The Steam/Valve arguement, (Question! not starting a flame war)
- Thread starter Hawkeye 131
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If there are any problems with the user agreement (you refuse to accept them), you will get your account disabled. You will still have access to your whole library but you won't be able to buy new games. I believe it's the same procedure in most cases, unless you have a really gross offense. And if that happens, you can sue them - Valve will pay for your lawyer no matter if you win or lose (if the court case is for less than $10 000). Yeah, really risky there, better thread carefully.[/spoiler]antipirate said:
yeah, sorry - I've never really used iTunes, so I didn't get if that's supposed to be serious or not.Rastien said:
You don't want to start a flame war, yet you ask a question that's sure to incite one? I like your thinking.
OT - I like the convenience, the range of games available, VAC, the workshop, and the community aspect.
Btw, regarding the game ownership comment, unles you make a game, you never own it. You have a license to play it. Physical or digital doesn't make a difference.
OT - I like the convenience, the range of games available, VAC, the workshop, and the community aspect.
Btw, regarding the game ownership comment, unles you make a game, you never own it. You have a license to play it. Physical or digital doesn't make a difference.
For me, Steam is an acceptable burden, it provides backup downloads and save synch so if I mess something up, I can restore it without scouring the entire house for the disk.
Still, I wish that it's offline mode would actually work because, for me at least, it seems that unless I make an apointment at least 3 weeks in advance, it simply won't work.
Still, I wish that it's offline mode would actually work because, for me at least, it seems that unless I make an apointment at least 3 weeks in advance, it simply won't work.
Dra·co·ni·anDoPo said:
   [drey-koh-nee-uhn, druh-]
adjective
1.
of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Draco or his code of laws.
2.
( often lowercase ) rigorous; unusually severe or cruel: Draconian forms of punishment.
Source:dictionary.com
It seems to me that GOG does have digital rights management. They do not allow you to download whatever you want from their servers, do they? Some titles have stripped down copy protection; but there are still small rights management technologies being employed. Now compared with steam which often preserves third party server verification; agressively manages your ability to launch your games; and by default makes updates compulsory on penalty of losing your licenses, I believe that the DRM on steam does reasonably fit within the "rigorous" definition of the word draconian.
Heathen! Blasphemy! Lynch him!
All hail the Great Game God Gabe Newell!
Also, you don't actually "own" a physical copy of your game either. You buy a license there too, the CD is only there so you can install your game. Same concept with steam, except it's digital.
All hail the Great Game God Gabe Newell!
In all seriousness, though, the only actual problem I see here is "unfair" market share. The DRM rarely ever affects actual gameplay and only occasionally restricts the game's availability.Hawkeye 131 said:
Also, you don't actually "own" a physical copy of your game either. You buy a license there too, the CD is only there so you can install your game. Same concept with steam, except it's digital.
Steam DRM: Draconian?
Wat?
I like Steam because it's backed by a company that I greatly respect. The sales are wallet-sucking, the offline mode functions well (for me), the Steam cloud is nifty, etc.
I'm still transitioning over to gog.com, as their library is growing, but Steam is still a solid choice.
The "market share" argument is silly, by the way. gog.com, Origin, Impulse, GamersGate and brick-and-mortar stores are still around and not going anywhere.
Wat?
I like Steam because it's backed by a company that I greatly respect. The sales are wallet-sucking, the offline mode functions well (for me), the Steam cloud is nifty, etc.
I'm still transitioning over to gog.com, as their library is growing, but Steam is still a solid choice.
The "market share" argument is silly, by the way. gog.com, Origin, Impulse, GamersGate and brick-and-mortar stores are still around and not going anywhere.
Convenience above all else is why i use steam. It doesn't have every game, but its pretty damn close.
Also, I can't remember passwords <..<
Also, I can't remember passwords <..<
I see a lot of Stockholm Syndrome in this thread.
Steam's DRM feels pretty Draconian when you've been screwed by it.
Steam's DRM feels pretty Draconian when you've been screwed by it.
You have a door. Behind it is another door. How is it the first door's fault what you've put behind it? No, Steam doesn't "preserve" as much as "doesn't concern itself with". Or are the gaming stores guilty of being draconian DRM, too? After all, they act to ensure legitimate copies circulate the world, and yet the copies themselves have DRM.Paladin2905 said:
A check at launch, which requires either internet, or Steam to be in Offline mode. Not for all games, either - I am perfectly capable of running Torchlight 2 when I don't have an access to the Internet and with Steam running in Online mode still. I tested that yesterday. AC1, I played without even needing to run Steam (well, through the DX9 launcher, but still, hardly "aggressive" of Steam).Paladin2905 said:
The only thing you lose, is the ability to get new games, you retain your library. And you can run in Offline mode most of the times, anyway.Paladin2905 said:
So, you believe it does way more than it should? Like, really over the top? And the punishment are similarly way overblown? See, I agree that in some respects it's harsher but that's not to an unusually harsh levels.Paladin2905 said:
Pretty much this, love* or hate it, DRM is here to stay, so if I'm going to have to put up with it, I'd prefer as few clients as possible and Steam fits this bill best. Its fairly unobtrusive, it has good deals, its kind of ubiquitous so all my friends have it so finding other players is a snap......it's not Origin? Copy protection in one form or another has existed for decades. I remember games in the early 80's used to give you a page number, paragraph number, sentence number and word number. You'd have to look that shit up in the game manual and type the right word or you couldn't play. That kind of crap makes Steam look like a high class hooker offering free blow jobs in comparison.thunderbug said:
* Is there anyone who actually loves DRM? I think my mind snapped a little bit just contemplating that.
