Steam is the way of the future. Lets hope others can follow

games, movies, music - get used to it, as soon you will not own physical copies of any of it. change or be changed.
 
Tolyngee said:
Steam's DRM has nothing to do with the third-party's DRM. EA's DRM doesn't care if you were logged into your Steam account or not, but Steam's DRM that launches the game cares whether or not you're logged into Steam.
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Well, I suppose that's logical. A bit unfortunate, but logical. I would've preferred a scenario in which ALL the DRM was removed should Steam as a company go under, no matter who the publisher, but at this point I realize that's probably a pipe dream.
 
Tolyngee said:
I learned with HL2 way back long ago that Steam's DRM of needing to be logged into Steam to launch your games is very easily cracked/hacked/circumvented. Very easily.
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But that's not really the point. At least, it isn't in my case. I'll be the first to admit that I used to pirate a lot of games and rely on groups like Razor1911 to provide hacked executables and modified DLLs. However, as the games became more and more complex, along with the DRM schemes, the cracks got less and less reliable. For instance, they would SEEM to work initially, but crash the game halfway through. Others would cause bizarre graphical glitches. And some especially crafty game developers inserted crack-aware code that would REALLY alter the game experience.

So, I just got tired of the whole scene. That, and the growing uncomfortableness of my conscience, led me down the straight and narrow. There's only one thing I still pirate and that's only because it would otherwise cost me $1000+ (and I'm working on becoming legitimate for that one). Everything else I've installed, from Windows 7 itself to AnyDVD to Newsbin and, of course, Steam is on the up-and-up.

The point of all this is that I don't want to go back to the bad ole' days of having to track down possibly unreliable cracks to continue playing games I've already legally bought. Because of that, I would certainly hope Steam/Valve would issue a "legitimate" way to erase or bypass their DRM should the worst occur.
 
I think the bigger concern for the whole "what if steam goes under" argument isn't so much being able to circumvent drm to play your games (cause we all know there will always be some method), but what happens when your hd crashes or you swap drives and forget to backup the steam folder. Then what will you do?

Still, I'd rather take the chance with it. I don't even use an optical drive anymore (thanks netbook) and it's so much more of a hassle to buy the game, install from the disc, keep the disc somewhere safe, etc. I figure when/if Steam goes down, I probably won't have any interest in the games anymore or they won't really be supported on whatever hardware may come.
 
WiLLiSTER said:
I think the bigger concern for the whole "what if steam goes under" argument isn't so much being able to circumvent drm to play your games (cause we all know there will always be some method), but what happens when your hd crashes or you swap drives and forget to backup the steam folder. Then what will you do?

Still, I'd rather take the chance with it. I don't even use an optical drive anymore (thanks netbook) and it's so much more of a hassle to buy the game, install from the disc, keep the disc somewhere safe, etc. I figure when/if Steam goes down, I probably won't have any interest in the games anymore or they won't really be supported on whatever hardware may come.
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Then what will you do? You'll just go download all your Steam games off of filesharing networks. Problem solved.
 
Xizer said:
Once again, the free product is better than the paid product. When will these companies learn? :confused:
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So the companies should officially release DRM free copies of their games weeks before the release date for free? Because that's what the pirates get, and you're complaining about them getting a better experience right?
 
Xizer said:
Then what will you do? You'll just go download all your Steam games off of filesharing networks. Problem solved.
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Sure, some of us will do that, but the whole debate is focused on the side of people that DON'T obtain their games this way. The want to know how they will be protected cause for whatever reason, they opt to not "steal" the game. More power to em, but what do they (legally) do in the event that steam disappears and they can't download their $300+ worth of games anymore.
 
fleggett said:
But that's not really the point. The point of all this is that I don't want to go back to the bad ole' days of having to track down possibly unreliable cracks to continue playing games I've already legally bought. Because of that, I would certainly hope Steam/Valve would issue a "legitimate" way to erase or bypass their DRM should the worst occur.
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While I'm sure Steam would release a legit bypass, we aren't even talking about game cracks in the way you were discussing.

We're talking about circumventing Steam's DRM. Nothing more. And yes, unfortunately to my experience that worked perfectly.

(If in bypassing Steam's DRM you were using modified EXEs and DLLs or anything else modified, you were doing it wrong...)

But I wouldn't have bought 350+ games off Steam if I didn't have some feeling of security that if Steam vanished tomorrow, what I have already downloaded isn't immediately dead in the water. It's not. And yes, a single circumvention technique will allow all games to play.

