Hey everyone.
Government of Türkiye is pushing a new regulation that would force Steam, Epic, PlayStation etc. to appoint local representatives. If they refuse? The whole platform gets banned.
They also want full access to user data and the power to arbitrarily ban “risky” content. This isn’t just a Turkish thing, governments everywhere are trying to pull this crap. They think blocking platforms will control us? All they are doing is driving people straight to VPNs and piracy. If you make it impossible to buy games legally, we’ll just sail the high seas for free.
Thanks for the boost, I guess.
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Publishers would just pay the extra fee and pass the cost to us. They care about controlling the data than they do about actual sales. You know… capitalism.
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Fair point. Let the giants pay the tax to treat us like criminals while indies get to market themselves. It just makes it easier to decide who to support and who to pirate.
DRM, digital locks, hardware locking fuses etc. should be illegal. If I buy a car I can change the lights, swap out the engine, do whatever I want with it, it’s mine, I own it. Why shouldn’t I be able to do the same with my phone or game? Why should some company have the right to tell me what I can and can’t do with my own property that I paid for? That’s not DRM (digital rights management) because they have no right to manage my property, it’s OSM (ownership subversion mechanism) and that’s what we should call all that anti consumer bullshit.
If I buy a car I can change the lights, swap out the engine, do whatever I want with it, it’s mine, I own it.
I’d argue that modern cars behave very similar to DRM-protected games.
It’s not similar, it’s the exact same crap. Yeah you can change the tires of your choice, as well as the cover for your phone or the sleeve for your laptop, but that’s about as far as you can go with your ‘new’ car nowadays.
you can change the tires of your choice
Not if they have integrated pressure sensors.
I’m confused, honestly. How can TPMS force you to brand or models of tires? Honest question, I had no idea that was even possible. Can TPMS also know the type of rim? Now I’m concerned.
I’m not a car expert, but from my perspective everything that has microchips increases the burden for DIY as you need special hardware and software to pair, program, reset that stuff. In case of tires I already had the case that I had to go to another car repair shop, because the one I usually go to didn’t have the right device to reset the sensor and pair it again with the car.
It’s already up to the developer whether or not they use Steam’s DRM. And fucktons of games from small devs already don’t use it.
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Yes. You can even copy the installed files and just launch the executable on another machine that doesn’t even have Steam installed.
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That’s the thing. The vast majority of people are happy to support game devs and the steam service. That’s probably why this is not an issue causing vast losses.
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I’m not sure the majority of games is DRM free though. But youve got a point.
How do you play games without launching steam? Can you give me a quick step by step instructions in this matter?
So long as the game is DRM-free, you just go to the install location and run the exe file.
But, for some reason, many then choose denouvo instead…
Valve’s better than Epic Games, but they still have every incentive to keep users in their ecosystem with DRM. To that end, the Steam Deck’s Proton compatibility layer and touchpad driver are integrated into Steam, rather than functioning independently of it.
Using the Steam Deck is possible without buying any games on Steam, but making Steam the core part of the distribution inherently encourages its usage.
Edit: I like the Steam Deck, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to point out the aspects of the platform designed to encourage the use of Steam.
Valve’s better than Epic Games, but they still have every incentive to keep users in their ecosystem with DRM.
Very true.
Thats why Proton on the Steam Deck only works with Steam running in the background.
Lmao what? You have proof for this? It’s just as likely that it was easier to do it the way they did.
Not true about Proton. It’s Steam DRM that requires Steam running in the bg, same as on Windows.
Wine can be set up in a similar way, but Valve’s default setup is designed to for use with Steam first and foremost.
A bigger issue is that the Steam Deck touchpads don’t work without Steam being open. A more open approach would have been to write independent driver software for the touchpads.
Valve’s far and away better than Nintendo, but has still designed the Steam Deck to be heavily reliant upon Steam to function. The Steam Deck is priced in a way that anticipates increased consumer usage of Steam, but in isolation of Steam, it would be more usable as a Linux PC if it were more software-agnostic.
