10 Feb, 2012
One of the arguments that are thrown at Steam from time to time is what would happen if the service was to disappear tomorrow? What would happen to your games, how you get recourse and more become the questions that formulate in your head. Well, we might not have to wait as long as you think to get an idea of how those questions will be answered with a recent digital conversion happening right now at Direct2Drive.
Last year, if you were out of the loop, IGN sold off Direct2Drive to Gamefly. On the surface, this seemed like a good idea for all parties involved, as IGN had let Direct2Drive sort of languish over the years, and Gamefly was looking for a way to find inroads into the PC marketplace, which has shown strong growth over the last few years. Gamefly took over operations shortly thereafter, and at the time, things seemed to be working well enough. As a person that had several titles bought through Direct2Drive, I never had an issue getting to my content after the purchase, and I assumed that things would go smoothly as Gamefly fully integrated the Direct2Drive service into its soon to come PC Digital client.
So as January 2012 came to a close, Direct2Drive shuttered its portal, and all transactions and purchase history from that point forward would be handled through the new Gamefly Digital client. Again, I was not too worried, as I had been in the Gamefly Digital client beta, and the FAQ seemed to make it clear that the transition would take a bit of time, but that it would be completed shortly after the migration is complete.
However, when things were finalized and I went to look at my purchase history, I noticed that out of the near dozen games that I purchased, exactly one made the initial transition, Bulletstorm. Other games, like Manhunt, Manhunt 2, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines and more were nowhere to be found. I did seem them in my purchase log on Gamefly, but the games were nowhere to be found. Of course, I knew that this might happen, but to have one game out of a near dozen show up was a bit of a system shock.
But the bigger shock came when I started to read deeper into the transition FAQ. From the FAQ, we have the following gem:
“If you’ve purchased games on Direct2Drive, your games are accessible via your GameFly Purchase History on the website or in the Client.
We will continue to work hard to bring ALL Direct2Drive titles to GameFly, if possible. Some older titles may take a bit longer or may not be migrated if their specs are no longer supported by today’s technology. The number of these unsupported titles will be minimal, and will not impact the majority of our customers. We’ll send you a separate e-mail if any of the titles you’ve purchased are not supported on GameFly, once all viable games have been transferred over.”
So now, I have no guarantee that I will ever get access to these games in the future. And here is where the question of a person’s access to their digital library when a service goes out of business, or in this case, is purchased by another entity. Yes, buying a digital copy of a game only ensures a license to play the game that can be revoked at any time, but we as consumers never really think about that component of the purchase. More and more, we are starting to rely on services like Steam, Gamefly and GameStop Digital. Some outlets, like GAME in the UK are already phasing out keeping PC games on the shelf, instead referring people to their digital marketplace, or keeping cards with codes for games in stock. PC gamers are slowly losing their ability to purchase physical games, and while I am normally behind this trend, my experience with the Direct2Drive/Gamefly rollover shows that the process could be fret with holes that leave the consumer in the dark with nothing. Gamefly states that they will be contacting customers for games that they cannot get ported over, but does that remedy me for a game that I cannot purchase anywhere else, like Manhunt 2, which was a Direct2Drive exclusive.
Of course, this will probably not stop me from continuing to use digital services, as I love the convenience that buying digital gives me. But a situation like this does give me pause when I hit that purchase button now, because who knows if I will have access to this library at any point in the future.
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