The PC wiki actually has a dedicated field for if steam games require it or not. It’s rare if not close to never that you don’t know ahead of time if you actually look.
This is something I wasn’t aware of, so thanks for the info.
There are also some other ways to work around Steam DRM, such as the Goldberg Emulator (basically a steam_api DLL which for steam client games emulates the Steam servers).
It’s just all so unreliable and an unecessary hassle when it does work, because of something which only benefits Steam and causes a product to be inferior for the customer.
If Steam made available offline installers with no DRM, clearly stated on the store page even if alongside stuff with DRM and/or no offline installers, I would be buying way more from them than I do.
Even with the whole “so far, so good” soft thouch approach under Gabe’s leadership that does not leverage market power over developers to force use of Steam’s DRM and lets us as customers have all sorts of ways to work around Steam DRM when games do have it, we’re all just having to pray that the guy keeps eating his veggies, avoids saturated fats and walks at least half an hour a day so as to reduce the risk of dying from a heart attack, and always looks both ways when crossing the road so as not to be run over, because when the guy goes the “benevolent regime” might very well be replaced by a malevolent one (as has happened in lots of good companies) and people’s game collections in Steam will be hostages to it because of the way things are set-up (since the first thing a “malevolent regime” would do is push updates closing all the loopholes).
The PC wiki actually has a dedicated field for if steam games require it or not. It’s rare if not close to never that you don’t know ahead of time if you actually look.
Its annoying it’s not on the store page but eh.
This is something I wasn’t aware of, so thanks for the info.
There are also some other ways to work around Steam DRM, such as the Goldberg Emulator (basically a steam_api DLL which for steam client games emulates the Steam servers).
It’s just all so unreliable and an unecessary hassle when it does work, because of something which only benefits Steam and causes a product to be inferior for the customer.
If Steam made available offline installers with no DRM, clearly stated on the store page even if alongside stuff with DRM and/or no offline installers, I would be buying way more from them than I do.
Even with the whole “so far, so good” soft thouch approach under Gabe’s leadership that does not leverage market power over developers to force use of Steam’s DRM and lets us as customers have all sorts of ways to work around Steam DRM when games do have it, we’re all just having to pray that the guy keeps eating his veggies, avoids saturated fats and walks at least half an hour a day so as to reduce the risk of dying from a heart attack, and always looks both ways when crossing the road so as not to be run over, because when the guy goes the “benevolent regime” might very well be replaced by a malevolent one (as has happened in lots of good companies) and people’s game collections in Steam will be hostages to it because of the way things are set-up (since the first thing a “malevolent regime” would do is push updates closing all the loopholes).