my desire to use Linux and continue learning

Steam seems to be one of the very few services (perhaps even the only one I know of) that hasn't transformed its product by following the trend of enshittification. I have many games on Steam, purchased years and years ago, many of which are no longer available, but I can still download and play, having purchased them back then.

I really appreciate Steam, but from what I read every day, I don't think "forever" exists, especially online. If we think of it in terms of "everything's in the cloud," well, the cloud costs money, so unless they somehow dispose of data, I don't know if a company can actually keep every single piece of data "forever" while maintaining a good price and not losing out or burdening consumers.

The same goes for physical copies: I could lose them, break them, my house burn down, and I'd lose everything, whereas if they were in the cloud, I wouldn't have any problems. The point is that consumers should be allowed, where possible, to export what they've purchased. Honestly, I think that anyone who bought movies or other content on some platform and then years later discovered that the company had removed them and they could no longer use them (or worse, the same content was on another paid platform) would honestly bother me.

I don't doubt that digital is more accessible and readily available than other formats. The biggest problem is that few services allow me to download locally what I've purchased.

So, for me, you're not buying anything, you're just renting for the long term.

Honestly, I'm tired of buying digital only to suddenly find out I can no longer use what I purchased. For these services, I prefer self-hosting or any method that allows me to have a working copy locally. At least I can decide what to do with the digital content.