It doesn’t need to be always for sale to be preserved my copy is still there and it’s still playable. It’s only lost of those that paid for it can’t play it.

But I keep being told the trillionaire corporation steam is 100% ethical and good guys and that the billionaire Gabe is OUR billionaire and loves us!!

How is this gabes fault? Should gabe ban people from removing their own games from the store?

“Don’t talk bad about MY billionaire! ”

But I keep being told the trillionaire corporation steam is 100% ethical and good guys and that the billionaire Gabe is OUR billionaire and loves us!!

It’s unlikely Valve forced the game off the page. Even so, the supposed issue has always been if Steam were to pull games from you that are already in your library (which AFAIK they haven’t) or a future hypothetical where Steam closes down and if people would be able to offline save their libraries.

If this had happened on ps5 you’d all be blaming Sony

The original version of Crysis is available right now on GOG and the EA store. PC isn’t a single vendor ecosystem where the only store also owns the hardware to play it.

We also don’t know who decided to pull it. I’d still wager it is unlikely Valve made a unilateral choice or pressured the game off the platform. Look at EA for answers.

But I keep being told the trillionaire corporation steam is 100% ethical and good guys and that the billionaire Gabe is OUR billionaire and loves us!!

Preservation, while perhaps idealistic, is about keeping every version that we can. Doom is a great example. Because Carmac released the source code, source ports have proliferated. That means anyone can play the original Doom on just about any machine. Varying degrees of accuracy to the original DOS release exist thanks to ports like Chocolate Doom, GZDoom, Eternity Engine, et al. As do varying degrees of accuracy to Doom 95, the Windows 95 rerelease. Or to the version running on Xbox packed in with Doom 3.

Ports cover the engine, but we also have an archive of all the doom.wad files, the contents. We have demo and prototype versions. The dos release. Officially patched versions. The win95 release. The Xbox release.

But a preservationist also wants the original Bethesda Unity release, wad and engine. The Kex release with the new engine and new episodes. Neither of those Bethesda engines needs to exist but why not keep them too? They’re a part of the Doom legacy, an ongoing chapter in the endless story of Doom.

Its good that in this community we’ve gotten to preserve so much. It keeps the history of one of the most important video games alive and relevant. It keeps the game itself relevant. Without the original source release, there’s no GZDoom and there’s probably no Bethesda rereleases. The impact that source release had on the gaming community, gaming as an industry, modding and indie gaming, is incalculable.

That Crysis–also a landmark game in its own time–deserves any less is laughable. The original release of the game should always be present and available: as an artifact of its time, as a fine game in its own right, and as a piece of living history that can be stood up against its remakes, sequels, and the games it inspired.