How Steam stopped me from pirating games and enjoy the sweet DRM kool-aid

I've used a Steam a little over the last couple of years (bought maybe 3 or 4 games), but with this recent summer sale I've added another 15-20 games to my collection, and all for around $60 total. When the price is right, I'm very happy to use a service like this, despite the DRM. The user experience beats anything else out there, including going to the local mall and buying a game boxed.

The key is the price though. With Steam games, I lose the ability to sell the game on after I'm finished it, and publishers of all kinds (music, movies, ebooks, videogames) need to understand that I'm not going to pay them the same (or more) for something that doesn't give me the same rights as the physical media.

The policy of certain publishers to charge considerably more for the same game in different regions (in my case Australia - see e.g. the price of Mass Effect 2 in Aus here: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/clwk1/steam_final_da...) is also something I'm not going to tolerate. I didn't buy any of the games in the Steam sale that were priced higher in this country, so those publishers lost out.

I presume that this is due to the way publishing rights are apportioned internationally, and I've seen similar problems afflict other media (particularly ebooks, where the availability of a particular Kindle title varies a lot depending on whether you're in the UK, US or Aus). Again, publishers need to understand that consumers really couldn't give a toss about this sort of thing: we just want to buy their product, not have to worry about some international publishing agreement bullshit. If somebody can't buy something on Amazon/Steam/iTunes/whatever in their region, that's driving them towards the pirates, not towards the locally-published version.

What gets me about Steam are the extra layers of DRM crud games get layered with by publishers. I recently purchased Arkham Asylum in a sale; to play it, I need Steam, GfWL and SecuROM activation. I understand that in this instance Steam is merely the distribution tool, and that the extra DRM is installed by the publisher for retail sales, but it sure is a pain in the arse to get the game loaded.

The same could be said of GTA IV (Steam, Rockstar Social Club, GfWL) or Riddick (TAGES). I wish publishers would just give up on these other activation methods altogether.

At work, a typical response I've received upon mentioning that I get most of my games through Steam is "Oh. Isn't that the one with DRM?"

At first, this threw me; I wasn't even aware that there was DRM on Steam. Well, of course I intuitively knew it, but I never associated it with the issues that people usually complain about regarding DRM.

I've never had the DRM get in my way... My experience with iTunes has been that when a bad bump on an airplane toasted my external hard drive and lost me every piece of legitimately paid for music and every legally purchased TV episode on it, I would never be able to download those purchases again. Steam, on the other hand, has let me download the same game as many times as I've found necessary, external to external, computer to computer.

Something interesting about Steam - it is a business model that creates a software distribution business without leveraging copyright. The guys at Valve have taken responsibility for their business model, rather than insisting that the government do it. Positive.

I remember back in 2003 when steam came out along with the release of CS v1.6.

The whole community complained for a long time, setting up private v1.5 servers and doing anything in their power to avoid steam.

The naysayers had their points, but now the bloated software,buggy friends list and LAN party issues have morphed into a model content distribution network making tons and tons of revenue. Who'd a thought?

Valve probably knew this all along.

So if they make obtaining games legitimately easier than pirating and make sure that the DRM doesn't needlessly hassle the end user, people will do that instead?

Stop the presses.

The question is, what's the point of the DRM once you have something like Steam? The DRM is not actually preventing people from pirating the games; you can still download them from Torrent sites. And you can prevent people from playing online if they haven't paid without any DRM; you just keep track of that on the server side.

So, by still including DRM, you are limiting users freedom, installing crap on their machines that they don't want, for no particularly good reason. The essential part to keep people buying your games instead of going to torrents is not the DRM; it's offering a good service that's competitive with the torrents. The convenience of fast downloads, of being able to reinstall the game on a new machine without keeping track of physical media and keys. And with a service like Steam, you can offer more than that, such as a nice option for online play, tournaments, leaderboards, and the like, updates that add value and keep your interest in older games.

