I don't have a horse in this race, but, is there any reason to believe Vive won't have DRM too? I mean... Steam is like the biggest DRM software ever made (although they've made it work well).
My guess is that Facebook's big advantage boils down to the sheer number of bodies they have available to make a platform, while Valve consists of a small team and a bunch of developers. Valve's non-management culture makes long-term focus hard. Facebook can mandate focus through their heirarchy.
Also, the people at Facebook are not stupid; this is fixable if they take the right steps. They probably don't even have to do anything at all now; just ignore the issue and it will sink below the community's outrage threshold.
But if I was a company stuck with an exclusive on the Oculus, I'd be screaming at Facebook for a pile of cash right about now.
[I have the sense that the Oculus DRM change was decided by some PM-like person at Facebook with little experience in security, or PCs as a gaming platform, or the market in general. I'll bet there's an internal shitstorm at Facebook that's resulting in new orifices being drilled into certain persons. If they decide to double-down on the DRM or try shut down the software shim in question through legal posturing, then I will make popcorn].
It does so much things for me. I no longer have to worry about CD's or whatever. All my games are in one place, install pretty much as soon as I want (50mbit fiber), are always up to date, I never have to fiddle with goddamn keys - click install, wait a few minutes, click play and that's it! Some games have Steam Cloud, so my saves are there, my settings might be there too. And don't start me on Steam Overlay! I've got a few hundred friends, clock (THIS IS SO RIDDICULOUSLY NICE TO HAVE), a web browser. It does streaming. It does screenshots. It does remote desktop. Guides.
It takes my issues and solves them for me. Maybe that is some Stockholm Syndrome. It's been years since I had any issues with Steam-as-DRM (Or just Steam, really)
But fucking hell, look at uplay or origin or any other cancerware corporate trash that does nothing but fuck with you.
I don't really see Steam/Volvo locking down VR. It appears that they provide an API for other hardware to work. (At least thats what cursory googling says!)
GOG Galaxy[1] is an example of a client that is completely DRM-free, but still offers many of those features.
I use Steam a lot and buy quite a lot of games from it, though I'd not consider it the antithesis of DRM. They do still use DRM - they just make it a better experience.
Any game you purchase and install through Steam works without Steam (unless it depends on SteamWorks, VAC, or any of the other Steam services).
Basically any game you can buy from a "No DRM!" shop like GOG that also sells the same version on Steam will be equally DRM-free.
Before the Greenlight-explosion, PCGamingWiki kept a pretty up-to-date list on titles that were DRM-free[1]. It was a small percentage of titles even then.
Now it's hard to say in a post-Greenlight world just how many titles use CEG. We can largely extrapolate and assume it's similar numbers. Though because so many Greenlight titles are indie I'd guess it's actually a lower percentage.
Still, I'd bet that most titles are still using CEG in some capacity. I'd like it if Valve made that information available on the store page pre-purchase, but unfortunately they don't.
One side-note: GOG does have an advantage over Steam even when Steamworks DRM isn't used. That is that the installer file can be copied freely between machines. Steam doesn't allow this without an internet connection. So for archival purposes, the GOG version is much more "free".
[1] http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_DRM-Free_Games_...
The way I understand it, CEG works by signing the binary to a specific Steam account for when Steam is used. It does not prevent any portability or introduce access control for when Steam is not used, right?
That is, if I'm offline or just have a backup of the game install without Steam, CEG has no effect on me (assuming the game's integrations with Steamworks are not a requirement for the game to function).
At least Valve/Gaben has gone on record on several occasions to say that the digital assets are structured in such a way that they'll continue to work even if Steam/Valve disappears (dies or what have you). It might have been a couple of years, but I'm assuming this is still true.
Edit: Btw, just to be clear, I constantly rely on this functionality. I play tons of games that I buy on Steam while I'm offline (mostly during travel and such). If I needed to be online for my purchases to work, I wouldn't be using Steam anymore.
I don't know the technical specifics, but I'm sure that's true. However, I'd argue this is still an implementation of DRM as it goes beyond just watermarking. Offline mode works because it previously downloaded your authorizations from Valve, and those are cached offline for a period. But there's still a key and lock system in place that needs to be met. That is, if you were to copy your game install folder for a title that uses CEG, you would have problems running that executable.
Titles without CEG would still work, assuming there's no other issues like missing registry keys, %APPDATA% entries, etc... (one of the reasons a DRM-free installer is important to me -- improved portability).
I admit Steam DRM is fairly unobtrusive, and its offline mode works way better than it used to a few years ago.
>At least Valve/Gaben has gone on record on several occasions to say that the digital assets are structured in such a way that they'll continue to work even if Steam/Valve disappears (dies or what have you).
Just to clarify, is this the same quote of "If Steam ever goes under, we'll release a patch to remove the DRM"? Because I've been following and trying to track down that pernicious quote for years, and have never once found a credible source on the matter. It's always "archived post of forum moderator", or "tier 1 support supposedly said". But never a credible source from the company, in the Terms of Service, or anything that would hold up. I'm pretty convinced at this point people only pass it around because it's a comfortable lie.
I'm not sure if that's the same quote you were going for, however. How the assets are structured seems like it could be a different issue.
>If I needed to be online for my purchases to work, I wouldn't be using Steam anymore.
As I understand, you still need to go online for the initial run, correct? And also if there's been any updates/patches I believe.
I don't believe this is true. The "backup game content" flow is fairly solid. Only time you'll run into issues if you try to import it into another online Steam account.
> Just to clarify, is this the same quote of "If Steam ever goes under, we'll release a patch to remove the DRM"? Because I've been following and trying to track down that pernicious quote for years, and have never once found a credible source on the matter. [...]
I've seen variations of it in a few places. It wasn't "we'll release a patch", it was more "your games will continue to work even if Steam disappears." I was just listening to an interview with Gaben on The Nerdist (circa 2013ish?) and I believe he said that there as well. The first of the two parts.
I mean this isn't hard to validate. Go offline, see if your games continue work. It's not like EA's Origin or Sony's always-on stuff.
> As I understand, you still need to go online for the initial run, correct? And also if there's been any updates/patches I believe.
If you're running from a backup copy, you don't need to go online for the initial run. If you want to download updates/patches from Steam, then yes you need to be online to do online things.