Its not like people can't change anything. Some DRM schemes were much more draconian in the beginning and droped later in favor of consumer friendliness, like the three activation limit on spore, the online activation of sims 3. Others did not change like Assasins Creed 2 making a SP game effectively an annoying online game.

However for me thats kind of not important. These games are all luxury for me. I don't need them and find enough alternatives (among others here). So, yeah, I can't have the games whose DRM I don't like, but I save a lot of money. Does it make a difference? To me yes, and maybe a little to the rest of the world, although only a little, but thats okay.

As the others have said, there is nothing preventing you from reselling GOG games, except the law. I suppose one could say the law is an overarching universal set of 'rights management' on almost everything, but the law isn't digital, so how can it be 'DRM'? ;)

I like using Xfire. It had all features of Steam 4 years + extras for some games before Steam integrated community features AND also supports more games. Not generic support like "Add Non-Steam game". I mean that the developers has gone through each game and added extra features like in-game joining, voice chat ++ for games that has such features!! I've used it long before Steam since the horrible Steam days (2003- approx. 2007).

So in my eyes, Steam is inferior to Xfire.

Would we even have Steam if the guys at Valve have had stronger passwords? We were going to get Half Life 2 in the same way as just any other game, until it's source got leaked and instead of Valve fixing the real problem we got Steam and a fake announcement of HL2 going gold because apparently Gabe Newell still thought that using "gaben" as a password was a good idea...

I approach all games with this logic: I may regret wasting my time, but if not, then it automatically becomes worth enough that I just can't accept any form of DRM that prevents me from experiencing it again and again. Any kind of online installations or activations means that the game's future playability is out of my hands and so I rather not play it at all.

I even extend this to CD-checks, if I can't crack it away or fool it with a CD-image, it is as bad as Steam. I actually once had to buy a new CD-drive because I had used a minimal installation option with Fallout and it kept spinning up and down the disc until the drive went dead. After that I made a rule of only accepting to play with a CD on drive in pure DOS and even then I first try everything, save but losing the audio tracks, to get the CD dumped to a HDD. And never again have I broken an optical drive ever sense.

But even worse than Steam is TAGES, because it actually prides that it minefields the code with hidden checks that, if triggered, can delete plot critical items from inventory or blank the screen or cause any number of things that can't be reliably separated from the game's own bugs. How could I trust to invest my finite free time to a game that could break my saves at any moment? Best of all, it has been reported that TAGES can just hate some optical drives and cause trouble even if the proper disc is used so you just can win with it deciding what is true or not.

Anyway, as long as Valve keeps HL2 unplayable for me and my fellow men of peculiar principles, I will not buy even those secretly DRM-free games from Steam.

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For new releases, the publisher is going to demand some form of DRM. This has been the case since the 80's, when manuals were needed to figure out where to go on a map, how to decipher a code halfway through the game, or in the case of Monkey Island 2 the DRM was a spin wheel where you had to match up symbols before loading the game.

DRM has been around longer than some members on this board have been alive. If Steam offers DRM in such a way that it is minimally intrusive and has added benefits, this is a win over DRM such as Securom and Tages.

Steamworks is much better DRM in that you only need Steam running, just like the cd check of years gone by. Steam does not install rootkits or complain for the most part if you have certain programs installed. It merely makes the assumption you will have it running to play your Steam games.

Given the choice and knowing that pubs want DRM in some form, I would gladly take Steam over many of the alternatives any day. We don't have a choice in DRM-less games, unless they're indie games or older titles such as what's found on GOG.

You really expect 99% of the gaming population to not buy any games with DRM? That's absurd. Most gamers don't care unless it personally affects them. ;)

Personally they can have the strictest DRM they want on a new game. However they need to patch it totally out after it’s lost its luster and allow it to be like games here at GoG.com. I won’t buy a game even in the bargain bin if I can’t play the thing I like my 10+ year old games and play them a lot.

Steam is absolutely DRM. But it has incredible sales, and I never pay retail prices (except for Torchlight, which I still regret 'cause of the seemingly dozens of sales its had since then.)

DRM can be a delayed punishment for the consumer, so only people with some level of fore-site are likely to be put off by it, I think.

