I'm not a heavy gamer, but I do enjoy playing them when I have time. I've played most of the Fallout series, Tomb Raider games, and started TES with Morrowind. Occasionally reinstall some of the of older titles that are still on physical media, but everything is going to client software and digital download. My concern is that someday these clients will go under and will no longer have access to those titles. Titles I have at the moment are: Fallout NV, 4 with DLC (Steam) Fallout 1, 2, BOS (Bethesda Launcher) *Have there's on physical media to, but there versions work better with later OS* TES Skyrim with DLC (Steam) Tomb Raider 2013 with DLC (Steam) Shadow of the Tomb Raider with DLC (Steam) Have others, but those are the main games I care about being able to replay. I'm sure more will come in the future on both Steam and Bethesda. So has anyone devised a way to backup these games and make them playable without the client? As long as I have access to the client and internet is prefer to install and play that way. If the client goes under or I'm no longer able to access internet (I live out in the sticks, ISPs suck) is still like to be able to install and play my games even if it doesn't include the latest updates
I don't run a client and probably won't. Unfortunately the way of games on PC is going fully client based. The future for me is not looking bright unless I cave and start using Steam or something. I just don't play games enough to justify running a client like that and I don't like how the software inserts itself into my computer and games anyway. Gog.com legally sells a lot of DRM free stand-alone games and I have several of them. They're always older releases. I keep my collection backed up on an archive disk because they can be hard if not impossible to recover if you lose any of them. Sometimes I get them off torrents which is piracy, but for the old games I run I don't think anyone cares. In any case you can find a lot of client games with the client protection cracked allowing them to run stand-alone. The illegal way is the only way I know of to run those games without the client.
I have steam on my computer and several older games halflife halflife2 bioshock bioshock2 that type and I play them at times offline when century link goes down I even have a couple of smaller games from the 60's I play im in my upper 70's so the older games work for me I tried my son inlaws vr games and I cant keep up with them, the ones with the head sets and hand controllers wow just to fast and to much lol, but I did get the larger monitor for my computer with the better resolution and I can use larger fonts and larger cursor .
That's a good point about newer games, especially the shooters. They're fast and you need to be quick to play them. I'm older too so I don't go for games like that. I play the ones that are more strategy based and less reflex based. I do have a few games I play that require fast action, but the older ones are definitely more tame. I'm just happy they didn't obsolete a lot of those old games with Windows 10. It actually amazes me. I have games over a decade old (oldest is 2004) that work perfectly fine on win10. Say what you want about MS, but Windows is really good about compatibility with old software.
one thing I did do was move steam and the games to another drive, I also have a few slot machine games that they have at the casino, I got tired when MS upgraded their OS and reinstalled windows 10 of having to install the games all over again there was something like 65-70 gigs of games I also back up my user files info on the games
valve and steam on the news said they are releasing a vr game called alyx from half life 2 should be interesting !