While some people are just so cheap that they'll go with the torrent no matter what, I think there are a lot of people who would be willing to buy DRM free games if they offer a compelling enough experience. The reason that media loses sales to piracy is that they offer so much of a worse experience than just doing a search and a download. See iTunes, for example. The music isn't DRMed any more, and it's the largest music retailer in the world; it offers a wide selection and easy download and no crappy DRM hassles.

Steam is not successful because of the DRM. It's successful because of the service and convenience. They could drop the DRM, and be even better off than they are today, and not have to spend all the time and money writing the DRM that will just be cracked anyhow.

Steam's pragmatic approach to DRM is okay with me. They make the whole flow from finding the game, purchasing, and launching easy and straight forward. It's one of the rare instances the Management is a two way street. I don't need to keep physical copies of the games or track the serial numbers. I can move from computer to computer and the games that are enabled for my account are available. I'm really impressed that they don't charge extra for games that run on OS X, that was originally purchased for Windows.

What does irk me still is the third party publishers on Steam that use region lockouts. Steam's DRM does make it easy for publishers to not allow games like Modern Warfare 2 to be sold in Japan. I understand it was licensed to a publisher local in Japan and that is why Steam can not distribute. But this crosses the line of my tolerance. Same with other media such as music and videos. I wish publishers would set a global price, based on one of the major currencies, and just let us purchase and use in any region.

There is also "good old games" ( www.gog.com ) - steam like site that sells old games without DRM and tuned to run in modern OSes. Sorry for advertising, I'm not connected to them in any way, just like this company (they made The Witcher) and wanted to promote DRM less online software selling.

Steam is awesome.

I used to never play PC games, and when I did I usually pirated them for convenience and simply because I couldn't legitimately purchasing the PC games I play (many of them are older and no longer in stores).

However, since this Steam sale came around I've been addicted. I ended up buying like 6 games with an average price of about $5 a game. It's just easier than pirating and it's cheap very easy just to click the buy button and charge my credit card.

Overall it's a great way to distribute new PC games and it definitely keeps the income coming in (although it might not be as much) for older games that no longer get shelf space in brick and mortar retail stores.

Steam doesn't even feel like DRM. The hallmark of DRM is always that there's some thing you run into that you want to do but can't: you can't play your music on THAT device, you can't convert your video to THAT format.

But the only thing I want to do with PC games is play them, and on any PC that I want to play them on. Steam lets me do that. It's copy protection, no doubt, but it's a bargain where I actually win in the exchange.

"In order to counter piracy.... It’s this sort of scheme that forces people to pirate games."

For publishers to understand why restricting rights of their customers is bad for them, they need to understand this. Steam, and other systems like it are the future. Those who do not understand this will (and should) be swept under the rug.

I just want to point out quick that what's so awesome about Steam is it's apparent longevity. They provide the convenience of the App Store: you see something, 2-or-3 clicks and it's yours, but the greatest value that Steam offers is the fact that THE GAMES YOU BUY ARE ALWAYS THERE. 5 years down the road, you will still be able to download and play the games you have bought, onto a different computer with possibly a completely different OS, all patched up. It's in Steam's best business interest to continue and grow and maintain a presence, possibly forever, so they will always be there, and the game you have bought and paid for the one time, you will always have, always. Try and say that about a physical copy or the stupid App store.

I installed a dual-boot of Vista so I could install Steam and play BioShock. I'd love Steam if it didn't crash every twenty minutes or so. Granted, it could be Vista...I had problems with Call of Duty 4 as well.

I really, really wish a gaming virtual machine would catch on. Of course it won't because it would defeat platform lock-in, but one can dream, right? Rebooting Ubuntu into Windows just to catch a 30 minute break gets old fast.

I can't wait until something like this comes out for my Xbox. I can't tell you the number of times I've been bored enough to shell out $60 bucks for a game I heard was good but was way too lazy (or slightly too inebriated) to drive to the store.

Sometimes I feel like companies just don't want my money.

There's another online games store that deals with older games: www.gog.com aka Good Old Games. What's interesting is that it doesn't have DRM.

i owned counter-strike: source for windows. i was AMAZED that i didn't have to purchase it for mac.

this particular kool aid is delicious.