developers are to blame for the game no longer working. The store you bought the game from is squarely responsible for your game not running.

Coming from the pre-Steam era of PC gaming, where you could purchase a game from whatever store was most convenient and then go online to a BBS or FTP site to get patches (irrespective of whether the store you used is even still in business), this is all infuriating!

   The proliferation of Steam for content distribution has fragmented PC gaming irreparably.

You no longer have the liberty of buying a game from wherever you want. You must consider whether your store is going to continue receiving patches, whether the store itself is going to continue supporting your hardware and software, and whether your friends online bought the game from the same store as you did (thank you Epic for partially addressing this).

   I was a registered Steamworks partner and had access to developer forums.

No matter how many times I raised red flags about the implementation of various things in the Steam client (mostly input-related), my concerns were ignored. I watched other developers raising the same concerns for years with no action from Valve. By the end of my bitter dealings with Valve I was simply working-around bugs in the Steam client, not even wasting my time reporting the bugs because there was zero hope. The Steam client is layered on various open-source projects, all of which I could submit bug reports / pull requests to if those projects were causing the problems.

Unfortunately, it is all Steam's proprietary code that has problems and because that is coupled tightly to their DRM client, I now regard that code and all of the unnecessary features that keep being integrated into Valve's DRM client without true off switches as obstacles rather than value-added service.

Ironically, the only store that messes with input also frequently has input-related features patched out of games after you purchase them. Numerous games have native DualSense support on Epic, but are XInput-only on Steam. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl uses Microsoft's advanced GameInput API on Microsoft Store and Epic and supports Xbox One controller Impulse Triggers, but has had input functionality removed from the Steam version after a few patches and has been reduced to Xbox 360-equivalent on Steam.

I buy games from Epic Games Store, Microsoft Store and GOG precisely because those stores have no bloated features unrelated to DRM crammed down your throat. Without those stores adding unwanted code that requires patching the store's client to properly disable, open-source projects like DS4Windows operate free from interference from obnoxious proprietary software.

   Stores should only provide DRM, and anything else that they do must be optional.

Stores must not invent proprietary APIs like Steam Input (the actual API accessed through steam_api{64}.dll, not the XInput translation layer) that require the store's DRM client to provide services that the Operating System provides for the same game purchased from a competing store. The native Steam Input API is an abomination, many games that use it have fallback code to use Operating System input APIs (i.e. DirectInput, XInput, HID, Windows.Gaming.Input), however Valve's unbelievably short-sighted design deliberately hooks and blocks access to those APIs as part of Steam Input's initialization.

Patching-out the native Steam Input API involves modifying steam_api{64}.dll, which is considered by many games to be tampering with the game's DRM. Depending on the publisher your punishment for trying to cut the Steam client out of the equation and preserve the software you paid for may range from the game simply refusing to run or deliberate glitches during gameplay such as missing assets or a screen that gets dimmer until you can no longer see the game (thanks CAPCOM, I hate it!)

   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.

GOG actually guarantees they will not patch anything without user consent. CD Projekt has my respect and may have its full retail prices and 30% revenue cut; they earned it. Valve and others should not be leaching as much money from the publishers as they are without stronger commitments to the end-user that their software is going to continue running in the future.

   The Lies of Valve      https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/21A6-7C93-6CFE-100B

Valve does not expect users to delete their account; they think because you paid them thousands of dollars on your software library they can lead you around and nobody will ever hold them accountable. I do not have the patience to bother getting a company I no longer have an account with or any respect for to keep their word, so I am just going to mention this passive-aggressively and you can judge them on their documented actions.

They claim that upon deleting your account, your community posts will remain and will be attributed to [deleted], however this is not true and 50,000+ posts and 30+ guides (some of which had shared attribution with multiple accounts) are gone. In less than one month, all of this content went from [deleted] to literally deleted, despite their worthless promise otherwise.

