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Nowadays, I try to buy most games on GOG. However, Steam 'DRM' is less DRM and more SDK. It assuredly adds value (compared to things like uplay or origin which are honest-to-god DRM schemes). Steam/Valve aren't perfect, but they do provide good service and I trust them to try to do the right thing more than most other game publishers.

That being said, GOG has gotten great, and their download client has been getting more and more robust.

It is still very much DRM, no matter how much people are okay with it.

This is simply false. An SDK is not DRM. They offer optional DRM but the platform itself is not managing rights inherently.

In practice, how many games opt out of the DRM, and for would one still be able to play those games should their steam accounts be cancelled?

I'd call their drm opt-in, not opt-out.

> In practice, how many games opt out of the DRM

Quite a number: http://steam.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games

but the vast majority of the store is DRMmed.

Still no linux version for GOG galaxy though.

> However, Steam 'DRM' is less DRM and more SDK

It's definitely 'DRM' - its just a good DRM that tends to not get in the way of the users.\

GOG had a promotion where they would add (some of the) games that you already owned on your Steam account to your GOG library. Hopefully they continue that.

If I have a game on GOG or Steam, I'm more likely to use Steam, unless I'm traveling and might be Internetless.

Yeah, GOG Connect is pretty awesome. I got half a dozen DRM free copies of games I have on Steam. I guess most of the ones they introduced initially were temporary, but they claim they'll add more over time, as they can make arrangements with developers.

Honestly, I wonder if they may have suspended GOG Connect during the GOG Summer Sale. Everything is still up at gog.com/connect, but nothing's available.

"good" drm where if they decide to ban you for whatever reason you cannot access the games you have "bought".

That's not true. The only way to get VAC-banned is to cheat in online games, and it only affects the game you cheated in and--for Source or GoldSource games--a few other multiplayer games that use the same engine. Source: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7849-RAD...

That's no different from what you'll get in non-Steam games. You cheat, you get banned.

That's entirely false: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5406-WFZ...

That's suspended, not banned. Suspended accounts can usually be recovered if you talk to Steam support, and suspension still doesn't block you from playing your games, just from buying/selling/trading games and in-game items. (At least since 2013 or so; it may have been different before that, it's not entirely clear, but it's definitely the case now.)

Oh interesting, thanks for the correction!

I would say that that has less to do with DRM and more to do with banning you from their multiplayer servers.

It does get in the way if you eant to run two instances of a game (one controlled by keyboard the second controlled by gamepad so that you can play with a friend) I've used sandboxie to get around this.

By the nature of what it is, the point of their DRM is to stop multiple people playing from one license. Sure, your example is much more friendly than, say, uploading to a torrent site, but you're still trying to get around the license restriction. If you want to get around the rule of one license per person then of course you won't like any implementation of DRM, but your complaint should be about the license policy, not the DRM implementation.

I don't know if you can call the easiest to crack DRM scheme out there "good".

It's good for legitimate customers.

Steam itself doesn't force DRM on a developer. As an SDK, it provides a very easy DRM platform to choose to use. They offer it, but it doesn't have to be utilized.

Indeed, this is a common misconception for some reason. There are many games, especially those from indie developers, where Steam simply acts as a light wrapper for launching the game. You can literally copy the game files from your Steam folder to another PC and it would work fine.

It's not misconception. Requirement to setup some proprietary software just to download your games makes Steam DRM no matter if it's enforced after download or no.

Currently everything needed is reverse enginered so you can actually download games using open source tool, but I pretty sure this is forbidden by Steam EULA. Even if we all know Valve will unlikely enforce it it's still gray area you don't want depend on.

I'll have to disagree, as I think you're taking the concept of DRM way too far.

The fact that you need a client to download your game is not DRM, but it is inconvenient I suppose. DRM comes in when you cannot distribute your purchased game freely, and you're limited to a set number of PCs or installs.

Still disagree? Let's look at GoG, the standard DRM-free game store. You need to login before you can download your games, correct? Would you call that a form of DRM? The difference between logging in and downloading a client is negligible in this day and age imo.

If you don't agree with any of the above, then I'm afraid that the way you think of DRM-free gaming is only achievable through piracy.

How are logging in and installing someone's software even remotely similar?

I personally find Steam, buggy, ugly, intrusive and effectively spyware that is logging and tracking god knows what. I feel very uncomfortable installing it on my machines and in general having to go through software A to get to software B makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

By contrast, logging in confines the the website to tracking my activity on the website itself - which they probably can do with a cookie anyways...

> I feel very uncomfortable installing it on my machines and in general having to go through software A to get to software B makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

The only difference between Steam and GoG is that GoG runs software A on their servers and in your browser, whereas Steam runs software A on your machine in the custom-skinned browser they give you.

