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Comment by barik | Hacker News Reader

Since both the Steam version and the DRM free version are $9.99, I'm a little confused on why one would buy the Steam version. I understand the rationale for things like games, where you have friends on Steam or you want your games to automatically update when a patch is released, but I don't understand what would make Steam a viable movie platform in this particular instance.

Anyone care to provide some insight on this? What is an argument in this case for why the Steam version would be advantageous over the non-DRM version? I'm not seeing it.

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The most important aspect to me is that I don't have to care about where I put the serial, the files or what sites I should download from if I want to reinstall in the future. Also Steam handles "directx and the like dependencies". Movies would be great too because I could just re-download it on another computer, at a friend's home if I want to watch it with him/her, etc. No more storage devices to walk around with.

Edit: forget about all I wrote before, I do it for the hats.

People use Steam and will hear about the movie that way. This is a way of selling the movie more, not providing a technically different or better option.

I assume Steam will let you view it on any computer where Steam is installed and you are logged in.

no drm , you can do that anyway.

Steam makes it so you don't have to plan ahead and make backups.

But you'd still have to wait for it to download, just like with games.

Sure, you can (presumably) download it from both places any time after purchase. With steam, all you have to remember is your steam ID and password.

Now where did I put my humble bundle key again?

(of course humble bundle gives you website and steam keys, so it's an unfair comparison. My point is that if buying one copy of this film doesn't give you the ability to download it on the other service, there is something to be said for the ease of finding the download URL)

I give all of those confirmation emails a special label in GMail.

Your friends can see you are watching it, plus it's easy to gift to your friends/add to your own wishlist. Same reasons I add my Humble Bundle games to steam, really.

I add all my games to Steam. The Steam overlay works well with most modern non-steam games, so I can still chat with my friends on Steam.

Does the steam version have DRM or are they both DRM free? Steam doesn't imply DRM, just DRM friendly.

They are both DRM free. You can find the mp4 in your Steam directory.

Maybe so that you can delete it locally and download it again through Steam (though I could be wrong). In the era of smaller SSDs, I find this very helpful.

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