441
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
441 points (98.0% liked)
Games
16407 readers
1205 users here now
Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)
Posts.
- News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
- Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
- No humor/memes etc..
- No affiliate links
- No advertising.
- No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
- No self promotion.
- No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
- No politics.
Comments.
- No personal attacks.
- Obey instance rules.
- No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc..)
- Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.
My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.
Other communities:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Everyone saw the current landscape coming, and there was no way around it if we wanted online distribution. I hate DRM as much as the next guy, and love my physical collection, but it wasn't Valve and Steam that ushered in this BS. You can avoid steam, and a large amount of DRM if you genuinely care about. There was pushback years later and even Apple allowed you to DRM-less options.
After years of MPAA and RIAA BS piracy claims from cd & dvd ripping and declining physical sales, every company and their mom was looking into DRM to allay the fears of copyright holders and enable digital distribution. It was going to happen regardless of Steam. Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Philips, etc were all launching the same shit. Apple launched the iTunes store months before with complete DRM and people ate that up. Companies new years before people would adopt it if the benefits of digital distribution outweighed the inconvenience, and they were right.
Shit like Denuvo was going to happen regardless, as despite the push back on some of the invasive DRM, some companies remain unconvinced. They do it even on top of Steam.
No, wait, it literally WAS Steam. I mean, it wasn't just Steam, but those guys were there at ground level. Valve is ultimately an offshoot of Microsoft, it's not like becoming the main app store on home PCs by introducing structured DRM, sales and download management software wasn't part of their plan.
So let's be clear about what we're talking about here. Denuvo? Yep, that sort of DRM predates Steam. License limits and online activation? That's contemporary to Steam and it's the problem Steam is trying to solve. Online app stores built around DRM? Steam is as early on that race as it gets, and it's absolutely built for that purpose.
I like it as a piece of software, too, it's well made, but why whitewash it?
Plus, I have to point out that you seem to be arguing two opposite things at once. Is DRM inevitable? Well, since you seem to be correctly arguing that DRM-free alternatives do exist and seem to be financially viable... I'm gonna say no?
My argument is that it was inevitable at the time, and everyone saw it coming. It was going to happen regardless of whether Valve created steam or not.
You literally state this:
I don't think any of that is true. You can avoid most of the shitty DRM today and the big brother-esque remote DRM. People who adopted it then, didn't usher this in.
But they did it. They made it work. Somebody else might have, I suppose, but it was literally them. EA was trying hard to push online activations and failing miserably. Download managers paired with DRM were a dime a dozen and were not making a dent. It was Steam.
They took the most anticipated game in the PC landscape and acquired the most played mod, bundled them together with their trojan horse of a DRM-cum-online store and forced the entire PC community to buy into it or be unable to play the big stuff.
That´s what they actually did in the real world. I remember, I was there.
So given that Steam absolutely counts as "shitty DRM" in my book, I'm not sure your representation fits reality. Like I said above, I buy DRM-free games whenever possible and my Steam account is still growing way faster than my GOG account despite prioritizing GOG.