OWNED BY STEAM

VALVE cordially reminds you that your games aren't yours

- Andy Chalk

Steam has made a little change to its shopping cart page: a new message that very clearly lays out to one and all that you're not buying a game—you're buying a license.

The message itself is brief, "A purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam." A link to the full Steam Subscriber Agreement is also provided. The change follows Valve modifying its subscriber agreement last month to remove a forced arbitration clause.

Of course, for practical purposes, all you need to do is forget your Steam password to get a real sense of just how much you 'own' your games. You can't bequeath your Steam library to anyone upon your unfortunate passing either, which of course you would be able to if you really owned its contents.