Steam skeleton keys exist. You wish to deny that, feel free.
For many other DRM Schemes, skeleton keys also exist. So far, Starforce was the only one I recall that required individual hacking, at least in the first year or so.


Depends on whether you know where to look. Scene releases rarely release just the cracks, but there are places that the cracks are available by themselves. And the cases of "US crack vs EU crack" are not that common.


You say that the difficulty of producing the files is due to DRM. I claim it's not. If you have the DRM'd files, you need to find the crack. If you don't have the DRM'd files, you need the files and the crack.
In a DRM-Free case, if you do have the files, you can play. If you don't have the files, you need to find the files first.
But yeah, claim strawman, nothing in common between those two cases.


Availability of files and perceived availability is not the same. And inability to find patches/DLCs is not dependent on DRM. Rise of Nations patches? NWN Premium modules? Chronicles of Riddick DLCs? GRID DLCs?


Yes. Or, if the community is self moderating, as was the case with Demonoid. Malware infected torrents didn't last there. Nor the members that uploaded them.


As you should be, with any piece of software, freeware or not. Sandbox, VMs etc


Good for you. That is why NFOs exist though, even if you do need a bit of experience to trust their methods.


So you already have the latest versions for your games (DRM'd or not), thus you know exactly what version crack you will be looking for. I thought you'd have to download the whole thing from scratch, since you wouldn't know what version you had.


See a few lines above. Having files and looking for crack is equivalent to having files and not needing crack. Not having files or crack is equivalent to not having files, even if they require no crack.


Funny how filesharing could work before p2p networks. IRC and BBS probably didn't exist, nor invitations. Hell, I've even got files over ICQ. Bittorrent is not the only filesharing method there is.


Funny, last time I pointed you to an (obsolete) skeleton key, you mistook a debugger for a trojan. Feel free to ask.

My definition: Every restriction that goes beyond any necessity for playing the game, when playing is looked at in a friendly way where freedom for the player is maximized and control is minimized, is DRM, everything else is DRM-free.

This way most of games on GOG are relatively DRM-free while most best-selling games on Steam are quite DRM-full and there is quite a clear separation between the two.

And steam has recently become the dumping ground of a lot of shovel-ware. There are a few poor games on GoG but nothing in line to what Steam has taken on.

edit: TotalBiscuit makes some suggestions for Cleaning up steam but it's apparent Valve has no intention of being very helpful with their cash cow...

Yeah, that really fucked me off about the Vita as well. It's a capable piece of kit, but Sony made so many mistakes in the design of it that it was beyond belief. They actually seriously expected every person in a household to have their own Vita, with their own memory card. Oh yeah, and their own copies of the games as well.

I do have to wonder if the backlash from that caused the more gamer-friendly approach to the PS4, but I can't help but be irritated that Sony has done fuck-all to sort out the problems of the Vita. If I wanted countless download-only indie games, I'd buy them on PC or on my phone.

I'm really tempted to sell my Vita at this point, as all it's really become for me is an accessory to my PS4. Other than that, the only games I've bought for it this year are Putty Squad and Demon's Gaze. The 3DS sees much more use in our household.

Valve have no reason to restrict the games being released. More games means more sales, and they will hold onto most of the money from a game regardless of its reception (no refund policy). Better yet, players generally blame the developers for making the game rather than Valve for actually selling the result, so Steam's reputation isn't significantly impacted.

More's the pity....

GamersGate sells even more different games but they haven't really a lot of sales. The problem is that most of the games GamersGate (and now also Steam) sell are quite uinteresting games which aren't very profitable. However they clutter the site and limit the usability. That might become a problem (people searching for the good games cannot find them with all the bad games because the attention is split and Steam/GamersGate cannot effectively feature their bestsellers anymore) for the sales too.

It's a gamble. If the site is well organized more (bad) games might still be good for the profit, but there might be a cut-off at some point. Just contact Steam customer service with some nice but annoying questions about any low quality game and you'll see how much they are really willing to invest in them.

First off, giving up on the Vita is what DRM-free fanatical "warriors" would say you should do because obviously most of them don't even have an interest in consoles, so an argument with them is like telling a 5 year old to stop eating buggers and sweets.

Secondly, I recommend getting an extra memory card. Every time you reset your PS Vita, just go ahead and log into your account, and after that insert the account linked memory card. I guess this is the most viable solution, though I heard some rumors that Sony will soon get rid of some of these annoying "protection" systems once the Vita is no longer so unpopular. It's beginning to sell more and more, so one can only hope for the best.

If there is any source to these rumours, I'd love to know them, because the Vita in its current state is pretty mucn unusable as a household device. I actually bought it for both me and my fiancée, but it's transpired that the games and DRM mechanisms are deliberately designed to avoid accommodating more than one user.

