Also, Mad Max on Steam is still laced w/ Denuvo, which also does not help matters.

I don't think that is a black-and-white question. For a lot of indie devs Steam provided an easy way to publish their games to a large audience (nowadays it's of course hard to stand out with the sheer numbers of releases). This, on the other hand, cemented Steam's position as the place to go for games.
It's the same with Valve's engagement for Linux gaming. Right now it probably doesn't bring much monetary profit, but strategically Steam/Proton is already in the best position. If Linux gaming takes off more in the future (with MS trying hard to piss off even the last loyal customers it could actually happen) Valve will again be in a position of undisputed monopoly for a time until the the most powerful competitors (Epic probably first) will manage to even catch up a little.
I won't deny that Steam has done a lot for Linux gaming, just like they have done a lot for indie gaming (before it became cool) - but I think that all was strategic thinking, and not an idea from the goodness of their hearts that suddenly worked out really well.

It's a situation which is comparable to Amazon Marketplace - it offers sellers a platform where they are easily found by customers and saves them implementing and maintaining their own shop system. And of course Jeff takes a cut, but what's more important is that they all add to the variety of "products available on Amazon". Which in turn attracts more customers, which attracts more salesmen...ad infinitum.

The only way for competitors to get at least a small slice of the cake is to have something that stands out, be it exclusives that people really want (Origin/EA tried that, not sure how that went, also Epic or Blizzard), giving lots of stuff away to lure customers to the store (Epic), "bribing" devs with better cuts and guaranteed profits for exclusives (again Epic), or DRM-free (GOG).

I bought Avadon from GamersGate, and the GG version had SecuRom on it. The full game ran very sluggish, while the DRM-free demo from Spiderweb Software had no such issues. When I told Jeff Vogel (he's awesome!), he provided me with a license key for unlocking the full game via the demo version, and I've been using that version ever since without any trouble.

I had similar issues with Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent bought from GG. Telltale provided me with a DRM-free version that worked much better.

I bought a grand collection of Telltale games directly from their site. Wanted to play one of their adventures offline on the train. Installed it and activated it online at home. Couldn't play it on the train, because the UI of the launcher was messed up when offline for some reason. Told Telltale, never got a helpful reaction. Now that Telltale's old site is down, all the SecuRom'd installers I archived from them are useless, the games gone (thankfully, in the meantime I had already gathered alternative versions for most games from bundles etc., but not for all).

I bought the German version of Sam & Max Season One as retail copy when it came out (supposedly SecuRom'd as well). Surprisingly, I could still install it after Telltale's shutdown, but now that I want to run it, it doesn't work anymore. Not sure if it's related to DRM, but it's a likely possibility.

Pooh, like you could sound as posh as you want but... if you think that providing more examples to prove at least only your side of a story, which is flawed by default since it the base thought seems to be that we live in a perfect world , will help your case in any way then i would like to point towards every failed launch from any big game we had in the past 5 years.

Or in a other words

The re-release for warhammer mark of chaos. ( the original dvd contains some software that is impossible to update preventing users from launching the installation )

And this is actually the only game i can think of. Of course there have been other older or indie type of games where i probably encountered DRM problems but the % as a whole is such a small value that bugs and or other game irritations score way higher on the list " what i hate as a gamer " . I belief this to be similar for the general gamer

IIRC, Manhunt 2 on Direct2Drive had Securom Internet-version and/or D2D's DRM. I can't recall. Yeah, good luck getting that running w/out going through alternative methods.

Also, Godfather 2 on Origin requires Securom - another game, where that Securom Internet-style activation junk needs to get pulled.

(hey, just realized I read this thread incorrectly! Wow... getting old. It was about DRM , not DLC.)

Although I don't have a particular example, I have posted in another thread...

... games with a large amount of dlc tend to dissuade me from purchasing.

There are a number of strategy games -- games that are probably great -- that I will not purchase because I don't want to be bothered. Either the "complete" price is too high or it takes too much effort to research what dlc seems necessary for my enjoyment. I start resenting having to do research like I'm purchasing health insurance plans!

While I hate paying full price for games -- often because it just doesn't work into the family budget -- I would be much happier if strategy games cost more but were one complete package (with no dlc).

If you are as old as I am, you might remember, that before Steam you were more or less at the mercy of the game stores. They sold what they sold, which meant rather limited storages, as they had a place only for the latest and biggest titles. When Steam came around, it provided means for a far bigger catalogue. Not immediately, but as it got bigger. It also provided a way to keep games in sales longer, despite their sales numbers.

Now granted, these days Steam has way too big of a catalogue, but when it began selling indie titles, it was a good deal for them, as they stood out. That overabundance is also the reason why GOG is trying, and from many views failing at it, the curated approach. Valve just decided it's too much of a hassle considering how many games come out these days. But on the other hand, before Steam, most of those games would not have had a sales venue either.

So, in many ways, Steam was a great deal for gaming. You don't relly have to like it, but that doesn't change that.

Well I'm in my 40's and I definitely remember buying a load of disc-based games from Amazon (founded in 1994) as well as many other dedicated online game stores a whole decade before Steam's late arrival in 2004. Going back to the pre-Internet era, we had these things called "Mail Order" firms with large multi-page adverts in computer magazines where you could phone up and order a ton of games that local stores didn't stock (and then receive an even bigger printed catalogue with an order). Many games (full + demo) came on magazine cover discs. Shareware was widespread, etc.

