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Comment by Already__Taken | Hacker News Reader

Steam does this to me as well sometimes. Why can't these stores use some kind of encryption that can just validate "Yes at some point in the past this has been purchased on this computer" and leave it at that. Always online frankly seems excessive.

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Steam seems to remember for a while... i've played Euro Truck Sim while traveling with no internet...

It varies with different games on Steam. Steam doesn't require its DRM, so some games have no DRM, even when installed by Steam, which is great. More critically, though, Steam also doesn't require its DRM be exclusive so some games are protected both by Steam's DRM and something else, where that something else may have its own weird requirements before launching a game.

Can confirm. I bought Goat Simulator from Steam about a year ago, have uninstalled Steam, and even moved the application between OSs and devices without any issue.

That's why we should promote DRM-free software distributions - like GOG.

That's exactly what Apple's scheme does, except that Apple's root certificate expired...

There is no communication between you and Apple when you launch applications.

That's not true. Apple issued a new root certificate using the latest OpenSSL standard. The apps that "expired" were using an out-of-date version. They technically shouldn't have worked in the first place, but Apple kept renewing the old SHA-1 certificate alongside the current one which allowed these apps to validate, despite using a cert that was obsolete since 2005.

Which is to say, that's exactly what Apple's scheme does, except in one crucial point where it does not, which malfunctioned and caused a bunch of havoc.

Why does a purchase receipt need to have an expiration date at all? It's stupid. This stuff should be once-and-done.

There is an Offline mode in Steam

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