The problem is for now more of principle. Any DRM means you depend on Valve/Steam to continue to legally play your purchased games. If Valve has a change of heart, or of leadership, or hits a financial rough patch they can easily become a rent seeking gatekeeper. That non-intrusive DRM is the thin line between perpetually accepting Valve's conditions or playing illegally. This isn't a Valve specific problem but they get a free pass today because of all the good things they've done and the good will they're continuously showing. If this ever runs out a lot of people will be very disappointed.
I'm not judging them "by comparison" because it's hard to look bad next to Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc. Just looking objectively at the situation, even if Valve was alone on the market.
“Not having drm” is also a “for now” thing. Everything is “for now”. A person being good, a corporation being bad, everything can be appended with “for now”. It’s not an argument. You look at historical actions and willingness to change. Valve has been doing business this way forever.
What do you mean? My GOG offline installers should work fine with or without internet or GOG services for as long as the binaries can be executed. I can pass them on to my grandkids, if they'll ever be interested. You can own games, music, videos. You can do what you want with them, sell them, give them to family or friends. Any non-dystopian interpretation of DRM means you get to keep what you own. Changes don't apply to already owned things. When "renting" changes can apply retroactively to everything.
> everything can be appended with “for now”
Only if you're looking to be unreasonable and make any argument irrelevant. But we're trying to have a constructive conversation not shoot down everything with generic, nihilistic arguments.
You wan to look at history but so selectively that it only supports your argument. Few companies stayed faithful to the customer without fault especially when the visionary leader and owner retired, or they hit hard times. The norm is for them to pull a bait and switch as soon as the profits looked too good to pass. When Gabe is out it could go either way, slowly or all at once.
The difference is that "Not having DRM" means the games I bought with no DRM is still there once they enable it. For example, with GOG I download the games I buy and there's no way they can enable DRM on the copies I made.
On the other hand, if the games already have DRM and it gets worse or for whatever reason Valve goes under and you can't play your games anymore, well... you can't play any DRMed game without using whatever DRM mechanism they'll choose next.
In other words "No DRM -> DRM" and "DRM -> Worse DRM" have different outcomes.
> Valve has been doing business this way forever.
And Google's motto was "Don't be evil" and for a good chunk of their life they weren't. That worked out well, did it? I'm not saying Valve will do a 180 and squander all the good faith it acquired. I'm just saying it's not beyond the realm of possibility.
But you are right there is always the possibility they turn to shit. The advantage is that compared to other DRMs it is trivial to break even by yourself and all steam games are already freely available cracked so if they do just torrent them.
>>For example, with GOG I download the games I buy and there's no way they can enable DRM on the copies I made.
There is no way for Steam to enable DRM on a copy of a game you made after you downloaded it from Steam. It's a weird argument to use really - once you copied the data elsewhere neither platform can do anything with it.
There are a few DRM-free Steam games but most devs on Steam enable the DRM. This isn't Steam's fault but Steam is holding the reins of that access. It works great now, so smooth you can't tell there's DRM. But at the end of the day most of my collection is at the whims of Valve.
I'm personally concerned about what happens when Gabe retires or shuffles off this mortal coil, and his replacement comes with a "fresh" revenue idea. He's a one of a kind visionary leader, it's not a sure thing that his successor is the same. I've been baited and switched so many times in the past few decades that it's hard to blindly trust any company for more than the very immediate future.
>I'm personally concerned about what happens when Gabe retires
From the couple documentaries I have seen over the years it already seems like he is basically retired, only working on things he is interested in like the brain interface stuff. I think as long as valve stays a private company the enshitification will be limited.
If the DRM is enabled, the game does a simple "Is the game available in the user's library?" and steams says yes or no.
If the game didn't have DRM enabled, no check is made. Copy the game folder elsewhere, without steam install and it should launch.
Devs can enable the DRM afterward, but your copy won't be locked.
But even then, if valve goes bad guy, the DRM is simple enough to be broken, and there is no double check or something preventing you from playing (unlike Denuvo which encrypts the game and has multiple separate checks for the DRM).
Yes (that's the point of a DRM), but like I said, the DRM is easily broken. Some games can also still use steam features when cracked (like joining lobbies, inviting friends, etc), and it's the same "crack" for every game (not withstanding other DRM the game may have).
With Valve, I'm more concerned of not being able to download the games if they go under, than the DRM on the games I have. Over time, the Steam DRM has also been more permissive than before, as I can now play my "family's" games and they can play mine.
Part of the apparently forgotten but huge amount of work that went into making digital storefront for games that people trust to work was that Valve publicly talked about verifying things such as a procedure to globally strip DRM from all games, in case Steam was to cease operations.
