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Comment by klez | Hacker News Reader

The difference is that "Not having DRM" means the games I bought with no DRM is still there once they enable it. For example, with GOG I download the games I buy and there's no way they can enable DRM on the copies I made.

On the other hand, if the games already have DRM and it gets worse or for whatever reason Valve goes under and you can't play your games anymore, well... you can't play any DRMed game without using whatever DRM mechanism they'll choose next.

In other words "No DRM -> DRM" and "DRM -> Worse DRM" have different outcomes.

> Valve has been doing business this way forever.

And Google's motto was "Don't be evil" and for a good chunk of their life they weren't. That worked out well, did it? I'm not saying Valve will do a 180 and squander all the good faith it acquired. I'm just saying it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

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>And Google's motto was "Don't be evil"

People here like to pretend google wasn't evil from the start.

https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...

But you are right there is always the possibility they turn to shit. The advantage is that compared to other DRMs it is trivial to break even by yourself and all steam games are already freely available cracked so if they do just torrent them.

>>For example, with GOG I download the games I buy and there's no way they can enable DRM on the copies I made.

There is no way for Steam to enable DRM on a copy of a game you made after you downloaded it from Steam. It's a weird argument to use really - once you copied the data elsewhere neither platform can do anything with it.

I'm not sure I'm understanding how Steam DRM works then. Does it phone home? Or is it tied to a particular device? How is this verified?

In the first case they can just refuse to let you use your copy when you ask for permission.

If the DRM is enabled, the game does a simple "Is the game available in the user's library?" and steams says yes or no.

If the game didn't have DRM enabled, no check is made. Copy the game folder elsewhere, without steam install and it should launch.

Devs can enable the DRM afterward, but your copy won't be locked.

But even then, if valve goes bad guy, the DRM is simple enough to be broken, and there is no double check or something preventing you from playing (unlike Denuvo which encrypts the game and has multiple separate checks for the DRM).

> If the DRM is enabled, the game does a simple "Is the game available in the user's library?" and steams says yes or no.

So if one day Steam (more broadly, Valve) says "nope" you're locked out of your game, correct?

Yes (that's the point of a DRM), but like I said, the DRM is easily broken. Some games can also still use steam features when cracked (like joining lobbies, inviting friends, etc), and it's the same "crack" for every game (not withstanding other DRM the game may have).

With Valve, I'm more concerned of not being able to download the games if they go under, than the DRM on the games I have. Over time, the Steam DRM has also been more permissive than before, as I can now play my "family's" games and they can play mine.

Part of the apparently forgotten but huge amount of work that went into making digital storefront for games that people trust to work was that Valve publicly talked about verifying things such as a procedure to globally strip DRM from all games, in case Steam was to cease operations.

Indeed that's what I remember too. So like I said, the risk is more not being able to download the games than the Steam DRM being there.

There is more than a single kind of Steam DRM (before even mentioning all the 3rd parties they allow) :

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/how_to_run_steam_games_off...

There are a few DRM-free Steam games but most devs on Steam enable the DRM. This isn't Steam's fault but Steam is holding the reins of that access. It works great now, so smooth you can't tell there's DRM. But at the end of the day most of my collection is at the whims of Valve.

I'm personally concerned about what happens when Gabe retires or shuffles off this mortal coil, and his replacement comes with a "fresh" revenue idea. He's a one of a kind visionary leader, it's not a sure thing that his successor is the same. I've been baited and switched so many times in the past few decades that it's hard to blindly trust any company for more than the very immediate future.

>I'm personally concerned about what happens when Gabe retires

From the couple documentaries I have seen over the years it already seems like he is basically retired, only working on things he is interested in like the brain interface stuff. I think as long as valve stays a private company the enshitification will be limited.

> he is basically retired

He owns Valve so semi-retired still means he at least keeps the spirit going. This can't last forever.

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