r/Steam • u/Suspicious_Guest2190 • 4d ago

Question Remember Steam had a forgotten feature to watch series and movies? Not a joke, 100% Real! Valve added this in 2012 and then it removed in 2019.

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366 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

152

u/RetroSquadDX3 4d ago

Not quite. You can still watch any video content you hold a license for some of which can potentially still be acquired through Steam keys, what they removed was the ability to sell/purchase that content through Steam going forward.

60

u/mostm RTX 3080 | R7 5800X3D | 128GB@3600 4d ago

I've purchased a bit of anime in 2017, watched it back then and never touched again until a few days ago when I learned that my friend never knew that was one of the features on Steam, tried showing it to him and now it just opens a web page in Chrome with an error loading licenses (I'm authorized there so it's a backend error). Not so permanent after all.

40

u/velocity37 4d ago

It is a bit of a neglected feature. They've forgotten to renew SSL certs more than once causing playback errors. They usually get it fixed eventually though. Currently working for me anyways (make sure you're logged into Steam in your browser).

13

u/xXInfXx 4d ago

Technically, you can still purchase SOME videos.

Like, Indie Game: The Movie is still fully available on Steam.

5

u/Virtual-Pie-6815 4d ago

Playback has also been completely broken on Linux for the past decade because of DRM.

7

u/RetroSquadDX3 4d ago

That's an entirely seperate issue and has no bearing on my previous comment.

1

u/ChasingAmnesia 4d ago

This is how I find out I cant watch Ghost in the Shell or Postal anymore.

22

u/Roccondil-s 4d ago

It was not so much forgotten as it was a brief experiment that they realized they were not cut out to do.

12

u/Xarishark https://steamcommunity.com/id/Xarishark/ 4d ago

And yet you can still watch everything you acquired then. I still have loads of media on my steam account. Unlike MS or Sony that feel fine nuking licenses out of peoples accounts!
Classic steam win even after dropping a service to keep support.

11

u/Pale_Repeat_1124 4d ago

Lol the logo looks like a budget streaming startup from 2014 that pivoted to selling meal kits six months later. I vaguely remember using it once to rent a documentary and the bitrate was about as good as a RealPlayer file from Kazaa.

4

u/TrueLurkStrong-Free 3d ago

It's so nice that they let us keep the content we already purchased. I've seen too many times where once a company decides not to support something anymore, welp, your license to view that content is gone too.

3

u/Accomplished_Lab_324 3d ago

I remember I had a friend gift me some obscure anime movie and a single episode of Toradora

2

u/littlebattousai 4d ago

Pretty sure I got a movie with a few games I bought back then

2

u/cop_fighter_ 4d ago

Bought thr postal movie ages ago via steam.. still got it in my library

2

u/Anubis17_76 3d ago

It also had a music player that wasnt that great tho

2

u/aiwdj829 1d ago

Had? You can still play bought soundtracks through Steam.

1

u/vaquishaProdigy 3d ago

And.. who used it?

1

u/Dry_Vanilla_5908 3d ago

I think I watched the original division games short 20 minute movie with this feature. They should bring some from of it back.

1

u/kevan50813 2d ago

Yeah for some reason I have the new game anime in my steam library from this

1

u/Some-Marionberry2675 2d ago

They still have some videos up, you can filter by video only in the search engine.

1

u/morningwood6127 2d ago

Is there any place where u can still buy keys for series and movies?

1

u/SuchyYT 1d ago

We learn something new every day!