I appreciate the transparency tbh. Would be better if things were different but it is what it is for now.
For context, Steam is now forced to display this due to a new law passed in California: https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24254922/california-digital-purchase-disclosure-law-ab-2426
Valve is not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.
Its pretty much up to the developer. You can have no DRM and not even require steam to be open, or you can make your game unplayable.
Imo Steam should tell people whether or not a game actually requires Steam (or another form of DRM) to run. I know they already do it for things like Denuvo, but they should also note if the game actually uses Steam as DRM or if the game can be launched without it.
Yeah that would be nice.
Steam DRM isn’t even really DRM in the traditional sense and it’s very easy to put games into a program or use an injected/patched .dll to bypass the Steam Launch check. It’s annoying sure but it’s not something that people should be concerned about.
Afaik, Steam only sells licences.
Steam sells DRM-free games too, you can download them and then uninstall Steam and they will work. In this case though, on top of purchasing the game, you are buying a license to download updates for it through Steam. It’s a developer decision.
DRM is orthagonal to ownership
I do not disagree?
You still aren’t “purchasing” it.
For example, you don’t have right of resale the same way you would with physical goods. You’re buying a license to the game for personal use, regardless, you just don’t have DRM limiting your access.
Well that’s just digital goods, not Steam specifically.
You do get all the files for the game, that will work for as long as the OS will run them, with or without Steam (this is as close as you can come to ownership for software). Rather than a license to use them files, which become useless if you don’t run the game through Steam.
If buying isn’t owning then piracy isn’t stealing.
Bad argument piracy has never been stealing
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If buying becomes owning, will people stop pirating?
If piracy was stealing I would do it even more
Stealing potential profits is no where near as fun as stealing actual profits
based and property tax should be illegal pillec
This is also the case for physical copies, and has been since software was first sold
According to media lawyers, maybe. But when I have a CD of music, or a game cartridge, I can sell it to someone else. For money. Because it’s my copy I’m selling. So, what the fuck are you talking about except ceding the point to corporate lawyers for no good reason?
That’s technically piracy. You should be careful as some have been sued for selling 2nd hand goods.
Just because it makes sense and is intuitive doesn’t make it correct legally speaking
No it’s not. It’s well established law that we are allowed to resell our physical media. You’re just wrong. Like I said, if it were up to corporate media lawyers, you would be correct, which is why it’s frustrating to see people like OP & yourself falling into line when no one’s even asking you to. Stop that.
I am not falling in line, I am asking you to be aware so you don’t get sued for doing a reasonable thing. Maybe games are safe but I heard of other goods causing lawsuits.
Take my word with a grain of salt, but as far as I understand with my limited knowledge, you do not own the content stored on the disc; however, you do own the physical medium itself. That is how game stores are allowed to sell you second hand games. They aren’t selling you the disc contents, they are selling you the disc. Regardless, readers, do your own research and don’t take the word of random people on Lemmy including myself.
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You know what else used to be standard? Slavery and feudalism. Things don’t have to be this way.
I mean, slavery is still standard if you consider the prison industrial complex
They can though
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People going on about being authorized do do this, not authorized to do that. General rule, don’t listen to others telling you what to do and what no to do if they can’t enforce their own rules. Steam and the rest of the digital corpos talk big, and act small. Do what you want, play your games not through steam, they handed the files to you and asked you nicely not do do what you want with them, you’re perfectly free not to listen to them, and honestly you shouldn’t listen to them 🏴☠️.
Yeah isn’t this like the thing that California required them to do?
Gog games
Good Old Games Games
By now my GOG library has far exceeded my Steam library in size. I was surprised by how many games on my Steam wishlist are also on GOG.
GOG shills no longer make full sentences to spread their lies now.
Personally I think we should bring back physical games to PC. Imagine a cartridge like device that can effectively use external storage as swap memory (which copies to ram as needed), laptops and desktops can be built with this while other computers could use an adapter.
And hopefully it dosent require the original game drive to be plugged in all the time when you want to play
The problem is how do you do that while preventing fraud?
The same way you do it digitally: add a thin layer of DRM that gives you legal protection, but doesn’t actually do much on a technical level. Check a license key from the game drive in the same way you’d check the key of software someone paid you for, then let the code run on their machine.
DRM itself isn’t a very good way of protecting media. The functional protections are almost nonexistent due to the nature of it. If you want to let someone play/watch/read content, you can’t also make it magically impossible for them to just take the code/video/text, and copy paste it somewhere else. The only thing DRM does is give you the legal right to invoke the state as a way of enforcing copyright law against anyone who ‘pirates’ your work.
Any fraud that could happen likely wouldn’t be stopped no matter what they tried. (or rather, if they did nothing protection-wise)
You don’t actually need to. The people who want to buy your game will buy your game. The people who don’t, just won’t. That’s not going to change by implementing artificial scarcity, people who really want it for free will find a way even if you try to stop them.
Twitter is bad.
Remember the people who long ago told you “in the future you will own nothing, and you will be happy”?
How’d you react? Did you call them crazy? Conspiracy theorists? Perhaps a Doomer?
You know what they should be called? Correct.
Yeah I called them all those things and I still do.
Steam doesn’t have a monopoly on digital games distribution if you’re unhappy with their service just use another one that allows you to own a direct software license.
Stop being a conspiracy nutjob.
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no need be angry at steam. that is how it always has been. kudos to them to point it out very cleanly and not hiding it on page 400 of the 3rd EULA.
new law
Steam doesnt make you pay for subscription fee and theres no expiry date for those games, so it’s fine I think?
It’s still something granted to you at all times, you don’t own it. If a fart gets stuck in their asses they can change the grant. It’s why actually owning is something desirable.
I agree, owning what we purchase is much more desirable. What I was trying to say is, Steam did not change their business model with or without that notice. Moreover, it isn’t as bad as some of their competitors - they dont use subscription model for example-, so I think, for me, it is still okay.
Okay, the way it is now is acceptable. I just wanted to add that this way can change at the drop of a hat. And yeah, Steam is indeed the best the industry has to offer.
I understand. Yeah, the trend is going into unfavorable direction. I hope steam can stay this way, but I’m ready to wear me old hat again if they go rogue.
What do you plan to do when Steam follows the market and become subsription-based or when they start taking away people’s games randomly?
Very good question. I don’t know yet.
I already am more of a patient gamer, so changing to the old hat is an option for me too. Currently I am looking at the OSS games like Beyond all Reason or 0AD. Probably also gonna look into buying more from GOG.
My main concern with the old hat is the multiplayer, so I mostly invest in games on steam and GOG that have local multiplayer, or a dedicated server.
