Do you think Valve cause the death of the physical game
Do you guys think Valve caused the death of physical PC gaming?
Valve has produced many great games, but their physical disc versions from 2005–2018 were heavily reliant on Steam DRM. Essentially, every Valve game released after 2005 requires an online account, mandatory activation, and the Steam client. Valve also encouraged third-party companies to adopt this model.
Because of this, many of these physical copies have essentially become paperweights. The systems required to run these games depend on Steam—which no longer supports older operating systems like Windows XP through 8. In many cases, the disc is nothing more than a glorified Steam installer. To make matters worse, around 2023, the legacy disc installers that relied on Steam were effectively retired. If these Steam-based game installers still work today, please let me know."