Edit: Does anyone remember Starforce? It was a godawful copy protection used in the early years of 2000. Often it just stopped you from playing the very game it was supposed to protect. The drivers didn't unistall when you unistalled whatever game it came with. They just floated around in memory, it negatively affected system performance and could even fry your DVD rom. You actually had to get a third party removal tool to get rid of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarForce#Community_response
OP, your list of pros and cons is pretty similar to mine, except I don't see the DRM as draconian. I play Steam games on my laptop offline while on public transportation very often and it works just like a DRM-less game would. You just need to set Steam to offline mod ahead of time, or keep Steam working to avoid having to log in again when in online mode and you have no internet connection.
I'm a big steam fan, I own many games of Valve's hand, and I enjoy most of the games I've bought through sales and discounts, games I'd otherwise not had.
DRM crops up, but basically any game has that, but we choose to ignore it. Steam is one of the few producers who can actually enforce said policies. Besides, if you're going to cheat, scam duplicate or break the rules, punishment is sure to follow in the real world too.
It's the argument a friend of mine has too, because she swindles people out of their stuff just by being a girl (that's not exaggerating, she's got mad skills doing that), people will complain, and she'd lose her account after the 9th billionth occurrence. She doesn't actually steal it, people just give her stuff, and passwords, and more stuff. it's a recipe for disaster. Steam doesn't allow her to do that, so she won't use it (missing out on so many good things like sales and such)
ahem, back on point. I love steam, they make buying games easy, they make good games( with regular extra FREE content) and they are helpful if you have a problem with something. for instance, I bought l4d2 in the store, but the code didn't work. then they fixed that fast and friendly.
and yes, sometimes it's down, but I usually only play online games on steam, and if I haven't got internet, that's hardly Valve's fault. I'll just play any other game in my MASSIVE list.
DRM crops up, but basically any game has that, but we choose to ignore it. Steam is one of the few producers who can actually enforce said policies. Besides, if you're going to cheat, scam duplicate or break the rules, punishment is sure to follow in the real world too.
It's the argument a friend of mine has too, because she swindles people out of their stuff just by being a girl (that's not exaggerating, she's got mad skills doing that), people will complain, and she'd lose her account after the 9th billionth occurrence. She doesn't actually steal it, people just give her stuff, and passwords, and more stuff. it's a recipe for disaster. Steam doesn't allow her to do that, so she won't use it (missing out on so many good things like sales and such)
ahem, back on point. I love steam, they make buying games easy, they make good games( with regular extra FREE content) and they are helpful if you have a problem with something. for instance, I bought l4d2 in the store, but the code didn't work. then they fixed that fast and friendly.
and yes, sometimes it's down, but I usually only play online games on steam, and if I haven't got internet, that's hardly Valve's fault. I'll just play any other game in my MASSIVE list.
This is a paranoid thing to do. I like it.Pandalisk said:
I worry about the games becoming obsolete. Plants vs Zombies got updated some months back and with the new update I have to jump through so many flaming hoops to open it that it's just not worth it. Fallout 3 (not immediately related to steam) has major issues running default settings on a multi-core cpu. With the combination of technology always being on the move, and games getting less popular as time goes on, I fear I won't be able to play some of the games the same way people with a Nintendo can still play Super Mario.
If you own a game on Steam, it can be downloaded as often and as many times as one likes to as many computers as they wish at any time. Games can be used in offline mode with a handful of mouse clicks and most of the time, doesn't even require a CD key to be entered nor any other action by a player. Further, we can modify our games to our hearts' content as well without any issues (not including cheating in VAC protectd MP servers).Frostbite3789 said:
I would like to hear of a single case where players have been unable to play a legitimately owned Steam game because of the client's DRM, and not because of PC/Internet technical issues, account/billing issues and where Customer Support would not help to fix the problem. This would also have to exclude games with their own DRM layer, like anything by Ubisoft (unless it's the Steam layer that's to blame).
I'm not defending DRM specifically, I'm not a fan of it in most any form but as I said above, Steam DRM is practically invisible, has no overhead and places no restrictions on me as far as I can tell, except the obvious one to prevent me distributing my games to others.
Starforce actually wasn't that bad. I read some of the technical documents associated with it and many of the "complaints" people had were simply false and didn't exist. The reason it was so slandered and reviled was actually much simpler. It was practically uncrackable. Pirates couldn't crack games protected by the system so they set about a campaign of lies and propaganda to make it hated enough that the community would "demand" developers stopped using it. And they succeeded. It's actually a very interesting story to read up on.Jason Rayes said:
Well my own experiences were much different. I had legitimate copies of games I had bought that Starforce would not recognise. I also had problems with the drivers themselves, the reason I knew that you had to get third party software to remove them is that I had to take them off and it was such a hassle. There were workarounds for Starforce too, I know because I used to dread finding a DVD that was Starforce protected, as having been bitten before, I would just wait for it not to recognise my disks. My previous experiences got me to the stage that when I bought Dreamfall and found it was Starforce I just went out and got the crack rather than trying to play it out of the box. Now that's just sad. I'm not saying pirates would not spread disinformation, but I know for personal experience that Starforce gave me nothing but troubleKingsGambit said:
i like Steam a lot myself. it's cheep, reliable, has a generally great userbase, its DRM isn't intruding and dosn't prevent me from playing games (like EA likes to do) and it saves a copy of my gamesaves on the servers so if i have to swap computers for whatever reason (even temporarily) i don't have to re-start