You're pointing at Batman, then you should point finger at Indies as well. I could name one hundred broken indies from the get go.

And yes. stop speaking nonsense about AAA term, it shows your ignorance. Nobody's gonna call Dust an Elysian Tail an AAA, despite it's handled by Microsoft Studios.

And nobody will ever call Batman indie.

Just stop complaining about that.

Oh, reports my ass. First hand experience or GTFO. I have a solid 50 hours playing Batman, my opinion regarding its performance is more valuable than yours with zero hour.

It shows that you didn't even read what I said. Continue using this dumb ambiguous term which means nothing today, but don't get surprised if people won't understand what you mean, or will simply disagree because they won't have time to understand you. On the other hand if you care about meaningful discussions instead of flaming forum topics - avoid the term AAA and explain what you mean in that context.

What is wrong in saying "Steam in itself isn't DRM, the CEG component is" ... apart from being more correct...

If that is true, how come hundreds of people working on Sims City flop badly while City Skyline 13 strong team makes it a raging success?

It's makes things much too complicated, I would say."Steam in itself" sounds a bit strange and is difficult to understand. Knowledge about CEG is rather detailed or expert knowledge and including another acronym is probably not helping things especially since most of the time CEG and Steam come together and CEG never comes without Steam, or does it? Anyway from a bit farther away, and I guess most people are looking from far away, Steam is just one thing, not a sum of Steam and CEG and potentially even more components.

What you say is not more correct - it's just semantics or definitions. I could as well include CEG into Steam and come to the conclusion that Steam is always DRM. What does it bring in the end? Making artificial distinctions can easily be misleading.

In the end, it doesn't really matter how you define it: Make it simple or at least not overly complicated and convey the correct message which would be that AAA games on Steam have DRM and some non AAA games have most probably not. No need to introduce CEG.

But of couse if you like it you can. But I prefer to include one in the other and just call it all Steam which is a plattform that of course has DRM but maybe not always.

No more complicated than saying all disk are drm because some use starforce

At the end of the day, whether some games are technically DRM-free or not on Steam is a moot point, given that (a) it is a minority of around 10% of games on the service and (b) of those games, around 95-96% are available DRM-free elsewhere anyway.

I do check my bundle Steam games that I get from Bundle Stars and Indie Gala to see if they're DRM-free (and store them as a ZIP archive), and 9 times out of 10 the only ones that are DRM-free are ones that I could have picked up from itch.io, GOG or Humble Store DRM-free.

It is only a moot point if you rephrase the question....

quotre

How is there work more complex than the next Programmer, Artist? That is a load of bullshit. Each programer texture artist 3D modeler each have there challenges and are no different than the rest. Its a question of priorities in what they're developing. AAA companies focus on fast and easy way to profit on the expense of overworking there Dev team and forcing insane requirements for the finish product in a short time. Indy its different. But not all indies are the same. They're are many many different groups with different ideals.. Which is why you can't compare apples and oranges..

I remember AAA brands that were indie themselves 25 years ago.. Most are dead because they where bought off by EA or other interest groups. Which those new owners shut them down when they couldn't do what they needed or simply wasn't profitable.

I prefer indie because its new fresh creative. Interest groups like EA destroy pillage rape the new fresh and creative!

Kotaku has another article, interviewing CDProjekt's co-founder, on how major game studio executives know DRM doesn't work, but uses it anyway as a scapegoat. His words are actually quite a bit stronger than my own:

“It seems to me that the industry as a whole knows DRM doesn’t work,” he said, “but corporations still use it as a smokescreen, effectively covering their asses, pretending to protect their intellectual property in front of bosses, investors, and shareholders. I’ve actually had quite a few discussions with high level executives who admit they know DRM doesn’t work, but if they don’t use it somebody might accuse them of not protecting their property. Whenever policy trumps common sense, the best interest of gamers is lost in the process.”

http://kotaku.com/the-past-present-and-future-of-the-witcher-3-1736499084

Nope. Steam is DRM. From Wiki:

"DRM includes technologies that control the use, modification, and distribution of copyrighted works"

Emphasis mine. Steam is definitely a technology that, even for the "DRM-free" games, restricts the DISTRIBUTION of said games, because you can only get it via installation of their own client. If you don't have that Steam client installed in the first place, or it doesn't work on your OS for whatever reason, you won't be able to get those files.

For GOG, I can be on a Windows 3.1 system with an internet connection and STILL be able to download the file through whatever Netscape browser I have installed.

Heh. You hit the nail on the head. I assume Steam requires a minimum of Windows XP as the currently active operating system to allow you to download and install anything. Sure, there might be a minority of DRM-free games on Steam, but can I get them without downloading and installing Steam? Oops, no. GOG allows you to download games from wherever you want as long as you remember your account and have an internet connection. That and if I wanted to, I could download Linux versions of games on a Windows with no issues. Come and show me how you do that on Steam on Windows. So downloading these DRM-free games still feels limited.

My response to things like this is always the same. Say it's a smokescreen/excuse/whatever. I can tell you what DRM is not to most developers or publishers and that is a deterrent. Not when they continue to make money by selling thousands upon thousands of copies on Steam (and other outlets). Corporations will start to take notice of DRM-Free when DRM itself starts to impact their bottom line enough where they need to look for another way. Last I checked this isn't even close to becoming a reality because most gamers don't know/don't care enough about DRM (read: steam) to stop using it.

Moral of the story - Most gamers just want to play Skyrim.

It is a deterrent if they care about more sales - DRM reduces them. But as was said multiple times, they don't use DRM to increase sales, they use it for covering incompetence and other sinister reasons.