Reddit users bypass valve linux beta invitations.

[TrashyMG]

@wizardstan and thatgui: this is one of the best debates I have read online in recent memory, in terms of respectful tome, argument and counter-argument etc. />

I had to bow out, I didn't know what to do with a respectful argument. I can't add snark to that.

 

[thatgui]

I still don't understand why this is Steam's fault....

Actually I really don't know the details about how specificially Valves DRM is implemented. It was just something I made up along the way to widen my examples spectrum.

"How to proceed" has several possibilities. The first is that, as said, the gate is Steam: if Valve is going down, they may care enough to simply release a version of Steam which responds "true" to every DRM request, or even an official DRM removal program. This would be a trivial technical update for them. The lawyers might have to get involved to make sure they can do that legally but that's what lawyers are for. The producers of each game wouldn't have to do anything, your games would just start working without a problem.

I'm currently damming my forefathers that they didn't gear their colonization efforts towards west instead of south, which would probably make things much easier for me.


DRM is one problem I have with the gaming industry in general, but there is something special about steam that bugs me more: that the games are bound to an account that needs a connection to their system at least once everytime I want to install it. Thats why

...Valve is going down or some third party DRM and the game publisher is going down...

this is one concern I have, but it is not my hobbyhorse/pet passion. Its more about loosing the right to use steams system leading to the loss of my right to use the games I bought via them (even if I can still use them till I have to reinstall my operating system).

The second possibility is that you simply crack it. Steam's DRM was solved years ago, it is pretty easy to questionably bypass it.

If cracking games would be a an option I would not see the need to fill pages discussing.

@wizardstan and thatgui: this is one of the best debates I have read online in recent memory, in terms of respectful tome, argument and counter-argument etc. />

credit goes to wizardstan, he brought it to the level it is now

I had to bow out, I didn't know what to do with a respectful argument. I can't add snark to that.

Cmon, don't hide your light under a bushel

 

[WizardStan]

this is one concern I have, but it is not my hobbyhorse/pet passion. Its more about loosing the right to use steams system leading to the loss of my right to use the games I bought via them (even if I can still use them till I have to reinstall my operating system).

That is a really good point, but it is a problem with all distribution systems: you could lose your ability to download the installs from the Humble Bundle or GoG at any moment. At some point you need to trust in the system.

 

[thatgui]

this is one concern I have, but it is not my hobbyhorse/pet passion. Its more about loosing the right to use steams system leading to the loss of my right to use the games I bought via them (even if I can still use them till I have to reinstall my operating system).

That is a really good point, but it is a problem with all distribution systems: you could lose your ability to download the installs from the Humble Bundle or GoG at any moment. At some point you need to trust in the system.

au contraire, there is a slight but significant difference: If Humble Bundle, GoG, etc. decide that they don't want me to use their services anymore, I would still be able to use my local copies of the games I bought - this, of course, fails if I loose these copies.


A local non governmental consumerism organization (did I translate that right ?), is currently trying to file a lawsuit against Valve because of that (and because you can't sell games you bought via Steam) - I'm very curious how this will turn out.

 

[WizardStan]

au contraire, there is a slight but significant difference: If Humble Bundle, GoG, etc. decide that they don't want me to use their services anymore, I would still be able to use my local copies of the games I bought - this, of course, fails if I loose these copies.

Assuming you've already downloaded the installs locally, right. Do the same thing with Steam: install the games, keep a copy of your SteamApps directory somewhere safe. "Installing" again later is just a cp command away. That's one of the features I mentioned liking about Steam: install a huge game once on one computer and then copy the directory to different PCs where I may want to run it (laptop and desktop for example), or re-install without having to redownload when I invariably had to reinstall Windows (which was every 4 months or so, inevitably contributing to my full switch to Linux).


This was a much more important feature back in the early oughties when my internet was "slow" and capped to just a few GB per month, but it still works today.

 

[2bit]

The point of storing illigal / hacked on an external would be so you could just unplug it to avoid DRM

 

[WizardStan]

Yeah, we've been talking about legitimately purchasing our games. Illegal was never an option.

 

[elwing]

hum Just saw the linux beta is open to all now...

 

[thatgui]

WizardStan

"Assuming you've already downloaded the installs locally, right.  Do the same thing with Steam: install the games, keep a copy of your SteamApps directory somewhere safe.  "Installing" again later is just a cp command away.  That's one of the features I mentioned liking about Steam: install a huge game once on one computer and then copy the directory to different PCs where I may want to run it (laptop and desktop for example), or re-install without having to redownload when I invariably had to reinstall Windows (which was every 4 months or so, inevitably contributing to my full switch to Linux)."

Sorry if this gets cumbersome for you, but could you explain this for a more "slow minded" audience like me please:

If I buy a game from Steam that has Steams DRM mechanisms built in/enabled, and install it via steam, I'll never need the Steam client anymore ? So if I bought that game, installed it, and copied the complete installation folder to an external drive, reinstall windows, I would not need to reinstall the steam client to run the game ?

 

[WizardStan]

No, if it is using the Steam DRM mechanism then it needs to be run through Steam, that's how Steam's DRM works. I was specifically talking about all the games on Steam that don't use its DRM. Worst case for those games is you would have to start Steam in offline mode (no need to connect to the server, useful if the server no longer exists) so it can do final setup (installing DirectX or dotNet typically, maybe create a couple of registry entries) once copied back but then never again. In this way your purchases are protected if Valve should ever close operation, just as you would be from any other online store like GoG or the Humble Bundles.

Talking about what to do with games that have Steam's DRM is entirely pointless now as every problem that you can think of is nothing to do with Steam specifically but rather would be the exact same problem if you bought a game from anywhere else that contained any sort of resource based DRM. The solution is to simply not buy games that use DRM, a solution that works whether you're buying it from a web store, a DVD from a physical store, or off of Steam. Stick to the DRM free games and you're in exactly the same position as buying stuff off of GoG.