Looking back through my DOS collection with a load of quirky unusual non-mainstream titles that have never been on Steam at all, I don't think Steam "saved" much of anything in terms of older Indie's. We've always had those and Valve didn't even sell any Indie's at launch - Steam was entirely about being a DRM-wrapper for Half Life 2. There was only a 4 year gap become Steam (2004) vs GOG (2008) and disc games were widely available during that time period with 2008-2009 games like Dragon Age Origins being more the "tail" end of them. So who knows, had Valve not created Steam when they did GOG may have simply stepped in as discs stepped out with no "loss" of anything...

I got many games through mail order. And usually a bunch of people teamed up, so the shipping cost wasn't much of an issue.
Of course, if a game went out of print it could get difficult to get a copy. That's not an issue with digital distribution any more (now we have expiring licenses and stuff like that).

I'll admit that Steam proved there's money to be made with indie distribution. GOG dropping the "good old" and going indie distributor can probably attributed to Steam paving the way.

There have always been ways, remember shareware disks, the stuff that made companies like Apogee and Epic big?

Steam made digital distribution extremely convenient for both AAA and indie titles (oldies got neglected for a long time, until GOG proved there was money there too). With the DRM it met the demands of the big publishers, with the open approach it was attractive to indie devs - both in unison created the gravity that basically created a monopoly to the point that PC gaming was almost synonymous to Steam - and that wasn't good at all, because - even with all the positive effects on the indie scene - it had an unhealthy effect on the consumers, who started to accept DRM, content removals, censorship and geo-locking as "normal", and not as anti-consumer as these "features" really are. It's like junk food - it may be tasty, convenient and there's a lot to choose from - but on the long run it's unhealthy and people un-learn basic skills like cooking and become dependent on it, even defend it.
Yeah, some of them were like voluminous magazines or even books, with screenshot and packshots in colour and longish game descriptions... :-)

That all really depended on where you lived. While I bought games on mail order, that was always inside Finland and from Finnish distributors, never aboard. I don't recall anyone I knew ordering games outside Finland, so we were, more or less, at the mercy of what ever games Finnish resellers sold. Back then, ordering anything aboard would have been pretty expensive. I do know a lot of people did that with music, especially heavy lovers who ordered a lot of stuff from Germany. I don't recall any game distributors offering something like special order games even as a service and ordering a game on your own would have meant huge postal charges as well as hefty taxes on the top of that.

Shareware is an interesting thing, as I don't recall any of my friends actually ever ordering a registered shareware title from the devs. All the full versions I ever saw were pirated copies.

Really, the way I see it, Steam really was a game-changer. It made buying games so much more convenient. And it did pave way for services like GOG. I don't think GOG could have ever sprung out on its own, had not Steam made the heavy lifting before it.

Steam did, in many ways, disrupt the status quo of the market, the same way Netflix did how people started to watch series and movies. Now, as I said, you don't have to like it and I disagree with some of their practices, but as a whole, Steam has been very important, perhaps one of the most important things that has happened to gaming,

Steam undeniably was a game changer. It made digital distribution easy and convenient (at least in countries with proper internet coverage - some regions were pretty much screwed when even physical games became boxed Steam keys...).
On the other hand the same people who had mass 1-starred Spore for the obnoxious online activation suddenly stopped minding online DRM because Steam was less obtrusive and oh so convenient. That simply was a bad development.

I've never felt that Steam's 1st party DRM is that "friendlier" vs 3rd party DRM. Eg, CEG works by making each executable completely unique and locked to the motherboard of the PC that downloads it then actively checks for presence of motherboard ID every time it's run and refuses to start if it changed. Literally the worst thing of all for game preservation (far more than code wheels / serial keys were) as when you change motherboard the game permanently stops working and the offline / backup copy is rendered useless until you redownload a new .exe. That was a far worse situation than "static" disc-based checks that never changed vs NoCD's that never needed re-downloading. So for those who want no DRM at all vs how the mid-2000's discs were sold (or zero clients vs the 'choice' of 1 vs 2), Steam's own DRM didn't improve anything of substance.

Steamworks is built right into Steam while Steam's active and still selling games, so this feels a lot easier to deal w/ than Securom. Keep also in mind, Securom's now defunct, not supported by Windows, and not necessary anymore.

Securom can really be a pain to do online-activation phone-home non-sense back in the day, as you could have trouble activating. Then, you'd contact say EA Support Online or EA Support by e-mail - and well, still you're up a creek....b/c you need activations replenished, DRM-removed, or other non-sense.

CEG and Steamworks is Steam's DRM/client solution - so if there's issues, Steam has to do something about it.

Once Valve & Steam goes away - which probably won't be anytime soon, of course - that DRM will be a pain.

Nothing will ever been DRM-FREE, though - as you own what you own, when it comes to DRM-FREE. We all know DRM-FREE can't be beat.

In an ideal world - all games would be DRM-FREE; and all game-client services would be optional.

- I was never able to play my Steam copy of Max Payne 3 since I was never able to authenticate the game via Rockstar's crappy Social Club that refused to connect. Haven't bought a Rockstar game since they made that shit necessary.

- Far Cry 3 needing to check with Ubi servers every time I would go into any menu. At the time I got the game Ubi's servers were all kinds of fubarred, so the game would hang ~15 seconds (or more) every time when I was trying to look at the map, check my inventory, etc. before eventually timing out and letting me continue. Haven't bought a single Ubisoft game that requires their UCrap ever since.

Good thing I got both for super cheap so I didn't lose out a lot on them, but that experience still soured me completely on any game requiring active DRM for me to play. If it's got DRM I ain't spending a single cent on it.