What I did was copy everything in the Steam folder to an external HDD. Every game that I had installed went with it. I think you're right about requiring online mode to reinstall, though. For almost everyone, that shouldn't matter much, but for those with spotty internet coverage, it could be a concern.
You understand, though, that those risks basically haven't occurred, and likely never will, right? You make it sound like Steam is teetering on the edge, a ticking time bomb just waiting to steal all your games. Doesn't make sense to me.

Now, are your concerns enough to choose an alternative to Steam? Not really, but it doesn't matter since you can choose from plenty of other digital download sites with unobtrusive drm.

But what about Valve titles, or Steam-only games? You're really missing out on some great games by refusing to use Steam. Portal (and now Portal 2) are such wonderful, unique game. There's a good chance you're missing out, if you'd only give it a chance. Portal has got to be very cheap by now-why not take a "risk" and try it out?

Edit: Aha! It did merge things into one post. Thanks hedwards.

I was kind of hoping you had information that made me wrong. This is sort of my point. It's not that big of a deal under normal circumstances, but in certain cases it could be an issue. In practice I haven't had any trouble with it, but I'm likely to be moving over seas later this year to who knows where, and I may or may not have stable internet. I also am not sure what that might do to my ability to reactivate games outside the country if I need to. I forget if they have regional lock outs.

The main reason why I prefer the key checks is because if I'm wanting to play when the DSL is out, I don't have to worry about being able to activate the game.
Yeah, I know it's not intuitive, can't recall how I figured it out.

Well, I mean if you already have the game on your hard drive, you should be able to transfer everything to another drive and start playing without needed an internet connection. If you want to reinstall, you'll need to download it again (obviously), and if you've done one of those deals where you've installed from a disc and then activate it on steam, I think you need an internet connection for that, but I'm not sure. In that instance it could be a pain.

I have to ask, does anyone remembers "old school" DRM-schemes where you had to find manual and look for RANDOM page and RANDOM word on that page to enter every time you wanted to play the game? Back in early 90s, before CD-keys, online activation, and even before anyone dreamed of steam?

That was a hassle.

That only works in one case, if you use your external HDD on the same computer that the one where the games were originally activated on, if you try on another computer or even if you change some hardware on the original computer then you will have to let Steam connect online to reactivate your games online. Steam backup are only useful for a single thing : spare the bandwidth needed to re download the game otherwise they are completely useless.

What are you talking about? The kind of risks I'm talking about have already occurred many times to many people. I'm not talking about Steam permanently going down and taking all one's games with it, I'm talking about the Steam servers being temporarily overloaded, or the client deciding it suddenly needs to update and not allowing games to be played until it does, or an account suspension, or so on- things that, while temporary, and enough to knock out access to one's Steam games for hours or days. And these are all things that have happened numerous times; they're potential risks in the sense that they may or may not strike any particular individual, but in an overall, general sense these risks are well-established and there's nothing hypothetical about them.

That's pretty much what I do. I buy plenty of games from GOG, some from GG, and a few from D2D and Impulse. Also, while the concerns I've mentioned may not be enough for you to have any issue with Steam, as I've already said I'm talking about my perspective on the matter. And acting as if your own perspective holds more merit than mine, even when we're talking about my own choices, is fucking rude.

As I said I've already got a massive backlog of games. Good games. Very good games. I'm not hurting for options here. No matter what games I choose to play it will mean not playing other games. And given my shortage of time relative to the games I'd like to play passing on ones containing DRM with a higher chance to waste some of my valuable time is an excellent what to narrow down the field a bit, as far as I'm concerned.

Now, you wanted to know why some people don't care for Steam, and I've given you my reasons. If you don't find those reasons convincing from your own perspective then that's fine, everyone weights the risk involved differently, values time and money differently, and should be free to come to their own conclusion on what risks they find acceptable or unacceptable and how those risks affect the value proposition of a given game. However, if you are unable or unwilling to understand how the reasons I've laid out could be compelling to some people other than yourself then quite frankly that's your failing, and one I no longer have any interest in trying to deal with.

I have started being annoyed by copy protection very early in my gaming life but ironically things started to get much worse as soon as I started to actually buy all my games (this was around 15 years ago). As the time I had a SCSI CD-ROM and as a result I had tons of games refusing to start because they were unable to detect the original CD as a result I had to crack 99% of my original games.

