How does Steam employ DRM?

[votemarvel]

The issue people have with DRM is that the only people who have to put up with it are those who do buy their games. Yet a pirate has no such restrictions, leading many to think that on some occasions the pirates are actually getting the better version.

It's like those unskippable anti-piracy adverts they had on DVDs. The only people who saw them owned a genuine copy. A pirate version either let you skip or removed the ad entirely.

Steam is exactly the same. Why does my copy of The Walking Dead require Steam in order for me to play it? I am required to prove I didn't steal the game every time I play, yet if I did steal it then I'd have no worries about those checks.

 

[rbstewart7263]

The ways in which this is bad for you are various, some of the most obvious being:
- You can't use Steam (Login into your Account) at once on more than one computer, this means that if you have a sibling or a child and want him to play any specific game while you play something else this isn't possible

This part isn't entirely true. I share my account with my brother sometimes and you simply have to go offline mode before he logs in. You can't play online, that's for sure but you both can play 2 single player games without any problems (the one logged in can play online if he wants). Then again, you couldn't both play online with the same game in the CD-KEYS era anyway. So you can both play on the same account at the same time, just not online.

OT : I didn't know you had to reauthenticate every 2 weeks to stay in offline mode. Nice to know. Other than that, Steam isn't unconveniant as much other DRM are, that's probably why so much people can deal with it without going on an anti-DRM rampage.

So if I moved to my mothers who doesnt have internet I would be screwed?

 

[Ulkjen]

Forgive me if I sound like a tool, but I honestly want to know.

I don't think it's any secret that DRM and similar topics tend to crop up when talking about video games. Whenever this happens, in addition to wondering how EA can be so dumb, I almost invariably see someone labouriously trudge into the discussion, mention how all the plebs are such twits for liking Steam even though Steam has DRM, and promptly leave without answering any responses or elaborating on precisely what they meant.

Anyway, my question to The Escapist is thus: how does Steam employ DRM, and how/why is that a bad thing?[footnote]I know that DRM is bad. I just want to know specifically about Steam.[/footnote]

So, yeah. I don't meant this question as any kind of defense or anything - I just want to know what's what.

First, a lot of games on Steam require Steam to run them. There are exceptions. For example, I can run my copy of ARMA2 w/o having steam running.

Second, its a bit of a hassle to make steams Offline mode work correctly. You have to set it up to save your login data. If you do not, and you ever have no internet, Steam will not have your login data to, well, login.

Third, people hate on popular stuff. Deal with it. ;D No seriously! There is no reason to hate steam. Steams never done anything bad to you (mostly. I've heard a few cases of people with bad customer service experience but really, not many). At most its done is prevent you from logging in because you did not set it up right! Most often people get angry with steam because of ID-Ten-T errors.

The worst problems I have had with steam are usually just the Item server not working for TF2. Or how some games have Steam Server Browser implemented into them being the only way to find servers... which doesn't always work when Steam decides to have a fit.

TL;DR: Steam is DRM because its often required to play many of its games. Not all, but most. Personally, the benefits outweigh the negatives. Like how drinking a glass of milk is good for you even though its crazily fattening. The benefits outweigh the negatives. Unless you're lactose intolerant... but i doubt anyone has an adverse allergic reaction when they look at Steam.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Well, when you buy a retail copy of most PC games, you have to register it to your Steam account, making your physical copy untradable/unlendable.

This not entirely true. There are a few companies that routinely do that (Bethesda comes to mind, and Valve kind of goes without saying) but most publishers either use a less restrictive DRM[footnote]like SecureROM, which in its basic configuration is little more than a disc check. For example, Morrowind used SecureROM in that configuration, as did a lot of more recent games, but I know off hand that the disc check in Morrowind was SecureROM. It had further optional restrictions at one point, which were used in a few games like the first Mass Effect, but that was a customer support nightmare, so that feature doesn't get used much anymore.[/footnote], or, like EA and Ubisoft, develop their own crazy one time use DRM.

This is all talking about boxed copies, though. Most new games that are sold through the Steam store use Steamworks, it's pretty much only a few really old titles that nobody wanted to bother to update that can run without the client also running, short of cracking the DRM. Steam is in and of itself DRM, it's only less onerous than the DRM on the Xbox One in that it has frequent massive sales[footnote]because of the all the competition on the platform -- Microsoft won't have that incentive[/footnote], and in that its offline mode, though incredibly unreliable, lasts a lot longer than a day when it's working properly. Which is not often.