> Will all of my information be deleted?
Your personal information is removed, but some content you’ve posted in community areas is not. This includes things like discussion posts, or content that you posted in Steam community hubs, as well as comments you made on other Steam account’s profiles.

   The biggest obstacle to game ownership on PC is the store you licensed it from, not developers.

A game with zero online features is subject to internet-based DRM and constantly increasing system requirements when the store self-updates and irreversibly patches the software in your library. There is some value to having a store automatically update your software, there is literally no value to a store that forces patches and offers users no path back to the working version of the software they initially paid for.

   Valve is right about piracy being a service issue, their service inevitably requires it.

I would encourage re-evaluating who you license your software from and whether long-term "ownership" of software that self-updates is even possible. Given the weak guarantees and outright lies of some stores, subscribing to a publisher's entire catalog of games for a month, or buying from Microsoft Store to take advantage of their cross-platform license to avoid the headache of PC compatibility may give you peace of mind.

Real users complain about specific bugs or missing features. Astroturfers write mini-essays about how [COMPETITOR] is "ironically better" and how [TARGET]'s users are "cultists" while repeating marketing slogans. As can be seen in the 2 comments above this one. It's funny how you people genuinely believe anyone would buy into the "subscription is better".

You don't know anything about PC gaming, the gaming industry or gaming clients, stick to AI.

Oh hey, did they pay you to comment on that aswell? Guess what? I also do game dev on the side.

"I also do game dev on the side"
The game:

I mean you can't make this stuff up.

Bro I just looked at your GitHub and you're really out here lecturing people about game development when your entire profile is 98 forked Blogger templates? Your most technical contribution is forking a Twitch drops miner. You've literally never shipped a single game or piece of original software in your life.

The fact that you're pushing Epic and Game Pass while calling Steam users "drones" is absolutely sending me. We can all see the coordinated talking points. Real developers don't spend their time writing essays about how subscription rentals are "ironically better" than actually owning games.

Maybe stick to copy-pasting HTML templates instead of cosplaying as someone who knows anything about the gaming industry. At least that's honest work.

I’m not a game dev, and I’ve never claimed to be - unlike you, apparently. I’ve been a PC gamer since the MS-DOS era, when games came on floppy disks, not forums full of hot takes. My Steam account is over 20 years old with a library of 10,000+ titles, many gifted by game devs and publishers themselves. I rank in the top 0.1% of Steam’s most-owned games list, and I ran a site focused on helping indie games get recognition and covering AAA gaming since 2007, alongside a Steam community of over 115,000+ members. I’ve pulled back from gaming a bit with time, but I still follow the industry closely.

Like I said, you don't know anything about the gaming industry.

Just install linux on your old box bro. We love steam & valve because they love linux, nobody cares about the joke of a drm they have on windows.

Just install linux on your old box bro. We love steam & valve because they love linux, nobody cares about the joke of a drm they have on windows.

Hey, look! Another non-technical user. Newsflash: the exact same DRM is used under Linux when you run games under a gross API translation layer.

oh and Kaldaien make sure you delete this alt too, otherwise you're still technically supporting steam!

Lmao the community post he made is such a joke. Now I understand what kind of person he is.

Valve tried to quell concerns of software preservation with the first of a long series of lies wherein they claimed to have a contingency plan for the DRM scheme reaching end-of-life.
<...>
Games you purchased on a Windows 98 machine later had their system requirements bumped up to Windows XP, then to Windows 7, then to Windows 10...

@Kaldaien LOTS of respect to you for speaking out against the destroyer of PC game ownership. As console players lament the decreasing presence of physical media, PC gamers have largely embraced their jailer and even elevated him to godhood. Even if people want to believe that GabeN is a deity that can do no wrong, he will not live forever.

No company should hold our libraries hostage, no matter how "good" they are perceived to be. This is why I buy everything I can on GOG, Zoom-Platform and Itch too. Not because I trust them, but because I don't have to trust them. I download what I buy immediately and then they can burn the next day for all I care. That is how purchasing used to work. That is how purchasing should work.

