Players began to notice a new message in their Steam carts on Thursday. Before completing a purchase, they saw a new message situated underneath the “Continue to payment” button, complete with a little computer graphic. It said: “A purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam,” with a link to the subscriber agreement.
In clearer language, Valve finally makes it clear that you don’t own the PC games you buy. Instead, you’re granted a license for the software.
Steam now shows that you don't own games
byu/Human-Equivalent-154 inSteam
But what changed? This is thanks to a new California law (AB 2426) that was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on September 24, which requires companies to make it clear that consumers don’t own digital goods — like movies, e-books, and, of course, video games — after a purchase. Otherwise, companies could be fined for false advertising. The law specifies that stores can offer a “license” only by providing easy access to the conditions and terms of service of said license.
A license specifically refers to a product that the seller can revoke access to if it no longer holds the license for it. This law doesn’t apply to a game that the store can’t revoke access to, like if you’re allowed to still play it as an offline download after it’s no longer available.
“As retailers continue to pivot away from selling physical media, the need for consumer protections on the purchase of digital media has become increasingly more important,” bill author Jacqui Irwin said in a press release.
This bill was signed in response to a number of incidents where users were no longer able to access movies, TV shows, and video games digitally after they’ve been removed from those platforms. The press release specifically calls out a number of recent video game delistings, such as Ubisoft removing The Crew from online stores and shutting down servers, making the game unplayable for previous owners. Following fan outcry, Ubisoft announced that it was exploring offline modes for future The Crew games.
While Irwin told Game File that the inciting incident for the bill was Sony announcing it would be removing Discovery shows from the PlayStation Store, “Ubisoft’s actions with The Crew further highlighted just how widespread this issue is.”
While the bill doesn’t go into effect until the new year, it looks like Valve is getting ahead of the requirement. It won’t change anything about how purchasing off the Steam store works, but it will just remind you that everything you buy is temporary.
This is just the latest change Valve made to its Steam subscriber agreement. It recently updated it to note that users will no longer be put into forced arbitration if they want to sue the company.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.