3 ms·

Valve is a pretty open company. However I feel they could totally and completely crush the competition by adopting a DRM-Free approach, or at least their own on

by pjerem 5y ago

Valve is a pretty open company. However I feel they could totally and completely crush the competition by adopting a DRM-Free approach, or at least their own one and allow us to backup a « steam-free » version of the purchased games. GOG is already doing this and they are not agonizing under piracy (and anyway they sell the same games as steam). To get back on topic, could we have the opportunity to play DX-Ball nowadays if it was full of today-standard DRMs? Well, tbh, probably yes, but only by adding a useless cracking procedure. Nonetheless, I totally agree with you and I myself have a « DX-Ball (2) Mods » folder on my PC for the last two decades :)

nixroot 5y ago
Steam is pretty DRM free. Games have Steam integration which checks if your account owns the game, but they don't attempt to prevent tampering like true DRM does. If Steam were to disappear you could easily un-steam your games. GOG also bans third party DRM software. It's great, but big publishers don't like that which is why GOG is mostly indie.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  > If Steam were to disappear you could easily un-steam your games. Speaking as someone who actually does this (because I despise the Steam client), it’s not easy. Different games need different Steam emulators to work, and titles that seem to run initially will break in weird ways mid-game.
- MikusR 5y ago
  This burger is mostly meat free except for the beef used to make the burger
  - captn3m0 5y ago
    https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games While not huge, it is a pretty big list.
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
      It's a big list because there are a lot of games on Steam. However, the chance that any given Steam game in your library will be DRM Free is very small. I've also had cases in the past where I bought a game because it was on this list, but the list was seemingly wrong because the game had DRM. I've actually had much better luck with the Epic Game Store, although it's seemingly not as good as it used to be.
wingerlang 5y ago
> However I feel they could totally and completely crush the competition by adopting a DRM-Free approach Are they not totally and completely crushing the competition already?
Fnoord 5y ago
Sometimes DRM, like Denuvo, gets removed with a post-patch after it got broken because it has a performance impact and the pirated version runs better than the DRM one, while the initial purpose of the DRM (ensure no piracy right after launch) has been fulfilled. I call that pragmatic.

by pjerem 5y ago

nixroot 5y ago

Steam is pretty DRM free. Games have Steam integration which checks if your account owns the game, but they don't attempt to prevent tampering like true DRM does. If Steam were to disappear you could easily un-steam your games. GOG also bans third party DRM software. It's great, but big publishers don't like that which is why GOG is mostly indie.

Wowfunhappy 5y ago
> If Steam were to disappear you could easily un-steam your games. Speaking as someone who actually does this (because I despise the Steam client), it’s not easy. Different games need different Steam emulators to work, and titles that seem to run initially will break in weird ways mid-game.
MikusR 5y ago
This burger is mostly meat free except for the beef used to make the burger
- captn3m0 5y ago
  https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games While not huge, it is a pretty big list.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    It's a big list because there are a lot of games on Steam. However, the chance that any given Steam game in your library will be DRM Free is very small. I've also had cases in the past where I bought a game because it was on this list, but the list was seemingly wrong because the game had DRM. I've actually had much better luck with the Epic Game Store, although it's seemingly not as good as it used to be.

wingerlang 5y ago

> However I feel they could totally and completely crush the competition by adopting a DRM-Free approach Are they not totally and completely crushing the competition already?

Fnoord 5y ago

Sometimes DRM, like Denuvo, gets removed with a post-patch after it got broken because it has a performance impact and the pirated version runs better than the DRM one, while the initial purpose of the DRM (ensure no piracy right after launch) has been fulfilled. I call that pragmatic.