Digital isnt the worst thing, but how “ownership” is controlled can be. I wouldn’t blame Sony for the move but their method is garbage, and their past practices with digital ownership is too.
GoG on the other hand knows how it should be done. I have tons of games from them on a thumb drive. I’ve never actually needed to use it, but its nice to know I can. Major kudos to them.
That said, most of my games are owned on steam, which still has DRM, but at least I can play those games on a 20 year old PC, a modern one, a box in my living room, or on a multitude of hand helds. With Sony you are tied to a specific console and thats that. Good fucking luck when they stop selling that console.
No. It’s impossible to sell a game DRM-free on Steam. They always require a connection to Valve’s servers to install, regardless of what the publisher wants. GOG lets you download the installer as a file that you can use wherever or whenever you want.
Ehh, pretty sure they know what they’re talking about, they just have what I consider a really bad take about it, and present it as absolute fact. Because yes, you need a connection to steam to “install” a game from steam, whereas you can predownload a GOG game and then not need a connection to install. Which doesn’t really matter to most people, since they don’t care about having the game use an official installer, as opposed to either an unofficial one or just archived game files, but it is a difference.
Then they’re being deliberately obtuse to make a point. Valve treats downloading and installing as the same thing so needing a connection to “install” a steam game is functionally no different than needing a connection to “download” the installer from GOG and then installing the game. Once Steam has installed the game and it has no actual DRM you can just copy it wherever you like. GOG gives a much better package for storing your games but that doesn’t mean what Steam does is DRM.
I mean yes… kind of. You can go to your library in gog and download (slowly speed-limited and broken into 4 gb chunks for some damn reason) which means no client needed.
But steam does have games that are DRM free after that first install. Ones that you can copy directly out of the folder and put them anywhere and run. Steam no longer needed.
Digital isnt the worst thing, but how “ownership” is controlled can be. I wouldn’t blame Sony for the move but their method is garbage, and their past practices with digital ownership is too.
GoG on the other hand knows how it should be done. I have tons of games from them on a thumb drive. I’ve never actually needed to use it, but its nice to know I can. Major kudos to them.
That said, most of my games are owned on steam, which still has DRM, but at least I can play those games on a 20 year old PC, a modern one, a box in my living room, or on a multitude of hand helds. With Sony you are tied to a specific console and thats that. Good fucking luck when they stop selling that console.
DRM on Steam is up to the publisher.
No. It’s impossible to sell a game DRM-free on Steam. They always require a connection to Valve’s servers to install, regardless of what the publisher wants. GOG lets you download the installer as a file that you can use wherever or whenever you want.
We really need a c/confidentlyincorrect comm for people like you
Ehh, pretty sure they know what they’re talking about, they just have what I consider a really bad take about it, and present it as absolute fact. Because yes, you need a connection to steam to “install” a game from steam, whereas you can predownload a GOG game and then not need a connection to install. Which doesn’t really matter to most people, since they don’t care about having the game use an official installer, as opposed to either an unofficial one or just archived game files, but it is a difference.
Then they’re being deliberately obtuse to make a point. Valve treats downloading and installing as the same thing so needing a connection to “install” a steam game is functionally no different than needing a connection to “download” the installer from GOG and then installing the game. Once Steam has installed the game and it has no actual DRM you can just copy it wherever you like. GOG gives a much better package for storing your games but that doesn’t mean what Steam does is DRM.
I mean yes… kind of. You can go to your library in gog and download (slowly speed-limited and broken into 4 gb chunks for some damn reason) which means no client needed.
But steam does have games that are DRM free after that first install. Ones that you can copy directly out of the folder and put them anywhere and run. Steam no longer needed.
There is a list here https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_games_on_Steam although it suggests its about 600 games more that arent on the list yet.