I mainly use steam for retro games, and most of the time the experience is good, but has of recent examples of old games like those of the Resident Evil franchise, the developer/publisher can simply modify it with DRMs when they aren't removing it just to have them become exclusives on their launchers or on Epic Games.

This video from Louis Rossman just sums up my thoughts on the idea of a rent option on these platforms: https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=o7wl6qYNrJc .

I think it would be a quite great thing to clearly show if the games you buy are actually "bought", not being a permanent license and just being an temporary thing, to reference Rossman again he did another video on Sony on the removal of movies and other media from their online services to transfer the rights of exclusivity to another service I guess, another thing that while not violating the terms (because you don't really own it without having the possession of the actual media) it is quite misleading to "sell" something when you're actually renting it.

Hi

I know that Valve dropped the support for many versions of Windows and macOS. I know some games are DRM-free and don't require Steam to play them.

Many games on Steam aren't DRM-free for Linux. I can imagine a situation when you can't play some games because Steam doesn't work on the old Linux distribution.

I like commercial games. I don't have an issue if the game requires a key. Unfortunately, Valve is doing something weird. They sell some DRM-free games. It means that we can play them after 10-15 years.

Unfortunately, many games require Steam, which means we rented them from this company. These specific games will stop working when Valve drops the support for Steam.

Why Valve doesn't help users to buy games instead of renting them?

The rent button instead of the buy button could help us differentiate between these games.

That could help companies create more games without DRM for users. There is nothing bad in renting games, and many users will choose this option. On the other hand, it would be nice if Gamingonlinux could add the information if a game requires Steam to play it.

I think that could help all users.

What do you think about it?

I think that's the whole idea (or used to be) behind GoG. If it's your requirement, you will have a better experience with that store.

Last edited by dvd on 5 Feb 2024 at 6:09 am UTC

I can imagine a situation when you can't play some games because Steam doesn't work on the old Linux distribution.

That would happen regardless of whether or not one uses Steam and regardless of whether you use Linux or not - the solution is not to use outdated OSes, because you really shouldn't do it.

I can imagine a situation when you can't play some games because Steam doesn't work on the old Linux distribution.

That would happen regardless of whether or not one uses Steam and regardless of whether you use Linux or not - the solution is not to use outdated OSes, because you really shouldn't do it.

Do you never go back to playing games that you liked?

You won't have a choice if the game for Linux is available only on Steam and hasn't been updated for many years.

When you have a DRM-fee game on Steam, then you copy it to Windows7 (or XP), Mac OS X Mojave (or Lion), or Ubuntu 18.04 (or maybe 12.04). Steam could be a great tool for many retro games if users will know more about it.

@Liam Dawe

What do you think about adding information (or a sing) about DRM-free games on Steam in your articles?

Last edited by gbudny on 5 Feb 2024 at 10:24 am UTC

What do you think about adding information (or a sing) about DRM-free games on Steam in your articles?

99% of people really don't care if their games can be launched outside of Steam (and most people, myself included, don't consider Steam specifically as DRM). That's the reality I see.

It's basically never asked about, and going through the games every time to check it just doesn't seem worth my time.

Steam with Proton is actually great for older games. There are games that no longer work on Windows 11, but run just fine via Proton compatibility layer.

Being DRM-free and being Steam-free are two quite different things. Want seamless save sync between different devices, achievements, workshop mods, easy and fast updates, etc.? Then you need Steam. Implementing all of that by yourself, as a game developer, is a lot of work. Doing it as an optional feature is even worse, because now you have two different ways of doing everything that you need to maintain.

What do you think about adding information (or a sing) about DRM-free games on Steam in your articles?

99% of people really don't care if their games can be launched outside of Steam (and most people, myself included, don't consider Steam specifically as DRM). That's the reality I see.

It's basically never asked about, and going through the games every time to check it just doesn't seem worth my time.

Thank you for your opinion.

I was afraid that you don't have time to check every game, and many users aren't aware of it.

Mac and Windows users had the same opinion about Steam, and they had to change it. I guess the majority of Linux users have to learn about DRM in Steam in the hard way.

Steam is now based on Chromium, which is another web browser. We have the web browser that relies on DRM for many games - a terrible combination. When a specific game requires the older Linux distribution, then two things will happen.