A bigger issue is that the Steam Deck touchpads don’t work without Steam being open
This is interesting, because the touchpads on the Steam Controller do work without Steam being open, at least on Linux, though without cursor acceleration. I wonder why the touchpads on the Deck were handled differently.
It works for me in desktop mode with Steam Launcher not running. Maybe their OS got corrupted and they need to do a reinstall.
Meanwhile I play all my GOG games on my SteamDeck. Sure it runs SteamOS and Steam in a sort of Big Picture Mode, but it’s still just a Linux PC, you’re free to use whatever software on there in Desktop mode, and then you can add all the apps and games you want to the Steam launcher, and run them that way. You’re not forced to stay in Steam, nor are you forced to only buy games from Steam. You can exit Steam on the Desktop mode and still use Proton to play Windows games, but that leaves you with more overhead running than when you do it from Steam in the big picture mode.
A bigger issue is that the Steam Deck touchpads don’t work without Steam being open. A more open approach would have been to write independent driver software for the touchpads.
It works for me when I tested it in desktop mode with the Steam Launcher not running.
Encouraging is one thing, and of course any business wants to encourage their consumers to, we’ll, consume from them. However, that is not what Epic does, or Buggysoft, or any of the other giants. They FORCE their consumers into a whole lot of crap to FORCE money out of them. Encouraging and forcing are 2 completely different terms.
Valve is definitely the best and the most innovative, particularly in contrast to Epic’s attempt to bribe their way to success and intentionally ignoring Linux, but even the best have their faults.
Absolutely agree, everyone, institutions or individuals, have flaws. I was just pointing out that Valva is not comparable to most, if not all, the big names in gaming in terms of following a more customer-centric culture.
It stands to reason that they want their DRM to be used, otherwise, why even design it, right? The ‘forcing’ part on many factors that Epic and most others resort to is what really grinds my gears.
Still waiting for the day Steam bites the bullet and just publish titles DRM free by default
They already do. Steam DRM is explicitly opt-in and the Steamdwork documentation even underlines that Steam DRM is a very weak form of DRM. Denuvo isn’t by Valve/Steam and also opt-in.
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Steam DRM can be bypassed without even modifying the game files (using open-source software no less), it is not the boogeyman people say it is. If the internet broke, or Steam was gone you could still easily play these games, and software like Goldberg would be well accepted by people.
What we need is an alternative store where opensource games can make money. That would change the business.
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How so? I’d expect getting people willing to publish their games there, regardless of the payment system, to be the problem.
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Does this mean the “PLEASE ADD TURKISH LANGUAGE 🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷” spam all over the community hubs will stop?
I hope.
Can’t they fucking learn a language ffs?..
Don’t be confident in the idea that VPNs will escape regulatory notice. The open web as we know it is rapidly being maimed.
No wonder EU has frozen their membership application. They backslid into autocracy.
We are sliding as well. And we are the EU.
I bet steam will create a “Steam (Turkey)” as a child company to deal with this.
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That’s a very common and very reasonable request, and given the size of Turkey, I don’t think they’d prefer to lose the whole market there instead of having a lawyer in the country to deal with local legal requests.
Only when it’s companies run by manchildren, like X and Rumble, they go on the internet to cry about censorship and shit when they pikachu-face-discover they have to follow a country’s laws to operate in that country.
ps: You are already not buying games when you pay for them on Steam.
edit: To people downvoting: are you also mad that Valve/Epic/PSN/etc has to follow GDPR data regulations for EU citizens and keep representatives there, or is sovereignty only bad when a non–first-world country dares to claim it?
Im pretty sure their happy to loose turkey. For years keystores have abused the worthless lira to buy cheap steam games and resell them for a massive markup and steam doesn’t get any cut and miss out on a more lucrative sale
Because of that they switched to USD one or two years ago, which made it impossible to afford games for a lot of people.
ps: You are already not buying games when you pay for them on Steam.
True, use GOG.
To people downvoting: are you also mad that Valve/Epic/PSN/etc have to follow GDPR data regulations for EU citizens and keep representatives there, or is sovereignty only bad when a non–first-world country dares to claim it?
turkiye already has been targeting dissent for a while, this is a next step.