But it won't matter. Steam would release a legit circumvention tool on their own.

To be honest, just like the "no cd" patches on Steam for some games that are actually the game cracks by pirates that are legitimately released by the devs/pubs, I wouldn't be shocked if Steam just up and released one of the hack circumventions.

(I also wouldn't be shocked if the circumventions in circulation already are actually just leaks by Valve themselves anyway! Gabe hates DRM... But pubs aren't going to release anything through digital distribution without DRM...)
 
spindoctor said:
So the companies should officially release DRM free copies of their games weeks before the release date for free? Because that's what the pirates get, and you're complaining about them getting a better experience right?
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I think they should at least run their networks as competently as, say, a Usenet provider.

There is simply no good reason why a multi-million dollar corporation cannot provide me with the same speeds to download the product that I bought from them that I get from a little Usenet provider's serverfarm, an FTP server, or somebody's torrent seedbox. I constantly have issues with Steam's content delivery network throttling me. I don't know if this is because of lack of infrastructure or if they think they're somehow saving money by limiting me to using 1/4 of my connection's possible bandwidth, or what. All I know is, I never have a single issue with throttling and my connection is always maxed when I go the shady route.

Edit: Left 4 Dead 2 downloaded for me at 80 KB/sec today from Steam. Absurd. My connection has the capacity to download at over 2 MB/sec.
 
WiLLiSTER said:
More power to em, but what do they (legally) do in the event that steam disappears and they can't download their $300+ worth of games anymore.
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Restore them from your backups on HD or optical discs.

BTW - My Steam account's worth over $4K+. But for some reason I never worry about my Steam account.
 
Xizer said:
I think they should at least run their networks as competently as, say, a Usenet provider.There is simply no good reason why a multi-billion dollar corporation cannot provide me with the same speeds to download the product that I bought from them that I get from a little Usenet provider's serverfarm or an FTP server can.
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The rate I can download stuff from slowest to fastest is:

torrent>usenet>Steam.

Torrent's and whatnot have always been slow from my experience.

Usenet's at 1.55MB/s, but then you have to unRAR crap.

Steam's also at 1.55MB/s (both can saturate my bandwidth at 100%, not sure what's wrong with your Steam connection, have you tried switching servers?), but once it's downloaded, it installed and patched and ready to go.

Steam still beats any illegal way of downloading the product. Except in price. But if you can't afford a $5 game, how are you affording a GTX 480 to play it the way it was meant to be played?

Xizer said:
Edit: Left 4 Dead 2 downloaded for me at 80 KB/sec today from Steam. Absurd. My connection has the capacity to download at over 2 MB/sec.
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Their servers are currently slammed because of the sale.
 
I have tried switching server locations all around the United States and to Sweden, South Korea, etc. all to no avail. Steam performance downloading full games is always erratic at best. Sometimes I get a somewhat reasonable 1.2 MB/sec (again, my connection can do over 2 MB/sec), usually I get 600-800 KB/sec. Yesterday was just atrocious though downloading Left 4 Dead 2.

I find it unlikely my ISP is throttling me when they don't throttle any file sharing protocols. They also have no bandwidth caps.
 
Xizer said:
Then what will you do? You'll just go download all your Steam games off of filesharing networks. Problem solved.
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That was a really glib (not to mention spectacularly unhelpful) response. People in here need to 1) drop the attitude, as it's gotten beyond old and 2) stay focused within the context of the discussion. We're talking about LEGAL recourses to worst-case scenarios. If I wanted to go back to being Blackbeard, I easily could, but I'm trying to play by the rules nowadays.

It was a legitimate (and highly topical) question that merits serious discussion.
 
Tolyngee said:
While I'm sure Steam would release a legit bypass, we aren't even talking about game cracks in the way you were discussing.
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It's still two sides of the same coin. What you're talking about is a server-type bypass which runs in the background and intercepts calls made by the querying program. Which is still technically just about as legal as patching the game executable themselves.

If there is such a beast out there (and I completely believe you in that there is such a hack available in the wild), that's still beside the point. It's nice that there's a fallback should Valve not provide what I believe to be their ethical obligations to the enduser community should a worst-case scenario occur, but it still falls into the realm of looking for cracks/bypasses/workarounds in all the wrong places.

