Online delivery

With the increased popularity of the Internet, online distribution of game content has become more common. Retail services such as Direct2Drive and Download.com allow users to purchase and download large games that would otherwise only be distributed on physical media, such as DVDs, as well as providing cheap distribution of shareware and demonstration games. Other services, allow a subscription-based distribution model in which users pay a monthly fee to download and play as many games as they wish.

The Steam system, developed by Valve Corporation, provides an alternative to traditional online services. Instead of allowing the player to download a game and play it immediately, games are made available for "pre-load" in an encrypted form days or weeks before their actual release date. On the official release date, a relatively small component is made available to unlock the game. Steam also ensures that once bought, a game remains accessible to a customer indefinitely, while traditional mediums such as floppy disks and CD-ROMs are susceptible to unrecoverable damage and misplacement. The user would however depend on the Steam servers to be online to download its games. According to the terms of service for Steam, Valve has no obligation to keep the servers running. Therefore, if the Valve Corporation shut down, so would the servers.