First, you can run Steam, but you won't be able to log in. Second, Steam crashes when you try to run it, and it's not supported anymore by Valve.

When a game is DRM-free on Steam, you can install it in 2034, 2044, 2054, and so on. You can play it if you have a copy of a directory with a game because you bought it. It doesn't matter if you use a Linux distribution from 2012 to play it. You can copy it to the old computer and don't care about technical support for Steam.

Unfortunately, when a game requires Steam to run, it won't be possible to play it. The period of renting it on Steam has ended, and you can't use it anymore like every streaming service. I suspect that many Linux users treat games on Steam like movies. They spend the money on games that they can't run it anymore - not a big deal. They pay more money for other games that they can play on Steam.

Of course, some companies could release a source code or remove DRM if you are lucky.

Steam is still the new application for many Linux users who don't check DRM when they buy games. We probably all have a piece of colorful plastic instead of a game that we can't activate anymore. These DRM games on Steam are not different from them. Linux users can avoid this issue if they have more information about DRM-free games on Steam.

Last edited by gbudny on 5 Feb 2024 at 10:39 pm UTC

I keep reading and re-reading your posts and I have no idea what you are trying to say.

When a specific game requires the older Linux distribution, ...

seems to be the biggest problem. In my opinion one really good way to solve this are abstraction libraries preventing hard dependencies to older system libraries (e.g. SDL, FNA) also greatly enhancing portability. My game library has a fair share of obscure linux ports needing special libs and I have used strange workarounds like renaming libraries or installing compatibility libraries. Concerning compatibility libraries Valve adds its own solution by providing steam runtimes.

On this page it is often discussed how older linux native games have a lot of problems and hard library dependencies only being one of them. I really like hamish's posts telling about his trips to the past but honestly I'm too comfortable to return to one of the distributions I used before (like older Mandrake, SuSe or RedHat).

Another great way of ensuring the continued existence is developers deciding to open source their code but even then it often needs other developers to maintain this code.

On the other side we got wine / proton using the windows API (often called the most stable application API on linux) that does an awesome job at preserving the games / applications.

Sometimes I sit down remembering all the work and restrictions gaming on linux meant for me when nowadays installing some newly released game. My past self, let's say from ten or fifteen years ago, would never have believed the possibilities of gaming I'm now having. I believed at that time that people would get fed up with windows being broken as it is and games would get made on and for linux. This future is still a possibility but doesn't seem pretty close.

@Liam Dawe
What do you think about adding the poll for users in articles about games on Steam?

Users could answer a simple yes/no question if the game for Linux on Steam is DRM-free (bought) or (DRM) rented. Users will be encouraged to check if they bought a game on Steam or they rented it from Valve.

The sign DRM-free will be added more closely to the title of the article when a specific number of users vote for it.

Last edited by gbudny on 6 Feb 2024 at 9:05 pm UTC

What do you think about adding information (or a sing) about DRM-free games on Steam in your articles?

99% of people really don't care if their games can be launched outside of Steam

Time to stand up and get counted, I guess.

Maybe I actually am the singular one percent (maybe I'm not, apparently others are at least thinking about it as well. Also I sincerely hope that GoL has more than just a hundred readers ;) ), but I for one very much do care about whether games have DRM or not, and I'd be especially interested whether games on Steam (where it isn't as obvious as say, GoG) would run without Steam in the background. That information is often enough not at all easy to come by beforehand, but it would definitely make a difference in my buying renting "licensing" decisions (as a positive or negative factor in case of absence or presence of DRM, respectively)

It's basically never asked about, and going through the games every time to check it just doesn't seem worth my time.

Speaking only for myself of course, just because I haven't thought of asking can't be taken as evidence I wouldn't appreciate the info if it were there ;)




EDIT:

(and most people, myself included, don't consider Steam specifically as DRM). That's the reality I see.

And just one more for the record, I do regard Steam as DRM, in case that wasn't obvious.



Last edited by Valck on 7 Feb 2024 at 7:54 am UTC

Since the discussion has been brought up, we talked about this a bit on VNDB.

In mid-October, the DRM tagging feature came out (cheers to Yorhel).

One type of DRM is "Steam DRM/CEG":

Steam DRM/CEG (101)

Online activation Account-based
Used by many Steam titles. Requires the Steam Launcher to play.
If the title can't detect that the launcher is running, it won't start, opening Steam instead. In some cases, it can boot the player out of the game or, in extreme cases, stop responding at all.