I personally have the amazing ability to think ahead of this precise moment, so I can easily foresee a scenario where I will go to play one of my old games, and find that it wont install because the activation servers don't exist any more. Or perhaps the activation servers are there, but are unmaintained by the company that now owns them: if I forgot to deactivate the game on my last computer from 5 years back, I may now have no activations left, and no easy route of getting them back.

Focusing on one particular DRM platform, Steamworks, I'm not sure if you've read the license agreement you have to click "I agree" too when you make an account... I've skimmed it, and I've pretty much concluded that for all intensive purposes, the games I own on Steam, I don't really "own" at all: they're just rentals. For that reason I tend to only buy games that are £5 or less, or if possible buy them elsewhere. I've begrudgingly made exceptions for a few steam-exclusive titles like Left4Dead, which are just ridiculously fun!

Ultimately though: DRM makes the whole gaming experience on the PC worse. To borrow a term - it is software that is "defective by design". Users on the PC are subjected to enough technical hurdles already without having to deal with you game pausing with big messages stating: "SORRY CHUMP - you purchased a single player game that requires a constant perfect internet connection to play... and either that connection just stopped or our servers did... either way I'd like to report that you're probably going to loose your progress and be returned to your desktop"... see Prince of Persia

Thankfully we've got GOG though, so we can at least buy some games DRM-free!

-Kom

I must continue to disagree. As others have stated here, Steam DRM and many of the features are not one and the same. They access the same client, but only because Valve has purposely set it up that way. Otherwise, they operate as separate entities as far as I am aware. The fact that Steam must constantly verify a game before I launch it has little to do with my ability to chat across games with my friends. Other programs have long provided these features as a standalone product.

If a DRM discussion is to be had, then we need to stop confusing things by talking about unrelated topics. Yes, Steam provides community features, but those features have little to do with the DRM process you must constantly deal with. A constant reliance on servers to authenticate you, or an offline mode which does not work for many. When those servers fail, as they have a tendency to do during large promotions, your games fail as well.

Aside from Ubisoft, I am not aware of any other DRM that is as restrictive as Steam.

I am one of those older gamers. I remember when 'DRM' consisted of having to find a specific word on a random page number, paragraph, sentence, etc from the manual. Those were fun times for sure. If the manual was lost, so was access to your game until you could find a copy.

However, as for modern forms of DRM, I have come to accept it as a necessary evil by this point, even though I do not enjoy it, and I am fully aware it is ineffective. Gaming is more mainstream now, and it is more of a business than it ever was before. Now we have big investors and 'suits' to deal with, who do not fully understand things. They just see the piracy numbers analysts show them, demand some form of protection, and people comply so the game will get published. It is a crappy situation, but I do not see it changing any time soon.

Steam is my breaking point though, and not a system I will put my support behind. I prefer to not have a third party service manage my game catalog and control my access.

Oh without a doubt, there are very few digital distribution services where you actually "own" what you buy. I suspect that's the reason retail has not disintegrated further than it already has, and why retail will never totally "disappear".

I would be upset if I lost my access to steam games, but like you, I typically only buy games if they're below a certain price point.

I wasn't saying steamworks is good, merely that it's the least intrusive of the major DRM players out there. I don't include Impulse because while it is DRM, it is optional unless you simply >must< patch your game. After you activate the game you never really need to run Impulse again...

Anyway thanks for sharing your thoughts. In my perfect Utopia we would own everything we buy and never need anything besides a simple disc-check or online activation you can revoke at will. No rootkits, no background processes running while you game that you do not want running... etc.

Is having a snowball fight with Randy Johnson dangerous?

The games are tied to your digital gog account, thus you can't resell them. (Selling pirated copies and reselling a product are two entirely different things, to resell you have to lose access to it, which doesn't happen if you only sell an installer, and yes, you could work around it by buying every single game on a separate gog account and then selling those accounts, but then you can also crack games so they don't require Steam)

I was actually a little bit upset when they told me Sins of a Solar Empire was DRM free, and then I found out they weren't lieing but that I had to install Impulse just to patch it! Horrible Hobbits, theys trixed us they did!