Why are you referencing copyrighted music? Oh, ok.

OK, so no I wasn't talking about music in my post, but I can see you making that error. I was referencing games on a CD/DVD and screwed up my explanation. Directly relevant to the OP, yeah?

There's only one special provision in regard to games:

4.1 ‘Back-up’ copies
There is no general provision allowing a purchaser of a computer game to make a back-
up copy without the permission of the copyright owner.

The Copyright Act includes a special provision allowing purchasers of computer programs
to make back-up copies, but this applies only to the computer program itself. Since
computer games also involve other copyright material, such as films, music, sound
recordings and artistic works, computer games cannot be copied under this provision.
If you wish to make a back-up copy of a computer game, you should check whether or
not the licence allows you to do so. If there is nothing stated in the licence about backup
copies, you will generally need permission from the copyright owner to make a back-up
copy.

Bullshit from Google, huh? This is the clause I found referenced in the first place. There is no "Clause 6" for games in the fact sheet I read.

GOG is allowed to sell us product because they have the copyright holder's permission to do so. In fact, they're in partnership to do so. Pretty simple.

You mean this holy mess?:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#Anti-circumvention_exemptions

Unless you're interested in hiring a lawyer to figure out if you have permission to "free" your purchase, just go drm-free. Let's not depend on or pay the legal system any more extra fees to be this useless.

Agreed. Such deception makes me mad and is the main reason I will never buy anything on Steam or other fake stores, ever.

I don't think there is much hope in the US (at least, not in the foreseeable future), and by extension Canada, for corporations to be held accountable for such blatant violations of consumer rights. The charge will have to be led either in the EU or elsewhere in the world for this one.

Steam has a function to make backup copies integrated in their client and I am pretty sure that the copyright holders are ok with it. Also GOG allows us to download a offline installer for backup purposes.

The whole "backup copies are forbidden" argumentation should be off the table and is not relevant to the topic in any way.

So ... back to modifying the game.

True enough. But still, realistically, nobody is every going to pursue any one person for cracking their copy of a game for personal use. Anyone saying so is just fearmongering. Especially when you can readily present a proof of purchase.

But should you start providing that cracked copy of a game as a download for anybody, then you might start running into actual issues.

And given the degree to which they encourage developers to integrate in their platform, any installer that you would backup would surely work and not crash spectacularly without the Steam platform right?

Half-true. They can't stop users from doing what they want in their homes.

However, they can certainly stop distributors of cracking tools right in their tracks from distributing them through more official (and auditable) channels, making the endeavor of cracking the drm always a shady propositon.

For example, if someone wanted to publish an open-source tool to do it, they would be shut down right then and there.

I point out this dose not work with a lot of games. Would really love DRM free copy of COH2. :(

It's still a backup, so what? I never claimed they remove DRM this way only that they provide a way to create a backup copy.

It would be a shame if NSA got shut down for publishing Ghidra :P

Though I gotta say ghidra is a bit of a mess and I'm quite tempted to write my own tools...

The backup feature that Steam provides are not even installers. They are archives of game data (possibly-encrypted, I never bothered to investigate) meant for people with slow internet connections. That way they only have to download the game once and reinstall as many times as they wish, assuming updates don;t throw that idea out the window.

They can still only be extracted/installed via Steam and require Steam to run, thus they are still vastly inferior to GOG's offline installers.

I think the reason neumi5694 brought it up was to say that we are already performing and are allowed to perform backups of our games, regardless of any law. Steam backups are not exclusive to any country, nor are GOG backups. Heck, Windows media player still allows you to RIP audio CDs, despite that technically being illegal in some countries, like the UK lol. Nobody has ever bothered enforcing it, or banning the software that provides these features. WMP is still there.

As per the DMCA

"(1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title"

A technological measure cannot be effectively controlled if it is no longer working. This is shown by precedent in prior cases.

For instance for Company of Heroes 2 it would be completely legal as per the DMCA to "Traffic" and "Circumvent" the DRM using the Codex "crack" for this "Complete" game for when the "technological measure cannot be effectively controlled", so since Steam does not work on Windows Vista (soon to be 7-8.1) then it's covered. If the crack includes copyright files then the copyrighted file would need to be removed or an xdelta file would need to be provided so the user can run that against their own files since distributing copyrighted files isn't covered but "circumvention" of DRM is.

It's all there in english:
https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap12.html#1201
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/10/28/2021-23311/exemption-to-prohibition-on-circumvention-of-copyright-protection-systems-for-access-control

Yes, that's what it was about. It was not about GOG vs Steam. I mentioned Steam because they practically dominate the market. And if they allow the creation of backups and no one complains, then I guess we are allowed to have backups.

GOGs installers are of course my preferred option, a RAR archive is not bad too.

On a sidenote: Back in the days, when music CDs had copy protection (with a big label on the front that forbid copying the CD), more often than not the only way to play them was to rip and copy them with CloneCD, the originaly would not play in most CD players.

It is up to you, And it could have sense you want to make a game you own functional because a platform is not working anymore

But you are drawing conclusions of your interest based on a line of text that does not provide this at all.

And those well known cracks are not created for the day of the armaggedon or the end of Steam. They are used to circumvent their DRM with the platform perfectly live and in good shape.

It is up to you. It is fine, and who knows, maybe it is ethic in theory considering those kind of abuses, but sorry, you are trying to justify something in a fake way

1) It's MY GAME and I have to have it functional at all times regardless of what one big crooked company makes a deal with another big crooked company.
2) MINE ALL MINE and I can do to it anything I want, use it, destroy it, bury it in the back yard.
3) Exception: deconstruct, re-assemble & sell for profit, like Bill Gates did with everything he sold.

So... you're just being arbitrary about which exceptions you accept/tolerate?