Comment by danpalmer
4 years ago
I suspect this won't happen, and that Valve have contingencies in contracts to ensure this never happens. You might no longer get updates to a game, but that would likely be it.
Why? How is this different to films?
Games are what Steam does. Films are not really what the Playstation Store does. Sure you can buy them, but who does? Not enough to cause irreparable reputational damage would be my guess. Also, the Playstation Store has far less negotiating power with film distributors than Valve/Steam does with game publishers, so the contract terms aren't likely to include contingencies for this sort of situation.
> I suspect this won't happen, and that Valve have contingencies in contracts to ensure this never happens.
They don't, and they literally can't.
Is there something in contract law that prevents this?
It's more that no supplier can credibly claim that they can deliver it. If there's a rights dispute about a piece of underlying code for example, the terms can say what they like but they can't override it not being that entity's code to licence.
Valve certainly try and insert a presumption they can leave the title up, but it's not a given, and there's also not much to stop a developer from "updating" the title to a barely working basic binary.
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