It has been almost 19 years since the Xbox 360 was launched. Depending on how you look at it, you could call it a retro console, or you could call it a retro person: launched a few years after Steam, the console's main feature was an online game store where full games could be purchased and downloaded. That store is finally being shut down.

"On July 29, 2024, Xbox will no longer support the ability to purchase new games, DLC, and other entertainment content from the Xbox 360 Store on the console and Xbox 360 Marketplace," Microsoft had announced last year, The day has finally come.

The suspension will only affect the ability to purchase games and DLC for the Xbox 360. It does not completely wipe out a generation of digitally distributed console games, as games you already own will continue to work, and there are many backward-compatible Xbox 360 games that can be purchased on the new Xbox. (Many Xbox 360 games are also available on the PC.)

The closure, while obviously not directly related to PC gamers, has activated long-standing concerns about DRM, digital distribution, and game preservation. The Video Game History Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving games and their sources, writes, "Today, the Xbox 360 Marketplace is permanently closed, and hundreds of games and DLC are off the market, with no way to legally access them" (they also made cakes). (They also made the cake.)

The closure of a game store or service like Stadia, for example, always makes me think about a real doomsday scenario: what if Steam is gone? Unlike the aging Xbox 360 store, Steam is still extremely important today and keeps Gabe Newell's yacht running.

Midnight Society, the blockchain FPS developer that recently ousted Dr. Disrespect, suggests that true digital game ownership is the cure: at X, the company says that peer-to-peer game marketplaces "replace the classic storefront . but this is more of a prediction than a fact, and such game marketplaces (e.g. RobotCache) are far from replacing Steam. And for this store to make a difference, it needs to offer Steam-like DRM within a fully decentralized and robust framework. I know of no such thing.

An easy solution is DRM-free game sales, as GOG does, where DRM-free games can be archived by users and distributed by hobbyists and archivists in the unlikely event that they are no longer available from the store.

Nevertheless, only a limited number of publishers are willing to release games without DRM, which does not help with the other major problem of game preservation: live service games that become unplayable when the official servers shut down. In this regard, a recent letter-writing campaign is pushing for legislation that would require game publishers to make their games playable regardless of whether or not they continue to actively support them.