So far, users have tagged 101 games as containing Steam DRM. And 2,031 games as being DRM-free, but most of them aren't from Steam. So if you're looking for a visual novel on Steam, check on VNDB. And if you own a visual novel, please tag the DRM status!

The canonical DRM field thread on VNDB started discussing Steam's DRM here:
https://vndb.org/t20399.37

And it was brought up again here:
https://vndb.org/t20399.117

I am curious if people marking Steam games to be DRM-free are properly testing it.

While trying to find this thread, I stumbled upon a post (t21273.1), which stated their criteria for testing Steam DRM-free status: close Steam > launch exe > if no Steam launched = DRM-free. I have also seen others elsewhere online claiming this is a valid test.

But that that is a terrible way to test for DRM on Steam games! >< There are games that will pass such a test and appear "DRM-free", but then crash/behave incorrectly if moved to a computer without Steam installed. Some don't even show their DRM until further into the game.

I can personally confirm a few games that do this, but only ever tested one VN this way - fault - milestone one (pre-2018 visual update):

It appeared to be DRM-free on an offline Steam-less computer. But after a while of reading, the game would inexplicably crash, with no way to get around it. I figured out it was whenever the game was trying to unlock a Steam achievement, and without Steam, would instead crash the game.

I then moved the game to my online computer which had Steam installed and guess what... it seemed "truly DRM-free" there (no launching Steam, no crashes)
But even so, knowing how the game behaved when run without Steam, the title had DRM.

So that said, I will no longer use PCGamingWiki to mark DRM status here since apparently they can be wrong.
But I am concerned that people using the simple test above will be incorrectly marking titles as DRM-free due to incomplete testing.

Basically, it was concluded that there is no reasonable test contributors could be asked to do to see if Steam games contain Steam DRM due to Steam achievements crashing the game. It's not really "DRM" - just bad programming - but it behaves in much the same way. I don't know if this would affect people using an older operating system or not with Steam installed. The only thing VNDB contributors do is try to launch the game without Steam running, and mark it DRM-free if that works.

Do you never go back to playing games that you liked?

Yes. Often. It's never been a problem, and if something doesn't work natively, I can use an emulator or Proton.

You won't have a choice if the game for Linux is available only on Steam and hasn't been updated for many years.

I already have native games from as recently as 2018 that don't work anymore. Luckily, two or three clicks to switch to Proton and there we go.

I don't think

What do you think about adding information (or a sing) about DRM-free games on Steam in your articles?

99% of people really don't care if their games can be launched outside of Steam

Time to stand up and get counted, I guess.

Maybe I actually am the singular one percent (maybe I'm not, apparently others are at least thinking about it as well. Also I sincerely hope that GoL has more than just a hundred readers ;) ), but I for one very much do care about whether games have DRM or not, and I'd be especially interested whether games on Steam (where it isn't as obvious as say, GoG) would run without Steam in the background. That information is often enough not at all easy to come by beforehand, but it would definitely make a difference in my buying renting "licensing" decisions (as a positive or negative factor in case of absence or presence of DRM, respectively)

It's basically never asked about, and going through the games every time to check it just doesn't seem worth my time.

Speaking only for myself of course, just because I haven't thought of asking can't be taken as evidence I wouldn't appreciate the info if it were there ;)




EDIT:

(and most people, myself included, don't consider Steam specifically as DRM). That's the reality I see.

And just one more for the record, I do regard Steam as DRM, in case that wasn't obvious.

I don't think doing this is a particularly useful way for Liam to spend his time. (although that is for him to decide) You can already spend your money on DRM free stores if you want, and buy your games there. I mostly abandoned steam due to this. (and cause i don't want to run the ad steam client running for no reason just to play)

It's not even a problem when it comes to compatibility layers. There are a ton of choices for you out there to run native/windows games with 2-3 clicks.

If DRM-Free is a serious topic to a person then they should not use Steam at all. You have other options that are DRM-FREE and support linux like GOG, itch.io and direct from DEVs.

Think the site is damn near perfect. I have it setup were I only see non-steam stuff so that I can see and look at stuff that I will actually get into. I only purchase DRM Free titles from the stores I like and keep it moving.