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| ▲ | akimbostrawman 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | the same way you should run _all_ proprietary binaries. restricted inside a sandbox. linux makes that easy with flatpaks. | | |
| ▲ | tokyotexture 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | That only goes so far though. A lot of games need internet access, so essentially you are running potentially modified binaries running on your hardware/network, that gets access to the outside. Sure, blast radius becomes somewhat limited, but you still have a potential problem. | | |
| ▲ | akimbostrawman 3 days ago | parent [-] | | The only games that need a network connection are online games. With those you can use a application firewall (which you should anyways) like opensnitch to only allow connections to sites that make sense and block anything else e.g. internal connection. Unless you get your cracks from google.com it will be fine. |
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| ▲ | moffkalast 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Flatpaks would make it easy, if they ever worked when you needed them to. | | |
| ▲ | akimbostrawman 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Sounds like a issue with your system. I have used hundreds of them on all kinds of systems. | | |
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| ▲ | secstate 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's not a great solution, but you can vote with your wallet and simply not partake in that form of entertainment. I can't say it's fun to be not up on current games, or to find indie/non-drm games to play. But piracy is just an end-around a terribly policy of non-ownership that manages to both not remunerate the folks who do the work and make no impact on the actual problem which is that we don't like the non-ownership clause in modern games. So yeah, TLDR, vote with your wallet and give up the entertainment this time. |
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| ▲ | ndriscoll 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | You could buy from a provider that advertises non-use of DRM like GOG, or on Steam, it lists third party DRM, so you can know whether you have the tools to remove it (and whether you have the tools to remove Steam's DRM, or whether the game appears on a web list of games that don't use any DRM). You could also refund it if you can't verify you're able to successfully back it up and run the backup on a computer or user session without Steam installed. For multiplayer, if it's possible, you can find people discussing it on the web (maybe in pirate communities). Otherwise, just don't buy it. Some recent stats indicated most gamers buy at most two games per year, so it's not a ton of work to ensure they have a working archive. | | |
| ▲ | mariusor 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Why do you think it's different with GOG? Both GOG and Steam allow you to use local copies of games, and both would deny you access to your account to download more games once banned. Steam allows you to install games without DRM from their platform. | | |
| ▲ | ndriscoll 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Unless they've changed recently, I thought GOG's platform itself does not have DRM? Steam does provide DRM and doesn't tell you if a game uses it, though as far as I know there are generic tools to bypass it. GOG also specifically advertises games that don't have DRM, e.g. [0]. Steam versions of the same game (e.g. Skyrim) often require Steam to be running and enforce mandatory updates that aren't always desirable with no rollback ability. [0] https://www.gog.com/en/game/the_elder_scrolls_v_skyrim_anniv... | | |
| ▲ | mariusor 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > Steam versions of the same game (e.g. Skyrim) often require Steam to be running and enforce mandatory updates that aren't always desirable with no rollback ability. Yeah, but that's a developer choice. Steam doesn't force anyone to use their API for things like that. If that's a concern for someone as a gamer, they should probably support the companies that don't do it no matter the platform, not blame Steam for it. | | |
| ▲ | ndriscoll 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The original question was "how do you know these things before you buy the game?" My answer was "You could buy from a provider that advertises non-use of DRM like GOG." Whether it's a developer choice is irrelevant. GOG tells you the information you need for your purchasing decision, so if you want to know what you're buying, buy from somewhere like GOG. Also, don't assume that because it's DRM-free on GOG, it is also DRM-free elsewhere like Steam. Buying a DRM-free copy on GOG seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do even if a company has DRM on Steam; it provides an economic signal that there's some segment of customers that requires no DRM as a condition of sale. Since marginal cost of digital "goods" is ~0 and it's likely trivial to disable DRM in your build, it would be dumb not to cater to them and take your free money. | | |
| ▲ | dylan604 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > it provides an economic signal that there's some segment of customers that requires no DRM as a condition of sale Do you just assume that's the reason someone uses GOG vs Steam? People could be using GOG for other reasons, and the lack of DRM is just bonus. So how does that signal really get interpreted correctly? | | | |
| ▲ | mariusor 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I see, thank you. That explains it better. I would imagine that's still possible to do it for steam games also with a simple internet search. :) |
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| ▲ | autoexec 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Steam is its own DRM on top of whatever else a developer chooses to do. I found this out one year when I spent months without internet access. At a certain point steam would refuse to run any of the locally installed single player games I had paid for through their platform until my computer phoned home to their servers. I'd already configured everything for working offline and they did successfully for a long time until one day they just wouldn't anymore. If you don't want lose access to every game you fully paid for on Steam you'd better pirate a copy of everything you bought because on a whim they can take it all from you at any time. |
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| ▲ | 0cf8612b2e1e 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There are some games on GOG that still include DRM. The one I can remember offhand is Cult of the Lamb where the game would only run until a certain milestone at which the copy protection determined the GOG version was pirated and would gate the player from advancing. There were forum posts from the developer confirming this was intended. | | | |
| ▲ | fencepost 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Slightly off-topic, thanks for the reminder that I wanted to try Skyrim someday, seems like a good time to get prepped for it. |
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| ▲ | protimewaster 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Another issue is, how do you get your games when you're banned? Most people don't have all their games installed at any given time. With GOG, there is at least an unofficial, supported way to get an offline installer for each of your games. With Steam, there's no officially supported way to do this, so it's likely to be a bigger PITA to archive all your games ahead of time. In reality, though, almost nobody is thinking ahead so that they have all their games archived, and, given the size of games and collections, it's a difficult thing to do on the cheap. | | |
| ▲ | dylan604 4 days ago | parent [-] | | How is something unofficial yet supported? Is there just no "download installer" button on the site, but can be done as long as you know how to obtain the URL? | | |
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| ▲ | humodz 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | With GOG you can download the games's installer, vy backing up those you can still install your games even if you get banned | | |
| ▲ | mariusor 4 days ago | parent [-] | | For purposes of backup I don't see that large of a difference between a single installer executable and a zipped folder that you'd get after installing a non DRMed game from Steam. | | |
| ▲ | unsnap_biceps 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | GOG has allowed third party backup software like https://github.com/Sude-/lgogdownloader to exist. I have a full offline mirror of my GOG library that I update monthly that will never happen with my Steam library. | |
| ▲ | autoexec 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | The non-DRMed steam game will stop working after a while if you haven't logged into steam after a very long time. If steam ever went under, your locally installed single player games that work offline will stop working. Ask me how I know. I've taken to getting a cracked copy of every steam game in my library so that steam can't screw me over again in the future. | | |
| ▲ | akimbostrawman 4 days ago | parent [-] | | >I've taken to getting a cracked copy of every steam game in my library so that steam can't screw me over again in the future. you can trivially crack any steam DRM game yourself within minutes. | | |
| ▲ | Rohansi 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Yup, and you can find open source "cracks" if you don't trust using a binary for it. It's barely DRM. |
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| ▲ | ghjv 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Steam's lawyers would say that one should know by reading the terms of service for the storefront and the purchase. But in the real world, how often does that happen? | |
| ▲ | dfxm12 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is 90% of the reason I don't bother buying modern computer games. For me, I assume games require phoning home and use some kind of DRM unless it is otherwise advertised. | |
| ▲ | behringer 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The best thing you can do is ask the distributor or publisher. It shows them this is wanted and gets you answers. | |
| ▲ | xp84 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Assume everything is encrapified with “strong” DRM unless credibly demonstrated otherwise. | | |
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