Any security or privacy ramifications of the two different approaches are quit irrelevant to a discussion of whether it constitutes DRM in the generally accepted sense of technical measures to prevent you from copying, sharing, etc. digital content that you already have in your possession. It's not DRM to require some authentication before they'll serve up the download to you. DRM is what gets in the way after the download.

I think I understand the distinction you're making. However I think it's only technically correct. I understand that I can boot up a VM with Steam, download the game, copy it from the VM to my machine that doesn't their software and it'll probably work. But that's in the realm of "technically possible but completely impractical". In practical terms I actuality have to run their software on my machine to have access to the software I buy through them.

The only difference between Steam and GoG is that your browser is already providing the VM to sandbox (albeit without hardware enforcement) GoG's code running on your machine, while for Steam you have to supply your own VM if you want that degree of isolation. (If you happened to be running Qubes OS then this matter of degrees of convenience would be trivial.) In either case, running some of the store's code on your machine in order to obtain the product is unavoidable. In neither case is it DRM.

You cab launch the client and immediately go into offline mode if you are concerned about your privacy

That isn't what DRM is. Proprietary APIs are a completely separate issue.

You can have open source DRM (for example hardware enforced schemes).

I think only like a half dozen of the 2 thousand Steam on Linux games actually use the Steam DRM as well, even titles that use Steamworks DRM on Windows.

At this point there's not much reason to use it- linux game torrents are slim pickings.

I think Oculus's attitude is actually fairly sensible for the position they are in..

First, the success of VR is an existential risk for Oculus. This is not true for Valve; Valve just doesn't want to be left behind (at least at a business level, I have no doubt their engineering organization wants to continue to be the tech leader).

Second, they are very concerned about whether people have good VR experiences, because the well has been poisoned by people's memories of 90s VR, Cardboard, concerns about motion sickness, overhype, headsets looking dumb, etc.

Third, they're a fairly small organization, and they already have to support engagements with GPU vendors, OS, as well, as getting their hardware built and supported. Having to support other hardware on their platform (especially as there is a race to the bottom between HTC, Razer, etc) is a huge additional burden. They do have financial resources from Facebook, but you can't just throw money at an engineering org, you have to scale carefully.

So to make VR is successful, they have to make sure that people have good experiences, but they have a small team. Buying exclusives makes perfect sense for them: it's a way to leverage Facebook's financial resources, and since the titles are exclusive they can focus on making those titles work as well as possible on a SW/HW stack that they own.

By now Oculus VR is clearly larger organization than Valve and likely only small portion of Valve works on anything VR-related. So I just not sure you can call them "small" anymore.

How much of the Vive is Valve and how much is HTC? Valve was very lucky to find a hardware partner content with not trying to establish their own content delivery platform.

Can hardly call it luck when Valve runs the largest PC game content delivery platform in the world.

They can definitely set the terms of that kind of partnership.

No, they don't have to make them Oculus exclusive to support VR devs and fund the development of more titles.

VR headsets on the PC are just another device like your keyboard, mouse and monitor. I haven't heard of an LG-monitor-exclusive game before, so why should it exist for VR?

It's different on consoles.

Firs there was DRM and now the insistence on exclusivity. For some reason Oculus seems to have forgotten their promise of an open ecosystem, and I hope it's not some Facebook influence Palmer is unable to fight against, and if that's case, I hope Carmack isn't getting pissed. Remember, John is the driving force behind GPL'ing all the engines/games at id software. It's reasonable to doubt any future GPL id software release since John left.

Between the Vive providing an arguably better experience (at a hefty price) and Oculus alienating PC gamers left and right, I have no idea what's going on in their management department. It looks like the wrong people got control.

TVs are all nearly the same. Currently VR headsets are not. If you disagree then I suggest you head on over to the reddit Oculus or Vive forums.

> TVs are all nearly the same. Currently VR headsets are not. If you disagree then I suggest you head on over to the reddit Oculus or Vive forums.

Don't they have both have very similar specs and hardware (ignoring input for now)? Also, the whole point of drivers/SDKs is to abstract hardware differences away so software can work on a variety of hardware. It doesn't strike me that they are so different the drivers/SDKs can't cope with the differences. Given Revive lets Vive users play Oculus locked down games and both the Oculus and Vive are supported on Steam it's clear their hardware differences isn't a huge deal.

Same with GPUs where the driver is what abstracts away most differences. I'm not sure what the argument is.

> It's different on consoles.

I'm exclusively a PC gamer and I'd even argue that this is false. Exclusives are bad for the industry and bad for gamers in general. It doesn't matter which platform you can afford/desire.

Even PSVR might be coming to PC. Many Xbox games are coming to PC. The industry seems to be turning its back on exclusivity. What does Facebook do? "Naaaa, we can make exclusivity work."

