5 ms·

I own over 200 games on Steam, from big name titles (Call of Duty) to small indie games and I have never had a problem with DRM.

barrkel 16y ago
I bought Portal 2, I got bored of it after the few hours of gameplay it has, and I wanted to let my girlfriend play it (who has just finished Portal 1). Can't do that without giving her my login. That alone means Steam games are worth perhaps only 30% of retail price to me; but they are not priced like that in the UK. They're usually 10-30% more expensive than e.g. Amazon. These are the biggest kinds of problems I have with DRM, when it's not something like Securom complaining that I'm running Process Explorer.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  - barrkel 16y ago
    You of course realize, not all contract terms are binding, yet when contract terms are implemented in software, they become much more binding than when they are interpreted by a court of law. You also realize that not all license agreements are the same; and first sale doctrine normally gives right to resell copyrighted works. I would in effect be gifting the game to my girlfriend, rather than lending it, as I wouldn't be playing it again. And thanks for accusing me of breaking the law. I appreciate it. (The thing that tipped me into buying the game on Steam was that I'd also be supporting independent developers with the Potato Sack etc.)
  - cookiecaper 16y ago
    First of all, please don't conflate license agreement and statute -- a statute is law, a license agreement is a private contract that may or may not be valid. The US has until recently had strong case law support for lending and reselling goods. Look up the first sale doctrine, which states that copyright holders can only impose restrictions on the first sale of a copyrighted project, and thereafter the property can be used, sold, abused, denigrated, etc., as desired by the possessor. This is actually a really important part of copyright law, because without it a copyright holder could say "You can't give my CD to charity, I don't make money for poor people" (manifest practically as "you must not charge less than x price"), and otherwise impose ridiculous restrictions on private property, thereby diminishing the real property of the possessor in favor of the theorized intellectual property assigned to the copyright holder in order to promote useful progress in the arts. To the extent that copyright powers do not promote useful progress in the arts, they should be entirely demolished!!!
aw3c2 16y ago
And what happens if Steam is offline? Do not reply "it has an offline mode" because you have to enable the offline mode while being online.
- michael_dorfman 16y ago
  And what happens if the power is out in your apartment? Don't reply "my laptop has a battery", because you have to charge the battery when the power is online. Seriously: what kind of uptime reliability do you demand from a game? The fact that it has an offline mode already puts it far ahead of most cloud-based services. If you don't like Steam for political reasons, that's fine, but this is a very weak line of argumentation.
  - jasonkester 16y ago
    It's a valid point that's bitten me in the past. I'll often head off to a remote 3rd world beach for months at a time. I bring a laptop along, and usually stock up on a few games to pass the odd rainy afternoon in the hammock. For this use case, something like Steam is just crippling. Even if you remember to put your games into "offline" mode before leaving home, it still insists on connecting to the server every month or so just to be sure. I'm in a place with generator power a couple hours a day and no internet. That's an edge case they didn't plan for, and it only hurts people who paid for the game.
  - vollmond 16y ago
    Power being out, luckily, is something that can be dealt with by the individual consumer (call power company, go to a neighbor's house, etc). The point here is that if Steam goes offline (through glitch or bankruptcy or whatever reason), there is nothing at all the paying consumer can do, outside of hacking/pirating the game. This is a massive loss of functionality from games past. And yes, Steam does give new features in return (online backup of your games, unified chat, etc), but there is no technical reason to have to trade the old features for new. edit: removed possibly inflammatory comment
    - 16y ago

barrkel 16y ago

I bought Portal 2, I got bored of it after the few hours of gameplay it has, and I wanted to let my girlfriend play it (who has just finished Portal 1). Can't do that without giving her my login. That alone means Steam games are worth perhaps only 30% of retail price to me; but they are not priced like that in the UK. They're usually 10-30% more expensive than e.g. Amazon. These are the biggest kinds of problems I have with DRM, when it's not something like Securom complaining that I'm running Process Explorer.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- barrkel 16y ago
  You of course realize, not all contract terms are binding, yet when contract terms are implemented in software, they become much more binding than when they are interpreted by a court of law. You also realize that not all license agreements are the same; and first sale doctrine normally gives right to resell copyrighted works. I would in effect be gifting the game to my girlfriend, rather than lending it, as I wouldn't be playing it again. And thanks for accusing me of breaking the law. I appreciate it. (The thing that tipped me into buying the game on Steam was that I'd also be supporting independent developers with the Potato Sack etc.)
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  First of all, please don't conflate license agreement and statute -- a statute is law, a license agreement is a private contract that may or may not be valid. The US has until recently had strong case law support for lending and reselling goods. Look up the first sale doctrine, which states that copyright holders can only impose restrictions on the first sale of a copyrighted project, and thereafter the property can be used, sold, abused, denigrated, etc., as desired by the possessor. This is actually a really important part of copyright law, because without it a copyright holder could say "You can't give my CD to charity, I don't make money for poor people" (manifest practically as "you must not charge less than x price"), and otherwise impose ridiculous restrictions on private property, thereby diminishing the real property of the possessor in favor of the theorized intellectual property assigned to the copyright holder in order to promote useful progress in the arts. To the extent that copyright powers do not promote useful progress in the arts, they should be entirely demolished!!!

aw3c2 16y ago

And what happens if Steam is offline? Do not reply "it has an offline mode" because you have to enable the offline mode while being online.

michael_dorfman 16y ago
And what happens if the power is out in your apartment? Don't reply "my laptop has a battery", because you have to charge the battery when the power is online. Seriously: what kind of uptime reliability do you demand from a game? The fact that it has an offline mode already puts it far ahead of most cloud-based services. If you don't like Steam for political reasons, that's fine, but this is a very weak line of argumentation.
- jasonkester 16y ago
  It's a valid point that's bitten me in the past. I'll often head off to a remote 3rd world beach for months at a time. I bring a laptop along, and usually stock up on a few games to pass the odd rainy afternoon in the hammock. For this use case, something like Steam is just crippling. Even if you remember to put your games into "offline" mode before leaving home, it still insists on connecting to the server every month or so just to be sure. I'm in a place with generator power a couple hours a day and no internet. That's an edge case they didn't plan for, and it only hurts people who paid for the game.
- vollmond 16y ago
  Power being out, luckily, is something that can be dealt with by the individual consumer (call power company, go to a neighbor's house, etc). The point here is that if Steam goes offline (through glitch or bankruptcy or whatever reason), there is nothing at all the paying consumer can do, outside of hacking/pirating the game. This is a massive loss of functionality from games past. And yes, Steam does give new features in return (online backup of your games, unified chat, etc), but there is no technical reason to have to trade the old features for new. edit: removed possibly inflammatory comment
  - 16y ago