I can still play my old PC games that rely on disc-based DRM. DRM-FREE stores are the closest equivalent to that. Download your offline installers immediately and store them safe. Protect them against their own publishers and from the store that sold them.

First GOG. As someone who has been buying games from them since 2008, GOG are great that they provide offline DRM free installers, however they have the same position as Valve in that they view Windows versions not supported by Microsoft should not exist. Games I paid for well within the XP era have since been updated to require Windows 10 or 11, some Windows 7 games no longer work and need newer win32 APIs and DLLs. GOG does not provide the option to download older installers, so if you lose it your older system is toast.

@Aerocatia That is true, but that is why you should either hoard your old installers, install them on a new system and then move them to the old one, OR get Inno Extract to extract them as zips: https://github.com/dscharrer/innoextract

The main point is that there is no need to run a modern online authenticator on an ancient system, which is what Steam often is (Yes yes, there's a handful of DRM-FREE games on Steam too).

I agree with a lot of this post.

I agree with this post. I support the writer, he's done more for games than Steam, who cares for income not gamers and developers.
I'm a developer, and I've been gamer for over 30 years, so it's clearly apparent what's happening there.
GOG is the place to buy old games.
To the author - quite a ballsy and admirable move, my respect.

@Kaldaien LOTS of respect to you for speaking out against the destroyer of PC game ownership. As console players lament the decreasing presence of physical media, PC gamers have largely embraced their jailer and even elevated him to godhood. Even if people want to believe that GabeN is a deity that can do no wrong, he will not live forever.

Physical media on consoles is hugely more important because people don't even really own the devices they play their games on.
Digital or physical is not the issue. The issue is DRM or no DRM. Consoles themselves are the DRM, so we should do what we can to take ownership back. As for PC, putting the whole blame on Valve for Steam is nonsensical. Each individual developer can decide to release their games DRM-free even on Steam, hence they should be held accountable first and foremost.

All DRM is bad. To preserve software in most cases the only solution is a crack. This is made harder and harder thanks to a combination of the customers not caring about their rights (and rewarding invasive DRM with their 70$) which in turns give the publishers and storefronts financial muscle to invest in politicians and technology that make it more dangerous and technically challenging to defeat the digital chains/rot and timebombed software.

The 80s and 90s was better.

ABSOLUTE CLOWN

such a good opinion you're shilling for 2 out of 3 objectively worse stores LOL

You're just jealous that Steam's improvements are making your terrible software irrelevant

cappuccino assassino

Just install linux on your old box bro. We love steam & valve because they love linux, nobody cares about the joke of a drm they have on windows.

Hey, look! Another non-technical user. Newsflash: the exact same DRM is used under Linux when you run games under a gross API translation layer.

It's really not the same, drm on linux is basically nonexistant because all the relevant nt api calls are just hacked in to return success

good try tim sweeney

they deserve it. google BwE controversy. Kaldaien, like BwE, would block users from his software he disliked. BwE created a tool to diagnose playstations.

Have you any idea how disingenuous this sounds? "Yeah just think of the BwE situation and apply it to Kaldaien" How about no? What is happening there is infinitely worse given that's commercial business. As for Kaldaien, I've googled what they allegedly did but I'm not seeing anything confirmed. On one hand I have seen people claiming they banned users from using their free software and on the other hand I see reports that it's open source and they couldn't have banned you if they tried. So, no idea what's true and what's not.

I've also seen reports the software doesn't work with certain pirated copies of games which... okay, not sure what to think about that, but wouldn't it be funny if all the anger came from pirates spreading misinformation? I don't know. It's really difficult to figure out what truly happened from an outside perspective today.

You're not special. You're not the only person with access to Steamworks and the Developer Community.

You’ve made a lot of wild and false claims, especially the idea that Steam forces developers to use the Steam Input API. That’s simply not true.

Steam Input is an optional feature, just like every other tool within Steamworks. If you're looking to blame someone, blame the developers who chose to implement it.