When industry leaders are aborting a strategy, it isn't a good strategy. What Facebook is doing makes sense only 5 years ago.

I'm with you, so let me expand on what I meant: On consoles it's different because some studious exclusively develop for Playstation or Xbox, meaning they don't even have the tech to just compile a PC or Xbox version if they wanted to. Now, this is a the result of being Playstation exclusive for years, but I'm sure they get paid enough to not worry about losing out on the other markets.

I totally agree that for gamers it's a loss. Most skip games on that other platform, but some grudgingly buy an Xbox or Playstation just for one game.

Another very stupid tactic is making PC gamers wait like Rockstar does with GTA. This is especially bad given the history of the GTA games and them being PC first back in the day.

> Third, they're a fairly small organization

Yeah, I'm playing the world's smallest violin for Facebook, of all companies. THEY ARE TOO SMALL!

Give them a break they only have a 300billion market cap.

Oculus is backed by Facebook. You cannot in any way frame them to be small, or at any existential risk.

And even ignoring Facebook I think Oculus actually has more employees than Valve at this point.

Zuckerberg mentions the number in this stream, I think it was around 700 or so employees, but can't remember for sure: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/137176-watch-mark-zuckerberg...

In the video Mark Zuckerberg says "we have about 400 people working on this now" at 0:50 in.

Thanks for finding that. Wikipedia says Valve had 330 as of 2013, so Valve most likely slightly outnumbers them. Hardly David vs. Goliath in headcount/organization size though. Though of course you have to be aware HTC is the production scale out.

It's laughable how outclassed Oculus is by Valve. If Valve were to release Half-Life 3 as an exclusive on Vive, Oculus as a gaming headset would be toast.

Valve has some of the most valuable franchises (Dota 2, Team Fortress, Portal etc) around and are under-utilizing them, not to mention they operate the largest PC gaming distribution platform.

It's sad but predictable to see your comment downvoted for offering an interesting perspective. Especially considering most responses are sarcastic "yeah Facebook is small", ignoring your explanation. I'd have thought most here acknowledge your point that you can't arbitrarily add people/cash to a team.

In general I don't like exclusivity, but I don't downvote for a well-intended, thoughtful contribution. I do think you ignore the more obvious motivation of them wanting a larger cut of the price.

I thought Oculus was funded as an open device?

Why is it now locked down?

Facebook. They bought it so that can have a display which guarantees ad views and consumer tracking.

That seems very unlikely to me. Nobody is going to put on a VR headset to kill time at work, which is what Facebook is. (There was an article posted here recently that says most videos posted on Facebook have subtitles instead of sound, because people won't even put headphones on while using Facebook.)

The idea isn't that people will put on a VR headset to kill time at work- their goal is for people to be wearing a VR headset at work in the first place.

Well obviously nobody's going to be doing that.

just you wait... if pitched properly, with higher resolution (so gen2 at least) and office apps developed with VR in mind it can bring added effectiveness (although probably impossible to wear 8 hours daily).

Yeah facilities managers will love it. They won't even have to buy cubicles anymore, because with VR we won't notice we're packed cheek-by-jowl at long tables.

I'll wait (we all will - there's no alternative) but I'm confident that the future isn't every/most employees sitting at their desk wearing stupid glasses/headgear and getting headaches and eyestrain and feeling sick when they can just look a their monitors like a normal person.

As a programmer, the idea of a VR headset with infinite space for my windows is very appealing. Mix this with gesture based input devices and a pinch of voice control and you have something awesome.

Sounds really inefficient (and that's ignoring the eye strain, headaches, sweaty headbands and nausea).

I'll use vim and you can wave your arms around like Cumberbatch-era Sherlock with your mumble-powered magic hat and we'll see who's the fastest!

Ever heard of workspaces?

There is already infinite space for windows. By moving them into physical world, you're actually imposing a limit on the available space.

I meant more like an infinite sized monitor. But I understand your point. That said, there's something appealing to me about the idea of just moving my head to see the info I want vs. switching windows. I already do this with 2 27" monitors and having even more 'space' to put visible items and just look around sounds great. But I like new and shiny things.

hmm, i'm a programmer, and i think even with current-gen vive this could potentially be really cool. wouldn't be surprised at all if this is the future.

He says no strings attached.

I just wonder why, with his stance, he doesn't apply just one string: a sort of "non-exclusivity clause" where the devs agree not to sign any game exclusivity contract.

I wonder if the 'strings attached' is that the 'pre-paid steam revenue' needs to be paid back if the game doesn't make the money back on steam.

AFAIK the hardware block was only partially worked around. It doesn't let arbitrary Rift apps work on Vive.