Gaben gave us DRM and games you don’t actually own.
THANK YOU for saying this. Their launcher based DRM scheme and its direct attack on ownership, physical and used games has been a scourge. Don’t forget their popularizing the F2P economy model and lootboxes, leading to more US-grown harm.
THANK YOU for saying this. Their launcher based DRM scheme and its direct attack on ownership
FYI Steam only applies a very weak DRM to stop people from copying games, but you can easily bypass it using Goldberg. Just copy/paste a few files into the game folder and you can play it outside of Steam.
I know it is weak, I have cracked the games I used to have there myself before just giving up the account. It doesn’t change the facts it harmed games forever, that it is the poster child of “you will own nothing and you will be happy.”
You say this like Steam created DRM… DRM already existed back in the day, and in way more intrusive ways. Having CD keys, games that would activate only once by connecting to the servers, etc…
Steam is the poster child of making digital games popular. That’s it. It’s not that deep.
Just because there was bad (CD keys), doesn’t mean we must settle for worse (phoning home to servers owned and run by a private company based in the fucking United States to play a fucking single player game). But if you’re happy owning nothing… Well, I’m not.
Iirc, half life 2 was the first major game, having DRM and needing validation through steam, even with a hardcopy. After that, all the other companies jumped aboard with using DRM with steam.
I feel like people think cd keys are the bar and if you are slightly better (online activation) them you get flying marks. Same with comparing to Xbox and epic.
They all fail, including steam. It’s crazy to see people defending any of them but Gaben always gets defended. Steam deserves the critique as much as the rest.
THANK YOU for saying this. Their launcher based DRM scheme and its direct attack on ownership, physical and used games has been a scourge. Don’t forget their popularizing the F2P economy model and lootboxes, leading to more US-grown harm.
FYI Steam only applies a very weak DRM to stop people from copying games, but you can easily bypass it using Goldberg. Just copy/paste a few files into the game folder and you can play it outside of Steam.
I know it is weak, I have cracked the games I used to have there myself before just giving up the account. It doesn’t change the facts it harmed games forever, that it is the poster child of “you will own nothing and you will be happy.”
You say this like Steam created DRM… DRM already existed back in the day, and in way more intrusive ways. Having CD keys, games that would activate only once by connecting to the servers, etc…
Steam is the poster child of making digital games popular. That’s it. It’s not that deep.
Just because there was bad (CD keys), doesn’t mean we must settle for worse (phoning home to servers owned and run by a private company based in the fucking United States to play a fucking single player game). But if you’re happy owning nothing… Well, I’m not.
Iirc, half life 2 was the first major game, having DRM and needing validation through steam, even with a hardcopy. After that, all the other companies jumped aboard with using DRM with steam.
I feel like people think cd keys are the bar and if you are slightly better (online activation) them you get flying marks. Same with comparing to Xbox and epic.
They all fail, including steam. It’s crazy to see people defending any of them but Gaben always gets defended. Steam deserves the critique as much as the rest.