And while I agree that the Steam Input API can be problematic and interferes with XInput, that’s the only point you got right, the rest of your post is just noise and personal opinions I couldn’t care less about.

Plus 2002 and Windows 98? That's false. Steam was released publicly in 2003 and officially supported Windows XP, not Windows 98. Steam was also optional and only had Valve games, such as Half-Life and its mods. It wasn’t until games like Counter-Strike: Source, which launched in 2004 alongside Half-Life 2, that Steam became a requirement.

Deleting your account and issuing a dramatic manifesto doesn’t make a difference; frankly, it's a bit childish.

I am sorry, but once again, everything you rudely spouted at me is wrong.

You are confusing the XInput translation layer that Valve refers to as Steam Input with the native proprietary input API that Valve refers to as ... Steam Input.

I explained this in my write-up. There's a translation layer that you can turn off in the Steam client, but underneath that is the native API. They expose that API to developers, and the Steam client uses it internally.

Steam Input is built on top of SDL, it has some extremely problematic non-defeatable behavior that I had to write a product referred to as ValvePlug (it's linked to in my write-up, go read it) to disable because Valve does not have an Off switch for the internal native input API they created.

Allow me to quote, verbatim, the problem code straight out of SDL:

/**
 * A variable controlling whether enhanced reports should be used for
 * controllers when using the HIDAPI driver.
 *
 * Enhanced reports allow rumble and effects on Bluetooth PlayStation
 * controllers and gyro on Nintendo Switch controllers, but break Windows
 * DirectInput for other applications that don't use SDL.
 *
 * Once enhanced reports are enabled, they can't be disabled on PlayStation
 * controllers without power cycling the controller.
 *
 * The variable can be set to the following values:
 *
 * - "0": enhanced reports are not enabled.
 * - "1": enhanced reports are enabled. (default)
 * - "auto": enhanced features are advertised to the application, but SDL
 *   doesn't change the controller report mode unless the application uses
 *   them.
 *
 * This hint can be enabled anytime.
 *
 * \since This hint is available since SDL 3.2.0.
 */
#define SDL_HINT_JOYSTICK_ENHANCED_REPORTS "SDL_JOYSTICK_ENHANCED_REPORTS"

Enhanced reports are enabled, meaning the second the Steam client boots it kills support for PlayStation controllers using DirectInput unless you run them through Steam.

You know what? Fuck you Valve, you do not get to hijack the Windows operating system, you can go straight to Hell!

I refuse to run software I purchased from a competitor's store through your shitty client all because your DRM client boots with Windows and I need it to run software XYZ.

I deleted my account, uninstalled Steam, got rid of software XYZ and good riddance to those assholes who think they have ownership of the Window operating system.

No one cares yet you're pretty salty about someone being an asshole to you a decade ago. Grow up

Thanks for demonstrating your immaturity.

The fact that you're still commenting and being salty about something you say no one cares about reveals a lot about your true emotional investment and how actually bothered you are by this person and their post.

The fact that you're still commenting and being salty about something you say no one cares about reveals a lot about your true emotional investment and how actually bothered you are by this person and their post.

i read the first 9 words but stopped reading after. anything else you gotta say?

looks like you don't even have the capacity to engage when someone calls out your hypocrisy.

You don't care yet you're still commenting. Two things can be true at once, He can be a dickhead and you can also be a hypocritical, obsessive nut for being hung over what a dickhead did almost a decade ago, pretending to "not care" and failing horribly at it.

You don't care yet you're still commenting. Two things can be true at once, He can be a dickhead and you can also be a hypocritical, obsessive

Don't waste your time arguing with an anime avatar channer, just report the abusive behavior via Github, block him and move on :)

@chanchi12 nobody cares about you, you look like a sorrow spammer.
I bet he's hired by Steam. Just block him right away, otherwise you won't see any useful comment just his stupid rants that don't bring anything whatsoever into the conversation. It's a guy who gives nothing, but complains the most.

