I made a new blog post giving my thoughts on PlayStation not making disks anymore, and the arguments around it.
I personally don’t think most people care about physically owning media (and some people even suggested PC should start going back to physical). It’s more about digitally owning your games.
But most people use Steam anyway, I hear you say. That’s true, but you can still own your games on Steam. Very easily, in fact! Steam doesn’t apply a hard DRM for games on their platform, you can bypass it and play your games offline without the launcher if you know what you’re doing.
Because PC is an open platform, people have figured this out and will continue to figure out bypasses in case things go south (which they haven’t so far, thankfully). All you need is to get something called the Goldberg Emulator, replace the SteamAPI file, then add an app_id.txt file. Done. You can play any Steam game offline (assuming the publisher didn’t put their own DRM like Denuvo). I’ve done this a lot, and it is legal as long as you don’t share your game to other people.
This part bears repeating anytime someone says “Valve killed ownership”. They can break the trust that is formed with their customers at any time, but so far they have not.
It really is all about trust. Of all the digital storefronts, Sony is the only major one I can think of that has actually reached into people’s libraries and pulled things out[1]. So far it seems to be limited to movies and TV shows, so it’s not a perfect 1:1, but they are the worst company to trust on this.
Buying from any digital store with DRM is a risk. Some have failed completely, but the big three of Sony, Valve, and MS are unlikely to go under any time soon. By establishing a precedent of tying your access to their behind-the-scenes licensing agreements, Sony’s model is more risky for consumers than the others.
- Ok, Amazon/Kindle was actually maybe the first. I haven’t heard of that happening for a long time, and obtaining another copy of a book is trivially easy, but they get a dishonorable mention.
Other examples are welcome, I’m always willing to put another company on the naughty list.
Very easily, in fact! Steam doesn’t apply a hard DRM for games on their platform, you can bypass it and play your games offline without the launcher if you know what you’re doing.
This isn’t a good point, how many people do you think remove the steam dependency from their games?
Steam also doesnt force DRM, it’s developers/publishers deciding to use it in the first place.
You’d only need Steam DRM for your game if you want to use any features like Steam multiplayer, workshop etc.
So while it’s easy to bypass, most games dont even need it in the first place.
