Poll: Steam, how do you feel about it?

[Delusibeta]

And you cant do anything about it if they dont.

Here's the big glowing problem with this arguement: we can. We can crack the Steam DRM, in the event of Steam's closure.

There's also one large flaw in Garak's analogy with PlaysForSure. In that case, there is nothing in common with the filesthat are DRM'd. In Steam's case, there is: the client. Rather than individually patch every file (like Microsoft would have to do, had they bothered), all Valve have to do is to make sure the client software does not require Internet access, permantly. Job done, all your games are safe and all Valve had to do was distribute one singular patch, rather than the thousands and thousands of different variations of the patch Microsoft faced with had they went and removed the DRM in PlaysForSure music.

 

[Delusibeta]

And you cant do anything about it if they dont.

Here's the big glowing problem with this arguement: we can. We can crack the Steam DRM, in the event of Steam's closure.

There's also one large flaw in Garak's analogy with PlaysForSure. In that case, there is nothing in common with the filesthat are DRM'd. In Steam's case, there is: the client. Rather than individually patch every file (like Microsoft would have to do, had they bothered), all Valve have to do is to make sure the client software does not require Internet access, permantly. Job done, all your games are safe and all Valve had to do was distribute one singular patch, rather than the thousands and thousands of different variations of the patch Microsoft faced with had they went and removed the DRM in PlaysForSure music.

It isn't about how much work is required, it's about the legality of being able to strip off the DRM for all those games.

BTW, if you have to crack the DRM, you may as well have saved your money and gotten the cracked version to start with.

...and we don't know what the contract the game companies signed for when they put their games up on Steam. For all we know, there could be a clause that says that "in case of Steam's closure, the client's authentication system should be disabled". For all we know, there might not be a legal issue after all.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

I hate buying stuff online, so the bargains don't matter to me. And I love that I get all sorts of free stuff for TF2 and L4D. But steam in itself? I tolerate it. I would rather not have to deal with anything other than me and my game. But it's the lesser of two or more evils. It's the succubus of gaming ;p