But I accepted it, just wishing for companies to remove the CD-Check via patch. (Which they rarely did)

But then DRM arrived and that's where I decided to drew the line, I can live with entering a serial, I can live with coding wheel/manual check, I can even live with annoying CD-check.... but having to ask for permission online to play the games I bought that was too much.

My main issue with DRM is not the limited activation, it's not that I don't like Securom or even Steam name, what I don't like is the absolute power it gives to the publisher, it's basically a blank check you sign, you give your money and you "hope" that maybe you will be able to play the game you pay for, and especially hope that you will continue to be able to play it in the upcoming years.

The EULAs where always pretty ridiculous but at least before they were mostly inapplicable, but it's not longer the case thanks to DRMs; if a company want's to limit in which country you can play a game you bought : they can, if they want to forbid you from playing a game yo own : they can, if they want to forces you to update a game before you can play it : they can, and even better thanks to some paragraph in the EULA they can change their mind whenever they want and add any new restriction they could ever come up with.

(Also for peoples not living in the US there are some country that are seriously thinking about video games banning law, I happen to live in one of them, so I don't really like the idea of having all my Steam games deactivated or no longer activable because of some stupid law.)


Anyway, as a result DRM have greatly changed my buying habit, I don't boycott "all" DRM using games (Heck I bought Portal 2 and plan on buying Deus Ex and Batman even though they all use Steam) but I definitely avoid them like plague, I "try" to limit to maximum 2 DRM using games per year, the only exception to this rule concern games for which a DRM removal patch is announced or released (e.g Alpha Protocol). I rather buy an average DRM-free game than buying an AAA game with DRM.

But that doesn't means that I stopped playing recent games, for most games I simply borrow them and play them on console or buy them dirt cheap on console. I know some will say that this doesn't "help" PC gaming market, maybe, but in the end today's PC market is mostly the console market backyard anyway so I am not 100% convinced that buying console port really help that much PCs in the first place.

Concerning the fact that DRM are irrelevant because they are easy to circumvent, I agree to an extent and like I said before I have used no-cd crack for years with my original game, but imho things are different today to what they were before.

Some years ago, downloading a crack was perfectly legal (i.e. there was no law forbidding it), nowadays newer/stricter laws are bought by media companies to make sure that soon creating or downloading a crack will be riskier than smuggling cocaine.

Also I am sadly 99% convinced that we are living the last years of PC and/or Internet "openness", with all the "cloud", controlled software ecosystem, or other similar "monstrosity" that are being prepared for us for the future, downloading a crack will soon no longer be an option, so if nobody actually fight against DRM today, even if they just now a bypass-able nuisance, there is a huge risk that when they will no longer be circumventable it will be way too late to do anything.


I have no illusion, I know that it's most probably an already lost cause, the big issue with DRM is that, like with most others things, peoples refuses see a problem before it starts biting their butt, and even then they wait to have a septicemia before considering that as being a potential issue. I might be kind of extreme but I often compare what happens with DRM to what happened with cigarettes, it took a certain numbers of peoples (especially celebrities) to start dying from smoke related sickness for the majority to start accepting the facts that maybe, only maybe, smoking might be bad for health.

NOTE: Just to be clear I am not saying that there aren't peoples who are perfectly aware of the risks of DRM but decided to accept them anyway, but I am convince that they are a minority (and most probably member of this forum :) )

Before i buy anything i always check if there is a crack available and download it immediately after buying a game. On principle i'll never buy any game with limited activations or ubisoft-like DRM, regardless of possibility of circumventing it.

Let's be honest: Short of some form of invincible DRM (...good luck with that one...), every game will be pirated to some extent. Also, some gamers will boycott certain forms of DRM (Steam, online activation, Securom, whatever; we all have our causes). At least some of these gamers would pay for a game they otherwise pirate or boycott if offered through GOG or published DRM-free. No matter your stance concerning piracy or DRM, that's definite lost sales by not offering on GOG or publishing DRM-free versus the supposed lost sales due to piracy (at least some of which aren't actual lost sales because not everyone who pirates a game would be willing or able to pay for it). Add to this the added savings of not having the additional expense of DRM (significant costs whether developed in-house or contracted).

If the publisher holding the rights has any smarts or sense, why wouldn't they offer a game through GOG?

It's obvious that current DRM is ineffective. Are they hoping that by feeding the DRM monster it will eventually sire that "invincible DRM"?