Please if you see anyone swearing here or at others, please note that this is not a +18 platform.
Please use the report option and report for "Harassment and Bullying"

I had a discussion with you a few months ago in a thread where I and others complained about a game shipping with Denuvo. You blamed Valve for that all the way through which was very strange to me since I know you can release a game without DRM on Steam just like many developers have. Even though you did not acknowledge that Denuvo was way worse than Steam's own DRM which can easily be circumvented and we didn't see eye to eye whatsoever you were still a friendly chap to talk to.

As for Steam and forced patches, it annoys me, too, but there are ways to prevent that. You can set all games to only update on launch, then when you set Steam to offline they will just let you play without updating. It is furthermore possible to download older versions of games from Steam by accessing Steam's hidden Console tab and inputting the manifest and depot IDs of the game patch version you wish to download. None of that is user-friendly, but at the very least it is possible.

As for multiplayer often not working well across stores, I see your point but it is again an instance where you place all the blame on Valve and none on the developers. Because just like with DRM, developers aren't forced to exclusively allow me to connect to people via Steam's APIs. I want developers to give me LAN modes and private servers. Epic making their own API that is also cross-platform is still just a bandaid fix. I know I can use the Goldberg emulator to play games that normally use the Steam API in LAN with friends, but Epic API does not have a dedicated modder for that yet and many games are stuck with this online DRM for multiplayer as a result.

Essentially, I don't think Valve is even to blame at all with their multiplayer API. It really should exist for making it simple for Steam friends to quickly and conveniently play together. The issue is developers irresponsibly using it as the only way to play together not bothering to add platform-agnostic LAN and/or private servers to their games like even Valve does with their own titles.

Overall you have many valid points regarding DRM and how customers should really be treated but your criticisms are partially misplaced.

I do hope the Stop Destroying Videogames ECI will succeed and alleviate many of these issues.

The problem is that Valve has a de facto monopoly, and an army of sycophant redditors that are determined to keep that monopoly in place. When that's the case, anything they push (steamworks, steaminput etc.) has a massive advantage in terms of adoption, and hey wouldn't you know, those things they push also serve to further entrench that monopoly!

People give Valve the benefit of the doubt on a lot of stuff because they've done a very good job of crafting their "good guy" persona (which, to be fair, isn't that hard to do when you have billions coming in and aren't spending it on actually making your own games), and thus they routinely get away with things that would never fly with any other company. Can you IMAGINE the shitstorm if Unreal Engine started pushing devs to use a proprietary input API that was 100% reliant on EGS to function? But with Valve, people are just happy to just go "Well, they were there first so they get the monopoly, and they're nice to me so they can keep it!"

Please if you see anyone swearing here or at others, please note that this is not a +18 platform. Please use the report option and report for "Harassment and Bullying"

Honestly, that's what I'm gonna do given that's all chanchi12 been doing in this comment section, because Kaldaien literally responded to that other post with a proper argument and this guy is gonna act like a 13-year old and ignore the answer to your misinformation completely because of something that happened 10 years ago(deserved if you're a DUMB pirate, tbh). No one's obligated to provide tech support to pirates. And also, any pirate worth their salt doesn't need to get tech support in the first place.
If you pirate games you have no reason to be a entitled kid, most pirates know how to take care of eachother, find workarounds and hate misinformation, unlike you. You're not welcome by either side, chanchi12.

Kal explaining the problem with Steam Input further for those looking for it: https://gist.github.com/Kaldaien/c66bf3dca62a5ac63785714f686e60ad?permalink_comment_id=5671709#gistcomment-5671709

Please if you see anyone swearing here or at others, please note that this is not a +18 platform. Please use the report option and report for "Harassment and Bullying"

Thanks, I've reported too. Funny how he just keeps confirming spiwar's point lol.
Edit: aand he's banned. Thank you Github

He's sorted.

You can't even open his profile no more.
Thank you Github.