https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games

There are hundreds, out of a catalogue of tens of thousands
They are not searchable via the client
Once installed, if launched via default methods Steam will enact parts of its DRM.
No assurance that it will remain DRM free

I hate it when people use "steam has DRM free games" as a defence

Because it doesn't change that they are there.

" Once installed, if launched via default methods Steam will enact parts of its DRM."

No they won't.

" No assurance that it will remain DRM free"
So back them up, else why care about DRM-Free? If you don't back up your GOG installers what point is them being DRM-Free if the service suddenly stops tomorrow?

Yes it does.
It is 100% verifiable.

You launch a DRM free game via the default methods presented to you by Steam, as in the Steam created Desktop icon, or from The Steam client, it WILL enact some parts of the Steam DRM.

It will
Record the PID of the launched game
Lock the library (blocking sharing, or launching another game on another machine)
If you launch another game on another machine it will use the recorded PID to terminate your DRM free game.
Launching a DRM Free game will terminate another game being run from that library, or boot out a SFS borrower.

It does enact Steam DRM and the only way to by-pass it is to know you can launch that game directly from the installation folder.

I assume you have access to two computers, test it.

Community is great and smart here, most of the time. :)
GOG is cool as long as we have Offline Installers.
Team is cool also, just lately absent. More involvement would be very welcome. But I think they had to let some people go since The Epic Store Aggressive behavior.

I would say I particularly dislike the brand of shills that pretend to act ignorant about GOG, inherent flaws in gaming and steam, and even DRM. You can support a platform without enacting massive dissonance. There are people who like steam and are honest about things like more restrictive controls on the platform as in compared to GOG, for example.

Well said Nicole.

Diablo II is "DRM-Free", too. lol

There's a lot of people that don't seem to understand what a Shill actually is. A shill is a person that receives payment or other benefits to promote a company to those unaware of the shills employment by said company. It's a betrayal of customer, or potential customer, trust. It can even be illegal if it betrays a countries antitrust laws. By the same token, calling people shills with no proof or when they are not, can also be illegal- slander, libel etc.

A person that spreads the company word because they just like what the company does is not a shill. In fact they are often the opposite to a shill, as they are paying for a service they promote. Those people are called "satisfied customers".

People that take the "satisfied customers" thing to a fanatical level, in modern slang, are called "fanboys". Even a fanboy is not a shill. GOG has it's fair share of fanboys too.

I would argue that the way language works and evolves meaning, the term "shill" can include unpaid fanboys trying to manipulate discussion.

Some games do though and that DRM-Free on Steam list isn't as clear cut as 100% DRM vs 0% DRM 'just like GOG' at all:-

- If you have the client installed it still gets 'called' by many games like Firewatch, Turok, etc, that (as mechmouse mentioned) will affect using games from the same account on another machine in the house. The 'fix' (renaming the client back & forth on every game start / quit or installing / uninstalling Steam after every game install) gets old very quickly
- Deleting certain Steamworks.dll, steam_api.dll, etc, files to prevent them calling the client works for some games but breaks others
- Some will refuse to start unless you manually create an steam_appid.txt file with the correct Steam id #
- Some need the DRM manually patching out of it (Deus Ex, Gothic 1-2, Tropico 3, etc) by hunting down retail disc patches then extracting and replacing the .exe (little functional difference vs using a NoCD / crack)
- Some need 3rd party utilities (eg, if you don't use FOSE for Fallout 3, then it still has DRM)
- Some are simply broken without the client (eg, Cognition and multiple others = "Game does not save" = Functionally useless)
- Some need source ports (Quake 1-3, Hexen 2, etc)
- Some like Penumbra, Shadowrun HK, Victor Vran, Deponia Complete, etc, are DRM-Free for Linux but still DRM'd for Windows.
- Some like The Walking Dead are DRM-Free only for Mac
- Some are base game only (DLC is still DRM'd) or like FEAR are the reverse (base has DRM, only expansions are DRM-Free)
- Some have bundled secondary .exe's that don't work (eg, level editors)
- Many games likely to be bought in a bundle are split (Portal 1 = DRM-Free, Portal 2 = DRM'd / Half-Life 2 = DRM-Free, Half-Life (non source) = DRM'd)
- Some like Don't Starve are "DRM-Free on Steam" purely because you can ask the devs directly for a non-Steam version
- Some like Two Worlds Epic require a lengthy registry edit unique to each install and then will still ask for a CD key followed by a server authentication check.
- Many games are untested (the huge number of ?). It's easy to assume that because it has a tick in Linux then Windows will be the same but as I reported with Deponia Complete Collection, it hard fails in Windows without the Steam Client running. Many ? games may be the same but only a very few of us are even bothering to test due to the hassle of the testing procedure.

All this stuff is there for informational purposes but also artificially pads out the list to make it look bigger / more appealing than it actually is. Enough research & testing is required for a mere 5% of Steam's catalogue that it's more of a gimmicky "bonus" for a handful of us who are both DRM-enthusiasts and extremely geeky enough to go through all that testing rather than any serious hassle-free mainstream "DRM-Free platform" in any tangible sense. And yes I own a couple of games on it and have contributed to that list myself in the past on multiple occasions, and it's a pain in the ass to test multiple OS versions then see if it actually saves properly not just starts, etc, then repeat verify of DRM-Freeness for each new patch issued for each game on that list, all ideally by downloading on one PC and testing on another (to completely rule out CEG style protection lurking in the background that would lock it to the first motherboard).

Overall, I'd say Valve is a store that sells games of which 1 in 20 can be bodged to be DRM-Free. They sure aren't a "DRM-Free store" in any sense remotely approaching GOG, Humble, etc, regarding how games are advertised, packaged, sold, downloaded or guaranteed by the store, nor by the fact that on Steamworks documentation page, they openly encourage devs to add Steam DRM that "can and should be used in combination with other DRM solutions". One hell of a "DRM-Free policy" there... ;-)

Well anyone claiming Steam is a DRM-Free store obviously doesn't have a clue what they're talking about, same as the people who think every game on Steam is stuck with DRM.

The most important part is, they can be DRM-Free. It's up to the developers. Just like it's up to the developers to provide a multiplayer that doesn't rely on a third party service, or use the Galaxy service which GOG encourages devs to use.

To me not caring doesn't make such people shills(they may simply not give a damn, as Rhett Butler said), as would anyone saying they don't owe us anything(technically that is a true statement and can be said in the right context by non-shills). The same goes for those who say Valve not making games is ok(maybe they dislike the current gaming trends and wants valve to stay far away from such?).

I dislike TRUE valve shills or shills of most things who cannot see flaws in something they love or admit to such, but most people called shills are usually random people critical of whatever one likes.

1. Better than no games being DRM free.
2. That is why we have fellow gamers to point them out, and of course steam cannot legally point that out(for various obvious reasons).
3. Port them to a source port or similar and this not a problem.
4. It will be once you DL your copy and port it.

As for "defending steam".....some do that, but some people don't mind steam/see them as just another source of drm free games and don't just go "anti-steam" by default because of their policies/etc & they point others who aren't opposed to using steam for it's drm free offerings/who want to save money there as an alternate storefront.

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I like some of(not all obv) of the newer entries and reboots to some franchises. HL2 I loved(even if they never finished the chapters), as well as the Thief reboot and Deus Ex:HR.


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One cane be a shill and not be paid or work for the company. That is to say one who pushes a game or product to others(or a company) by overstating the product/company's pluses and understating/dismissing/denying it's flaws with intent to get someone to buy said product/buy from said company for some reason.

Of course, there is a difference between being a fan and shilling imo.