Forget the tidy PR spin for a second. Luna’s announcement that it will bin third-party stores and stop a‑la-carte purchases in April 2026, followed by the removal of access to those streamed purchases in June, is a glaring reminder of a miserable truth. In 2026, the word “buy” has been hollowed out. You hand over cash, you get access, and you keep it only as long as it suits a platform’s shifting business model. This isn’t some unforeseen technical glitch; it is the industry’s default setting.
The fundamental problem is centralised control. When storefronts, licences, and save files are tethered to someone else’s infrastructure, you are always at the mercy of their kill switch. We have seen it with films and TV shows being delisted without warning and games tied to specific streaming layers being pulled when a company pivots. Server-side DRM is a ticking clock. Luna is just the most recent example of a platform changing the locks on a house you thought you had a deed to.
Steam feels like a safer bet, and in many ways, it is. Having local installers provides a genuine buffer against the total disappearance seen with cloud-only services. But it isn’t an absolute guarantee of permanence. Specific DRM choices and platform policies still carry weight. There is a legal fight brewing in the UK regarding platform duties and consumer rights which might eventually force some accountability, but do not expect a courtroom to save your library this week. Law is a slow-moving beast, and digital mirrors break much faster than that.
In the real world, this fragility manifests in annoying ways. A streamed title you paid for disappears because a third-party integration was scrapped. Your save data, representing hundreds of hours of effort, becomes inaccessible because the export window was too short. A movie you “bought” gets geoblocked due to a licensing disagreement. If the DRM needs to talk to a server that is no longer being powered, your receipt is just a bit of digital paper.
There is no elegant solution to this, but there are practical, if tedious, defences. You should log into the original storefronts where you made purchases to confirm they actually exist there. Download local installers or DRM-free copies the second they are available; these are your only real shield. Export your save data immediately if a service offers the option rather than waiting for the deadline. Above all, treat anything that is streaming-only as a rental. Unless you have the files on a drive you own, you are just borrowing a bit of someone else’s space.
It is depressing that we have to do this, but convenience has systematically replaced permanence. The only way to push back is to embrace the boring work of downloading, backing up, and verifying your access. If you value your privacy and your library, take those steps now. Then you can get back to the much more important task of complaining about the state of the modern web.