Or are they afraid that a complete lack of DRM will cause a drastic increase in the number of pirates? This could be the case with children (a significant market) - kids might not ask their parents to buy a game if they can install a friend's copy.

Or are they just too stubborn or stupid to see the light?

Oh, and any way you slice it, Steam sucks. :-P

Consider Leisure Suit Larry 3 for instance as well as the police quest games. You would need information in the manual to complete the game, or a walkthrough. For Larry 3 I remember being stuck way too long. My collection was one of the first Lsl collections released which came with a ringbinder scrapbook with bits from all the included games. In black and white, and where colour mattered in some of the scraps and pictures there were drawn in notes like "This is blue" and an arrow and such. I didn't think about why, so I missed the fact that some of the manual bits they included were because you needed to for instance think that you knew how to make a lei because it was described in manual.
Police quest was even more so with police procedures and everything. Copy protection built directly into the game. No manual, no progressing.

That is lame business. Master of Orion and Frontier : Elite 2 come to mind for me. MOO even here still needs you to have the ship list from the manual because there is no real way to bypass the issue since its built into the game instead being a separate thing merged with it. I lost my MOO manual years ago but not my game, which made playing it difficult for a time. I have a ship list now but its still a hassle that lingers even though nobody really cares about protecting the game anymore.

CP for me is often about the longterm and inescapable DRM may be fine in the short term, but as technology changes, and as companies start drying up or changing hands some of it may stop working, its not all about the problems we aren't having today, its also about the problems we may have tomorrow.

I hate to rag anymore on Steam because this wasn't intended to be that kind of discussion (nor do I know much about it at this point) but its just a good example of what might need to be address down the road. To run a game on a computer you don't just need the game to be compatible with your particular arrangement. You need Steam to be in working order, you need Valve in working order, you need the DRM software in working order. That makes for a number of unnecessary parts that all have the potential to bork access to the game. These extra parts complicate the long term solution.

I don't currently run windows. My computer broke so I moved my only windows copy to the family computer where it made more sense. So now I'm running a double distro-linux machine. I have to be careful about what I buy, but I've gotten quite a few games from GOG and thanks to wonderful programs like wine and dosbox I have been able to play them all despite not actually having Windows. One of the interesting things about wine is the GOG versions (when listed), often tend to have better luck running than the original versions of games. DRM creates obstacles that are often jealously guarded and can be hard to overcome. Eventually everything we buy today is going to be dependent on things like wine just like everything I bough when I was a teen is dependent on DosBox or some other solution. In that day we may wave a few hackers over to strip the DRM off the classics but a lot of the little stuff may get lost along the way when Good but not great titles won't install because the installer is looking for a server that has long since been taken down.

I'll give the pirates one thing, they are doing more to preserve a game in the long run than those making them by creating less complicated versions.

This, definitely this.

I've been pretty lucky when it comes to DRM in that I've only been bitten once when a company went under without providing a crack or patch to deactivate the DRM. Fortunately, it wasn't that big of a deal because I was planning to run the software one last time and there are alternatives, but it was a pain that I hadn't really expected.
The reason you don't see those very often any more is that they're obviously just a pain for paying customers, with DRM you have to trick people into thinking that it might work.

Railroad Tycoon and Civilization both had that IIRC.

Maybe not very often, but it's there. X2 comes to mind, with tutorial lines like "now check the manual page for docking procedure and start docking the station..." - and since you got the game online (steam, in my case), the only way to see the manual is alt+tab-ing out of the game itself, or printing the damn thing.

DRM has had a major impact on my decision to go out and buy a new PC game. The two last times i did it was the first Bio Shock that had some draconian activation-based DRM and then Dawn of War 2 that forced me to install both gamecenter crap for windows and steam even though I bought a physical copy.

Since that time I've mostly bought games on GOG and bargain bin games for my consoles.
I've Also bought all Frictional releases twice to give them some support and have gradually began to buy some 3 year old bargains of Steam, figuring that if I can only rent the game its also only acceptable to pay a reduced price/"rent fee".

Like you I have stopped playing RTS after the experience with Dawn of War 2 and due to drm, dlc, and killing off mod support I have also stopped playing FPS.

Games that I'm currently holding off from buying because I'm unsure about their DRM status: A vampyre story, The Black Mirror, Black Mirror II, Black Mirror III, AvP 2010, Both stalker sequels, Grey Matter