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Comment by mmanfrin | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

Still no linux version for GOG galaxy though.

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.

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