There's no law stopping them, but that's not the same as "absolutely nothing." It would be super bad from a PR standpoint and there would be a consumer backlash. Would it be sizeable and devastating like the Xbox One suffered? Hard to say, but why mess with it? What reason would Valve have to mess with their golden goose? We don't have to invent concerns when there's no real reason or precedent for them and every reason to avoid it.

Also there's no law against GOG changing their stance on DRM overnight either (which leads to a ton of forum paranoia).

Xbox got hit because people had the PS to go to, no such alternative to Steam exists.

Yes its Bad PR, so was paid mods but they came back.

And Yes GoG could add DRM, at which I walk away with the NAS full of great games.

And yes there is precedence, in 2008 ish they changed Steam client and SSA from allowing concurrent use of a single account (and games) on multiple owned machines to strictly forbidding it and enforcing the restriction via the client.


Also they don't have to remove Offline... just restrict. They could easily ride that bad PR wave flying the flag of "its to stop abuse."

They are not invented and very valid.

Once upon a time games without Steam (except games made directly by Valve) were optional. Then they changed it to forced. They had a lot of opposition, but by subtle propaganda, constantly telling people how much more `convenient` and `better` it was for the gamer (the typical marketing little lies until very young people became brainwashed) , and continually forcing it, along with a new generation of children who can`t remember what freedom was, they succeeded.

It`s a political tactic- tell people crap enough times with no option to go elsewhere and the weak will believe it and so many that the disbelieving and resisting can be safely ignored. In fact the brainwashed will fight the naysayers to be chained to Steam! Now you see many companies using this all the time. The trick is to create rabid fanboys.

Only recently have refunds even been allowed by Steam, by their holy bs grace - if they felt like it that can be overturned overnight.

And there`s plenty of incentive for steam to, one them being greed.

I girlcott Steam games.

(I don't go quite as far as to girlcott games that happen to be available on Steam if they're available somewhere else DRM-free; I am willing to buy the game from elsewhere in that case.)

When concurrent use was pulled in 2008 (6-8 million users), there was thousand of posts complaining and asking for a family sharing system.
None ever got an answer, luckily physical media was still an option. But those complaints died down rapidly and anyone that left was quickly replaced. A few years later physical media got tied to Steam.

Valve could easily remove/restrict offline mode.

No you're not.
22 pages in this topic with plenty of good reasons... and you're still "looking"? Right.

Exactly what I said :D

i know ;)

Can't reply to everyone so I picked you. It's not propaganda to sell a service and have people like it and embrace it. Whether we agree or not people LOVE Steam. They love the features it offers, the ease of use and the centralization of their game library. In the very early days it was not so and I was there reading all the forum complaints about Half-Life 2 and whatnot, but Valve are great developers and designers and over time they've turned that thing into a mass-market pleaser like no other. GOG fans and DRM haters (of which I am a part) often mislead themselves into thinking people begrudgingly use Steam or were tricked into using it. Nothing could be further from the truth, people enjoy and embrace the platform.

This is one reason GOG is trying to add Steam-like features and functionality while remaining DRM free, which as half the forum threads will show you is a tricky process.


I don't see discs as some great DRM alternative. Most of them had copy protection on them anyway and if you crack that you can crack Steam so what's the difference. A flood, fire or tornado could take a disc collection away from you. Disc rot is real, as are scratches and other imperfections. Also owning discs feels so old at this point, I hate that I have to own movies on disc because the quality difference is still so massive (IMO).

^So much this.

IMO GOG tries to mimic Steam to make the transition from Steam easier. For people who love the convenience and features of Steam, but also worry about DRM - just not enough to pull the plug. I don't really understand why many regulars here don't get this. Galaxy is there for the convenience, for the existing users and more importantly for people being used to clients.
I still think the way profiles were introduced was deep shit, but I actually like the feature itself too.

I can't believe they would even consider to drop DRM-free, because that's the only thing that truly sets them apart from the top dog.

No point wasting time in circular arguments with Steam psycophants.

Those of you who love love Steam so much why are you even here? Of what use is GOG if Steam is so wonderful?

Or is it the small sweet taste of no annoying DRM too hard to resist though you won`t admit it?

My reason is simple. I have a Mac. While GOG does it's best to have as much as possible of the games here for the Mac plus Linux I wish more could be so but I am greatful that at this point that there are any games available for the Mac to run natively. Now I haven't checked since the beginning days of STEAM but I feel that they wouldn't lift a finger for the Mac users. Perhaps things have changed since then. GOG was easy for me to get a game and DL the installer. Which I keep safe in case I need to reinstall my game again. Again perhaps Steam does so to but my info of it is very old about it.

I know Origin is a mess. I only have it because of some EA games I have for account purposes for my PS3 & 4 system. It is great however that Origin does have the on the house deal game. Don't know if Steam does this or not? Offer a free game for users of its service. GOG will run a free game deal from time to time. Origin does have some real cheap prices for games at times like GOG does but Origin is mainly PC. I'm very picky on what I want. I'm a RPGer. Thus D&D is in my blood. Just wish NWN2 would be native for Mac users like NWN1 is. ANywho.

I don't really boycott Steam. I just don't think there are any games for the Mac for me to buy or play. I'm lazy and should actually check now since I'm online now as of this typing. But the deal breaker for sure for me not use Steam as I do GOG here is for this reason mainly. Net required in order to play. I hate this because not always I can have Wi-Fi or some internet connection. WoW really pissed me off when I did on a different point. Different net locations. WoW would log the IP of where you first setup and logged into their site. Now for home users that's no biggie. But for travelers it's a pain in the ass. I would be kicked off. Have to prove who I am. Then I could log in. But once I changed locations it would happen all over again. So I don't play WoW at all.
So my point on Steam is I don't like being forced to have something when It's not necessary. Now if It's about keeping track of trophies and other stuff like that then I can understand why a net connection would be needed. But just to simple play a game I need the net? Nope. No thanks. Now if my bad memory is working right now. I think I heard some news that not all of Steam games work this way. I may be confused on something else. Anyway, that's why I stick with GOG here.
GOG allows me to play my game and save the installer if I want to.

I hope I wasn't rambling on too much here.

For me, the first of the sentences I just quoted applies to me, but the second does not. I find that D&D mechanics, as a whole, don't work that well for video games; in particular, the fact that attacks tend to miss often (especially at low levels), and the fact that HP scales faster than damage (which creates issues at both low and high levels), tend to not really work that well in a video game, and I don't think they are good mechanics in the first places.

So no, one doesn't apply the other, at least not for me.

Talk about a way over-dramatic "us versus them!" response that does no one any good.