this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2023
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The only certain way to own digital products is apparently to pirate it illegally.
Gog provides DRM free installers when buying games at their store
And plenty of steam games are DRM-free too.
I really wish steam made it clear though. Should have to come with a tag stating DRM/no DRM. Shit, let us filter games by its DRM status.
Don't all games on Steam get the basic DRM treatment?
Nah, it's optional
However, because steam doesn't tell you which games are DRM, and companies have been known to arbitrarily add DRM in updates, I generally treat steam games as being DRM games
Nah, you can buy it legally and break the drm illegally. That is what someone I know very well does with my, ahm, their ebooks.
Removing DRM from content you bought is actually legal
What's illegal is doing so for the purposes of sharing whatever was DRM'd in the first place
Not that it stops me
It depends on the jurisdiction. Removal is illegal in some countries
Fyi, steam doesn't add additional DRM to games. So long as the maker hasn't added anything significant, you can often just copy the game folder out, and run it independently. There's nothing (in theory) to stop you backing it up yourself.
Steam itself is drm though. If you have a pc that can't connect to the internet or is no longer compatible with steam (like an XP pc for example), even if you have the game files, you can't play then without first installing and updating steam.
I have an XP pc for period-era gaming and I can't touch anything steam related for it so instead I have to either look for them on the internet archive or hope there is still a torrent for such an old game. Or failing both, actually find a physical copy. This still means I can't really play Valve's XP games though because of their requirement of Steam no matter how you bought the game.
Sort of, but only if you're launching through Steam. You can launch DRM-free Steam games through the executable file without launching Steam if you already have the files downloaded.
Games on Steam don't require Steamworks or any other DRM, if your game won't launch without Steam running that's a choice by the game developer and not a restriction imposed for Steam.
There is a whole list of drm-free games that will work without the launcher or with instructions on how to make them run without the launcher. If a game makes use of Steam's APIs, it won't run without proper authentication when opened with the launcher even if it is drm-free. You would need to launch it directly from the game's files in that case.
I'll look into it, saves me buying a game again on gog
There're few games that work like that. Many use the steam basic drm, making the game not launching if a valid steam session is not running.
That's why I have the generic steam crack. In case they pull the plug some day.