Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: gbudnyWhat 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)

QuoteIt'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:

Quote(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 February 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":

QuoteSteam 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

QuoteI 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.

Quoting: gbudnyDo 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.

Quoting: gbudnyYou 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

Quoting: Valck

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: gbudnyWhat 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)

QuoteIt'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:

Quote(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.