If you would like to be able to keep playing your games once the official servers shutdown, this may be something to look into (If you are an European citizen you can sign up and vote on the petition), at the bottom you can find more information about the full story.

It may, or may not work but we'll never know if we don't try.

https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007_en

Objectives
This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union (or related features and assets sold for videogames they operate) to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state.

Specifically, the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher.

The initiative does not seek to acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights, neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state.


Annex
Videogames have grown into an industry with billions of customers worth hundreds of billions of euros. During this time, a specific business practice in the industry has been slowly emerging that is not only an assault on basic consumer rights but is destroying the medium itself.

An increasing number of publishers are selling videogames that are required to connect through the internet to the game publisher, or "phone home" to function. While this is not a problem in itself, when support ends for these types of games, very often publishers simply sever the connection necessary for the game to function, proceed to destroy all working copies of the game, and implement extensive measures to prevent the customer from repairing the game in any way.

This practice is effectively robbing customers of their purchases and makes restoration impossible. Besides being an affront on consumer rights, videogames themselves are unique creative works. Like film, or music, one cannot be simply substituted with another. By destroying them, it represents a creative loss for everyone involved and erases history in ways not possible in other mediums.

Existing laws and consumer agencies are ill-prepared to protect customers against this practice. The ability for a company to destroy an item it has already sold to the customer long after the fact is not something that normally occurs in other industries. With license agreements required to simply run the game, many existing consumer protections are circumvented. This practice challenges the concept of ownership itself, where the customer is left with nothing after "buying" a game.

We wish to invoke Article 17 §1 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union [EUR-Lex - 12012P/TXT - EN - EUR-Lex (europa.eu)] – “No one may be deprived of his or her possessions, except in the public interest and in the cases and under the conditions provided for by law, subject to fair compensation being paid in good time for their loss.” – This practice deprives European citizens of their property by making it so that they lose access to their product an indeterminate/arbitrary amount of time after the point of sale. We wish to see this remedied, at the core of this Initiative.

We also invoke Title XV of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU)[EUR-Lex - 12012E/TXT - EN - EUR-Lex (europa.eu)] and the following TFEU Articles as our justification for and the Union’s imperative to respond to this initiative:

Article 169 – Per §1, the EU has an obligation “to promote the interests of consumers and to ensure a high level of consumer protection…to protecting the health, safety and economic interests of consumers”. We believe this practice infringes upon or requires correction to be commensurate with the EU’s obligation. The actions taken in response to this initiative must supersede any end user license agreements associated with videogames.

Article 12 – “Consumer protection requirements shall be taken into account in defining and implementing other Union policies and activities.” Given that this practice extends across Member States and beyond the EU, the Union’s actions regarding this practice ought to keep consumer protection in mind. The actions taken in response to this initiative must supersede any end user license agreements associated with videogames.

Article 114, §3 – “The Commission, in its proposals envisaged in paragraph 1 concerning health, safety, environmental protection and consumer protection, will take as a base a high level of protection… Within their respective powers, the European Parliament and the Council will also seek to achieve this objective” This practice undermines the high level of consumer protection that the Commission, the European Parliament, and the Council takes as the basis of law in the Union, and their objectives of establishing and maintaining the functioning of an internal market as described in §1 of this Article, and Article 26 TFEU.

If you are not a European citizen, but would still like to help, or simply follow up on how the story unfolds, you can check this website.

https://www.stopkillinggames.com/

Keep on gaming and collecting!

Security alert
Lately more and more people seems to have been compromised by someone asking them to vote for their team on a website, the site itself doesn't look out of the ordinary, but as soon as you click on something, you get a page where you're asked to login, which looks quite like the original one, do not do it if you value your account.

If you think someone is trying to steal your account, go to their profile and report them.
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1927-RTSV-6909

Always make sure to login first on the real Steam website, so then you'd get a popup asking you to login via the Steam API, without having to use your credentials, while keeping you safe.

For more security tips see here
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1266-OAFV-8478

Stay safe, and keep on gaming.

As of lately, there's been a surge of Steam account getting compromised.

If you get any weird message from someone in your friendlist saying you won a free game, that tells you to login to a shady website to claim your win, think twice about it.

I won't be posting the link to the site/s in here, but always make sure that when you login, it's a safe website.

Here's some helpful tips on how to protect yourself.
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1266-OAFV-8478&l=


If you know someone who had their account compromised, here's a helpful link on gaining it back.
https://gtm.you1.cn/helpsteam/en/wizard/HelpWithAccountStolen

Stay safe out there, and keep on collecting !

It's 2015 people!
Thus it hath been decided.

Starting January 1st 2016, the new entry limit for our group will be raised from 500 to 750 games as per Steam's count.

Current members who have less than the new entry will stay in the group next year, no need to worry about that.

And as usual, VAC bans are still a brand of evil.


I'm kind of trying to avoid 1k as a limit because there's already a few 1k and 2k groups around.

In the coming years we might end up with a max of 1500 and then see from there what Steam has in Store for us.
Plenty can change in a few years...

For yurs now, we have enjoyed the second place on MetaGamerScore.
I think it's about time we dominate the scoreboard and become the unstoppable force on 1st rank.

Achievement hunters assemble! Sign in for the crew today!

http://gtm.you1.cn/groups/gamescollectors/discussions/1/846960628427678668/