Posted July 08, 2021
low rated
Personally I cannot give a single S about things such as "trends", "mainstream" and such.
I have opinion of my own, and even tho general public tries really hard to shove their opinions down my throat, I still make a high effort to form an opinion of my own.
I didn't mean to suggest that you should care about general public's opinion.
Perhaps you misunderstood what I've said.
I meant that I stated that general world population seems more or less biased (generally depicting Valve as "the big bad pro DRM") and majority refuses to see and acknowledge the fact of Steam actually having pretty broad selection of true DRM-free games (after installing) as well as even greater amount of games that can easily be made DRM-free with minimal efforts (be it steamappid txt file trick, Steam emulator, or other methods).
This only proves my point.
GOGrepoc is a community-made software iirc running on Python - that makes it exceptionally portable - *almost* as portable as browser-based downloads.
Whereas Steam requires a piece of software that will work on uncomparably less amount of platforms due to dependency reasons.
The thing is, it's not even remotely the same level of convenience, and it's undeniable.
On GOG or itch or for that matter any DRM-free specialized platform you get an installer file, a batch of (often compressed) files wrapped in installer (often from InnoSetup), that is meant to not only unpack files to a location but also create registry entries - not every game is able to create those by itself if an issue appears and so they may break if install-related creation of those gets omited for whatever reason.
Meanwhile Steam, not being DRM-free platform PER SE (it is, quite literally, pretty much DRM agnostic platform that requires authentication for downloading and usage - this by itself is seen as DRM by some and not by others - personally it's somewhere in a greyzone in between for me) - has content delivery network that is extensive and heavily optimised, with things such as bandwith saving as well as install time optimisations in mind - this creates certain technical predicaments:
- you don't get an installer file, a game is downloaded in chunks that look nothing like those from a standalone installer, then it is all joined together/unpacked from not-standarized file format that Steam uses into "normal files"
- Steam software itself handles registry entries creation and any required dependencies deployment - that means if you get the files using semi-official (SteamCMD - official - but not meant for general games fetching) or unofficial (DepotDownloader) tool for file obtainment (instead of "normal" Steam software) you are likely to miss the manifest and not know about the required registry entires - ergo - packing your downloaded files into an installer of your own or perhaps just backing them up may not be sufficient for a working game (missing registry entries and lack of info on that in public websites)
You can make vast majority of games on Steam DRM bypassed with enough manual effort.
But that only happens after you obtain the files using platform-constrained software (again: browser based downloads can work on pretty much ANYTHING whereas a standalone sofware is far more restricted).
And that is not even remotely comparable to the convenience of standalone installers.
I'm not saying it's bad. All I'm saying it's far less convenient and requires more manual work and is thus less ootb ready.
Then someone needs to create the page for them on PCGW since it's clearly missing.
Also, something exceptionally overlooked:
Steam never pretended to be 100% DRM free platform (I mean the DRM in games themselves part).
Valve never promised that to be a thing, therefore they did not break any promises and they didn't betray their customers in that regard.
Meanwhile GOG was boasting about it's "DRM free superiority" ever since it's creation, having "100% DRM free" all over the place, even creating very in-your-face dedicated website to mock their competition.
And then they ditched their sworn principle - it's not a risk - it has already happened, and it's no mistake, it's a deliberate (on GOG's part) betrayal of customers.
I have vast info on the matters not generally known by an average customer, including info outside of official channels, such as directly from HQ (Valve, I asked some questions in priv communication).
I have dug through large number of SteamDB data over the span of many years.
And let me tell you this:
1.Valve does not ENFORCE or FORCE the use of ANY DRM, even the few casual ones developed by themselves, therefore calling them "pro DRM" would be a lie
2.They are not responsible for product cards, that's the responsibility of a developer/publisher, so if a product card misses the info of a product containing for example Denuvo it is entirely 100% fault of the developer/publisher - it's a lenience on their part - and I saw multiple examples of such games and could give you many effortlessly - and inbefore someone comes in saying "Valve should do that" - it's beyond unreasonable to expect Valve to *manually* (as this cannot be automated except for maybe neural networks usage) check each and every game from their few DOZEN THOUSAND games catalouge *after each update* to check if dev has changed the DRM and to what extend - dev's themselves are responsible for accuracy of product card info for a reason.
3.Vast majority of indie games' developers haven't properly read Steam developer technical documentation or they don't understand it properly.
I see f-ups on a regular basis in SteamDB - indie games are profoundly frequent in this regard - but it also happens A LOT with big companies (being lazy and refusing to learn documentation properly is apparently a thing there).
What it means is that *many* indie devs don't understand how to make their game use Steamworks while not using "Steam running" checks - in fact it (the lack of understanding leading to inclusion of the checks when it's not intended) happens so often that general population has gone to false conclusion that "Steamworks == DRM".
Steamworks is NOT DRM. It is a toolset for various functionality (for example achievements, multiplayer, etc) and is not DRM by itself. Steam running check is separate, but since many devs don't understand what they are doing it is often included by them in their code even when they don't intend it to be.
Therefore many indie games actually require various bypasses simply because their developers didn't know what they were doing.
The actual number of "DRM by ootb readiness" division is impossible to calculate.
There's only so much info you can get through Steam API calls - and those will not tell you if a developer was inexperienced - Steam API calls don't report on file *contests* and therefore it's impossible to tell what extend of Steam-related DRM is in place without manual checkup - as in: calculating the numbers would require checking EVERY single game by HAND.
Which is obviously impossible.
50%?
I don't think so.
For one it's way to abstract and round number.
For second I think it's much larger.
If you want to dip into the world of Steam DRM forms bypass I encourage you to start reading various technical docs to get a better understanding of the situation ;)
Just know this - using Goldberg and various Steam emulators usually isn't plug and play as people are left in the dark needing to blindly check what works and what doesn't - as in: don't expect everything to get bypassed equally easily.
This should be easy decision if you care about DRM-free and NOT the platform.
It's available on 2 platforms 100% DRM-free?
You don't approve of actions of one of them?
Then get it from the other one.
It's really that simple ;)
