| ▲ | rjh29 3 hours ago |
| Steam for some reason gets a pass even though it normalized the use of DRM for PC games over 20 years ago. |
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| ▲ | noir_lord 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Good customer service and mostly benevolent for the last two decades, it buys them a lot of goodwill they otherwise wouldn't have. That and people simply trust steam because it has always been trustworthy (on the whole). |
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| ▲ | Insanity 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yeah, I’ve been on Steam for about 20 years now and I can’t recall many bad moments with Valve. The only one that comes to mind is the “outrage” when they decided to release L4D2 just a year after L4D back in 2008 instead of making this a free upgrade. Times have definitely changed. looks at yearly COD with barely any changes |
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| ▲ | inigyou 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Most Steam games don't actually have any DRM. They just link to steamapi.dll for things like achievements, and that makes you think you can't run them without Steam. Some have DRM, of course. |
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| ▲ | righthand 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | What is the command I can use to run them without Steam then? If the game links to a dll that launches Steam and won’t play without it, then that is effectively Drm. Before I even play the game without Steam: how do I download it without Steam? | | |
| ▲ | Orygin 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There are DLLs that remove any check of Steam running. Just keep a copy of one and use that on other games. Regarding the download, it's the same issue with physical media. If I don't have the DVD, how can I acquire the game? | | |
| ▲ | righthand 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Oh there are Dlls? And as a non-technical consumer I just know this do I? I know how to dig deep into my file system and copy+paste a dll file into software I can’t/don’t understand? How do I download and install a copy without Steam? | | |
| ▲ | saghm an hour ago | parent [-] | | The premise of this hypothetical is Steam's servers going away. Ping me about this if and when it ever happens and I'll write you a tool where you can select the steamapi.dll you downloaded and have it copied to where your games need it. There's a fair chance you might not even need to because someone else will have made it before me. |
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| ▲ | inigyou 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You can download a fake steamapi.dll from a pirate site. It will fill in all the function stubs and it isn't even illegal. Or so I assume. I have Steam installed, so I wouldn't know. | |
| ▲ | wongarsu 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You download it with Steam, then run Steam's backup function to back up the games you care about to physical media. Or in the vast number of cases you can just copy the game folder Obviously if you buy it with steam you need Steam. But you only need it at the time of purchase, for the vast majority of titles | |
| ▲ | chainingsolid an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I got Kerbal Space Program to run by just copying the entire folder then deleting the Steam dlls. Not sure how many games that will work for though. | |
| ▲ | happymellon 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Depends on the game. Stardew Valley can be run outside Steam, and I do it to be able to add mods. How do you run an application? Depends on the application, as they all have different filenames... |
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| ▲ | jeroenhd 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I sort of get it. Every competitor, except maybe GOG, has come down hard in hyper-capitalist value-extraction mode quickly after pretending to do any good-will. For Valve, being a somewhat decent company is part of their ethos, for their competitors it's a means to an end. I trust Valve not to screw me over, even though I know they totally could. Their own DRM is pretty weak (just put a modified DLL in the game directory and the game will launch), luckily. |
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| ▲ | jakubmazanec 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Steam for some reason Currently probably because of Valve's work on Proton, and before because Steam just worked and didn't seem to exploit players. |
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| ▲ | flohofwoe 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Steam games are not required to have DRM, it's entirely up to the game developer/publisher. |
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| ▲ | Cthulhu_ 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| It allows you to play your games offline though, so if Steam's servers go down you can still play your games. I'm not sure if that's permanent or if you need to reactivate your DRM / license every once in a while though. |
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| ▲ | harrisoned 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Around a decade ago i had to move to another city and spent a few months without internet. I had all my favorite games downloaded on Steam and was able to play them offline with no issue for all that time. Not sure if it still like that, but it was possible back then. | | |
| ▲ | Gigachad 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | It’s not possible with any Denuvo game which will require you reactivate with a drm server every so often. | | |
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