I realize you're a pragmatist and work on practical levels. Which is commendable in its own way, but I'm arguing from the perspective of the non-geek who doesn't even know what DRM is (like, say, a friend of my mother who buys the occasional game off of Steam). Which is, I'll wager, probably no less than 70% of their customer base (and probably closer to 90%).

I bet most of you are thinking I'm anti-Steam, which is the furthest from the truth. I've purchased games off of Steam that, to be brutally honest, I'll probably never play. When it works, Steam is great PROVIDED there's no additional DRM (like with several EA and Ubisoft titles). I'm worried about when it stops working and I've amassed a huge collection of games that could very-well now be in jeopardy of no longer running. I'd love to read any official verbiage on the subject. Anyone got a link?
 
fleggett said:
It's still two sides of the same coin. What you're talking about is a server-type bypass which runs in the background and intercepts calls made by the querying program. Which is still technically just about as legal as patching the game executable themselves.
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Just as non-legal, but completely different from modifying the games in any way.

fleggett said:
If there is such a beast out there (and I completely believe you in that there is such a hack available in the wild), that's still beside the point. It's nice that there's a fallback should Valve not provide what I believe to be their ethical obligations to the enduser community should a worst-case scenario occur, but it still falls into the realm of looking for cracks/bypasses/workarounds in all the wrong places.
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It's not a hack. It's a circumvention. And it's not plural, just singular. There aren't multiple Steams. So there aren't multiple circumventions.

fleggett said:
I realize you're a pragmatist and work on practical levels. Which is commendable in its own way, but I'm arguing from the perspective of the non-geek who doesn't even know what DRM is (like, say, a friend of my mother who buys the occasional game off of Steam). Which is, I'll wager, probably no less than 70% of their customer base (and probably closer to 90%).
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To run the Steam games they have to understand how to run Steam. If they know how to do that, they can run the circumvention. Anyone computer-illiterate enough to not be able to do the latter also cannot do the former. So I don't buy your argument, sorry.
 
fleggett said:
That was a really glib (not to mention spectacularly unhelpful) response. People in here need to 1) drop the attitude, as it's gotten beyond old and 2) stay focused within the context of the discussion. We're talking about LEGAL recourses to worst-case scenarios. If I wanted to go back to being Blackbeard, I easily could, but I'm trying to play by the rules nowadays.

It was a legitimate (and highly topical) question that merits serious discussion.
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You own the license through your purchase on Steam, not the data. If you can obtain the data through not-quite-legit means, I don't think the dev/pub cares as you're still using a legit license to run it in the end.

I'd still have my own backup anyway though and attempt to use that first.
 
I have used Steam for a while now and have had little trouble with the system until yesterday when there was a overload(cheap deals)Most of my stuff comes from Steam.I do have some disc's,but they are becoming less and less.
 
while I'm a fan of digital downloads, what really turns me away is the amount of bandwidth it consumes.

Most of our internet plans here are capped around the 60GB mark monthly bandwidth allowance, any more than that you get charged, err gouged per GB used.
 
Sucks for you.

I love my uncapped Internet connection. I download over 2 terabytes a month.

This really isn't a complaint you should have with Valve or their Steam service. The blame rests squarely on your price-gouging ISP's shoulders.
 
Tolyngee said:
To run the Steam games they have to understand how to run Steam. If they know how to do that, they can run the circumvention. Anyone computer-illiterate enough to not be able to do the latter also cannot do the former. So I don't buy your argument, sorry.
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Because I know how to use wrench X does not necessarily mean I can find, much less effectively use, wrench Y when I'm only trained on wrench X. Now, it SOUNDS like this workaround is a simple AnyDVD-type call interception trick, which is all well and fine, but it presupposes four critical things:

1. The enduser is aware of such a hack.
2. The enduser is able to find the hack (a non-tampered with version, at that).
3. The enduser is able to use the hack correctly.
4. The hack actually does work on the enduser's system and doesn't conflict with anything else installed.

None of which is necessary when running Steam alone. This has little to do with computer literacy and more to do with navigating through the grey area of borderline illicit applications.

So, I think my argument still has plenty of merit. Should Steam go under and with no other recourse, I believe the onus is on THEM to provide a solution of some sort, not toss everyone out into space in the belief that a few, some, most, or all will be able to circumvent the Steam DRM.
 
I don't own a boxed copy of any PC game anymore

I used to have a couple from back in 2001, but I didnt get into PC gaming


I started up pc gaming a few months ago.. I currently have around 80 games in steam. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Though I support an option for both formats, hard copy and digital..
 
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