Steam DRM is opt-in and even then rather trivial to circumvent, practically all it does is prevent things being as simple as copy+pasting files. GOG can go completely DRM-free because the bulk of their offering is stuff they hold the rights to, way fewer publishers would put games on Steam without that basic DRM being available. They’re not trying to defend against hardened pirates but opportunistic copying. If you want to ship a rootkit with your game you will have to include it yourself, Valve doesn’t offer that kind of thing.
Their monopoly position is an issue, yes, but also frankly speaking not their fault. Though things will get interesting once the EU vs. Valve case is through and they have to allow resales, it’s probably going to mean more than resales within Steam.
As to the cut they’re taking – meh. I think it’s too high, of course I think it’s too high because it’s money not landing in my pocket, but it’s also ballpark market standard. And much unlike other companies they actually spend the money they rake in on sensible stuff, like the work they do on proton.
Oh yeah for sure. But it doesn’t really matter whose fault it is, what matters is that it’s bad for developers and consumers, and it’s a reason to want competitors to succeed, and to be frustrated that they’re not.
The developers can choose. Many games are “DRM” in scare quotes, it’s not that developers are enabling this but they’re hooking into features such as cloud saves or the workshop and to get them running outside of steam you need to provide a steam.dll with stubs for some functions so the game doesn’t get confused.
DRM, at least from a programmer’s perspective, only starts once you actually a) check for integrity of game files etc. and b) check for integrity of that integrity checking code. The bulk of steam games will throw some error when you try to run them outside of steam, but they’re not taking any measures to prevent you from making them think that steam is running.
From a developer’s perspective – honestly, I don’t care. If a game gets published on multiple stores I’d generally try and make all of them the exact same version so the game will check whether steam.dll is available, use it if it’s there, and not if it’s not. If it’s only published on steam I may blindly assume that steam.dll is there and error out if it’s not because I didn’t bother to make a version of the main menu that doesn’t have a “workshop” menu item.
I don’t really mind whether you pirate my game, unless you’re a millionaire that is at that point I will judge your character quite harshly. But I’m also not going to spend time and effort on making the game easier to pirate.
Steam DRM is opt-in and even then rather trivial to circumvent, practically all it does is prevent things being as simple as copy+pasting files. GOG can go completely DRM-free because the bulk of their offering is stuff they hold the rights to, way fewer publishers would put games on Steam without that basic DRM being available. They’re not trying to defend against hardened pirates but opportunistic copying. If you want to ship a rootkit with your game you will have to include it yourself, Valve doesn’t offer that kind of thing.
Their monopoly position is an issue, yes, but also frankly speaking not their fault. Though things will get interesting once the EU vs. Valve case is through and they have to allow resales, it’s probably going to mean more than resales within Steam.
As to the cut they’re taking – meh. I think it’s too high, of course I think it’s too high because it’s money not landing in my pocket, but it’s also ballpark market standard. And much unlike other companies they actually spend the money they rake in on sensible stuff, like the work they do on proton.
Oh yeah for sure. But it doesn’t really matter whose fault it is, what matters is that it’s bad for developers and consumers, and it’s a reason to want competitors to succeed, and to be frustrated that they’re not.
Just asking out of genuine curiosity, what do you mean by steam DRM being opt-in?
The developers can choose. Many games are “DRM” in scare quotes, it’s not that developers are enabling this but they’re hooking into features such as cloud saves or the workshop and to get them running outside of steam you need to provide a
steam.dllwith stubs for some functions so the game doesn’t get confused.DRM, at least from a programmer’s perspective, only starts once you actually a) check for integrity of game files etc. and b) check for integrity of that integrity checking code. The bulk of steam games will throw some error when you try to run them outside of steam, but they’re not taking any measures to prevent you from making them think that steam is running.
From a developer’s perspective – honestly, I don’t care. If a game gets published on multiple stores I’d generally try and make all of them the exact same version so the game will check whether steam.dll is available, use it if it’s there, and not if it’s not. If it’s only published on steam I may blindly assume that steam.dll is there and error out if it’s not because I didn’t bother to make a version of the main menu that doesn’t have a “workshop” menu item.
I don’t really mind whether you pirate my game, unless you’re a millionaire that is at that point I will judge your character quite harshly. But I’m also not going to spend time and effort on making the game easier to pirate.
They probably mean publishers can choose not to include DRM on Steam