(Note I use DRM in this case, not copy protection, because the primary purpose of the mechanism is not to prevent copying, but rather to prevent several people using the same game and device)

There's nothing solid. As I said, they are only rumors that I happened to walk by in PlayStation forums. (By the way, never go there unless you're fully "loaded", I expected a nice community and instead I got a fuckfest of arrogant idiots)

Well, as with any platform-specific forum, you should probably take any claims you see there with a generous pinch of salt. It's like the 80 million active user claim on Steam or the secret sauce conspiracy with the Wii U (well, the Wii U thing turned out to be half-way true, but not the PS4 beater that some people were claiming - the Wii U is a great console for other reasons :-) ).

Platform-specific forums tend to attract assholes through their expectation of being able to find likeminded idiots. SPUF used to be fucking horrid for that, although I must say that Steam Community is marginally better (it's still full of idiots, but at least it's idiots without a particular platform loyalty for the most part).

Thanks, actually I have two 4 Gb memory cards, but not yet figured how to switch PSN accounts without the formatting request.. Not searched much either, they are small sized and I keep the backups on my Pc. So, to reset device and sign in Psn before the card is in, you say, hum...

I'm used already to this DRM stuff, it's still better than Nintendo for DSi and Wii digital content, the worst EVER! There my consoles fry and my purchases are lost.. Reason why I only got real few on these, not having 3ds or Wii U to transfer.. :/

The Vita.. Was released too soon. It will hopefully really take off with the Ps4 remote play and SONY streaming service of their Ps1,2,3 goodies coming, also the Vita TV.

I'm really happy with it to give up, I put up with the cons, the pros are awesome games, just got FF X / X-2 HD Remaster yesterday, 19€ deal from the PSN Europe.. Just superb, also Ps One Classics on that screen are fantastic, a real 4/3 feel, the PSP 3000 could not deliver to me.

Now, I do hope these rumors have some truth in it and some corrections could be made on that heavy shitload of legit playing check-out.

It shouldn't have to be a hurdle. Companies blatantly showing no interest in preserving something that should be both a work of Art and something for future generations pretty much is like pissing on the meaning and intent of copyright. It would take so little work to release it as public domain or make a clean copy rather than trying to hold onto it for decades. So many companies have been bought out or went bankrupt.

Now I feel like crying in a corner...

Obsolete keys which depend on which game you want to use it on. At least the last time I checked for pointers on that. A skeleton key which works only a few doors, or is already obsolete and doesn't work on any doors, is a rather poor skeleton key.

Yeah, you just "have to know where to look", invite-only pirate FTP sites, join relevant IRC channels or maybe even old usenet binary groups, right? Sorry if I fail to see that easier than just getting the DRM-free version of the game from my external HDD.

No, I said that finding all the relevant cracks for all your hundreds of DRM'ed games that you already have (many possibly with many layers of DRM) is not such an irrelevant blip as you and velvet make it to be.

It is ridiculous for you to come up with "if you don't have the original DRM-free installers, you'll have to pirate them from somewhere anyway". That is completely irrelevant to this discussion, as is saying that you can't watch the Robocop DVD you bought ten years ago if you have already thrown it to trashbin.

Cracked updates. Ie. all the unofficial stuff you need in order to play your DRM'ed game. If you try to use the official update with a crack, there's a good change they are not compatible, unless the crack was specifically made for that version.

If you have to resort to redownloading the whole game again (because your original game, that has the DLC already, came with DRM), then the question about missing DLCs etc. comes relevant, as the pirate version you are downloading may be missing them. Similarly like how many old CD games seem to exist only as rips, with no music, FMV or latest updates.

Good that there are such exceptions, even if the idea of joining a pirate community just to keep playing my legit games doesn't sound too enthralling.

Why would I have to redownload the whole game from a scratch, if I have it already DRM-free? With DRM'ed games it may be different as hunting down for the correct cracks may be much more tiresome than just redownloading the whole game ("a scene release") from the scratch, even though you already have the original game (but with that DRM). After all, you have said yourself that the individual cracks are not as widely available as the scene releases.

As for "knowing already exactly what version of the crack you are looking for":

- First I have to check manually which version of each game I have. I haven't learned them by heart for all my games. What version of Arkham City or GTA IV I have on Steam? The heck I know, same goes for the rest of my Steam games. I'd have to check the exact versions first for each game.

- Then finding a working crack for that specific version, also if it depends on the language/country version.

Sorry, but that is a lot of work for hundreds of games, compared to not having to do it at all, but just running the original DRM-free versions.

Yeah, except for the "looking for the cracks (and make sure they are malware free)"-part. So they are not equivalent at all.

Not needing something vs. needing something and having to search for it and validate it, are not equivalent things.

In the same sense as having lost your Robocop DVD is equivalent to not having the Robocop DVD. Maybe so, still completely irrelevant.

You sure make invite-only and limited-connections pirate FTP and BBS sites, or binary pirate Usenet newsgroups, sound easy. I wonder why people didn't just keep using them, instead of moving to p2p networks?

Are you still trying to convince me how laughably easy it is to find cracks for hundreds of my original PC games, compared to just running the (legit) DRM-free versions I already have? Seriously?