[RD] Games as a Service

[Timsup2nothin]

I remember watching a commentary of a Half-Life 2 speedrun where one of the runners mentioned he had to leave the game running indefinitely to prevent it from updating (as one of the glitches needed to do the speedrun had been patched out).

And yet when I point out that Steam is the ultimate in invasive DRM systems I still routinely get "What? Invasive? How?" I mean, you can keep Valve from poking around in your machine at will by disconnecting it from the internet and they won't send jackbooted thugs to your house to hook it back up, so I guess they could still get worse...

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Nah, they'll just demand you reconnect before you can actually access to your games. It's happened to me before when my internet was out. It sucks.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Nah, they'll just demand you reconnect before you can actually access to your games. It's happened to me before when my internet was out. It sucks.

Well, yeah, they will hold your games hostage of course, but that is still a step below smashing in your door.

See, they are on your side! By gamers for gamers!

 

[Gorbles]

Steam has support for multiple folders across drives. The fact that each of these locations has a /steamapps folder in it is probably some horrendously backdated part of the Steam filepath logic (assuming for the sake of charity it's not there for a specific reason, which it could well be).

I'm no fan of Valve, but there are problems to seeing literally every choice the platform makes as "evidence of DRM", too.

Automatic updates are mostly another topic, but I'd need to be downstairs to check on that. I support any client that lets users defer their updates, but I'm not sure if any client has done that (it would also logistically mean, short of some kind of engineering miracle, that you'd cease to receive critical updates to dependencies; security patches, etc).

One last bit on offline support (@aimeeandbeatles) - it's actually a lot better than it was. It was downright horrendous for years, exactly as you described it. I believe they've stopped it being as restrictive, but that ruined Steam for most of my uni days for that exact reason. I think it was only improved because Origin came out with something better. At least market pressure counts for something I guess, however minimal.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

With GOG, you can download the installers and have that specific version. And GOG Galaxy actually has a checkbox for whether to update or not.

GOG Galaxy I only use out of sheer laziness, because Playnite (which I'll never pass up the chance to recommend) has the option to import my game libraries and handle launching Steam/Galaxy/Epic Launcher/whatever to install the games.

 

[Synobun]

I like the playtime tracking and achievements from Steam, and having everything in one place. It annoys me to need to go to my desktop, or through my folders, or another launcher.

That said, Steam has suffered in its superiority. It needs a real competitor. I'm simply not convinced Origin or Epic Games can be that.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I'm no fan of Valve, but there are problems to seeing literally every choice the platform makes as "evidence of DRM", too.

It isn't "evidence of DRM." None of that is needed because "Steam is DRM" is a self evident statement of fact. The hilarious thing to me is that as an early purchaser of the "hard copy" Half-Life 2 I actually had a letter from Valve explaining what a great thing they had done in creating a way to keep theft of their intellectual property from destroying their ability to continue making games. They very quickly realized that announcing they were going into the DRM business was probably poor marketing and they stopped including that letter in the boxes, but at the start there wasn't even any attempt to obscure what Steam was and what they were doing.

The points cited are evidence, but they are evidence of Valve's prioritizing of their primary product and its features. Their primary product is Steam. Steam is DRM. Their priority is adding features that make Steam more marketable to people in the market for DRM. Those are just the facts on the ground.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

There are two other reasons why I prefer GOG games over Steam, aside from the DRM:

• GOG lets me install where I'd like. Steam forces it into a SteamApps folder.
• GOG lets you download older versions of games without any hassle. There are ways to get older versions with Steam, but it's a bloody pain and I think newer versions of the Steam client patched the loophole that allowed it anyways.

GOG does not auto update and screw over all of your mods (thanks Firaxis, thanks Bethesda, you gave me a useless update and killed my setup! Great job there!)
GOG does not track my time spent with a game
Steam forces me to watch Ads every single time I want to play a game
Steam forces me to start a program and log in every time I want to start a game
Steam forces me to click away their recurring offers before using their UI
Steam keeps data about my game preferences in order to do targeted advertising

Steam also does not allow multiple install of your purchased games. WTF? Multiple installs of Skyrim would be soooo useful for a modder/content creator, but for absolutely no good reason it's not possible.

I like the playtime tracking and achievements from Steam, and having everything in one place. It annoys me to need to go to my desktop, or through my folders, or another launcher.
.

Playtime tracking mostly makes me anxious When I look at Civ 5 it looks almost as bad as a World of Warcraft character..

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Playtime tracking mostly makes me anxious When I look at Civ 5 it looks almost as bad as a World of Warcraft character..

hmm...

 

[Gorbles]

It isn't "evidence of DRM." None of that is needed because "Steam is DRM" is a self evident statement of fact. The hilarious thing to me is that as an early purchaser of the "hard copy" Half-Life 2 I actually had a letter from Valve explaining what a great thing they had done in creating a way to keep theft of their intellectual property from destroying their ability to continue making games. They very quickly realized that announcing they were going into the DRM business was probably poor marketing and they stopped including that letter in the boxes, but at the start there wasn't even any attempt to obscure what Steam was and what they were doing.

The points cited are evidence, but they are evidence of Valve's prioritizing of their primary product and its features. Their primary product is Steam. Steam is DRM. Their priority is adding features that make Steam more marketable to people in the market for DRM. Those are just the facts on the ground.

Yeah, I didn't word it well. Steam is DRM, objectively. I was just offering technical reasons for a couple of the points offered in evidence.

i.e. in a magical pixie world where Steam isn't a DRM platform, some of the things highlighted could still easily be the problems they are, or implemented in the way they have been. Like how the Source engine was basically the Half-Life 2 engine for however long.

It was intended as context, not a defense of Steam as a platform. I'm a stickler for these things, not least because of my longstanding crisitcism of Steam, but also because software and tooling specifically is an area of expertise.

 

[Senethro]

Yeah, lots of (unintentional im guessing) falsehoods here from people not using the software properly (both gog and steam tbh). Just tick the boxes re updating/ads/Game library as default page whatever.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Yeah, I didn't word it well. Steam is DRM, objectively. I was just offering technical reasons for a couple of the points offered in evidence.

i.e. in a magical pixie world where Steam isn't a DRM platform, some of the things highlighted could still easily be the problems they are, or implemented in the way they have been. Like how the Source engine was basically the Half-Life 2 engine for however long.

It was intended as context, not a defense of Steam as a platform. I'm a stickler for these things, not least because of my longstanding crisitcism of Steam, but also because software and tooling specifically is an area of expertise.

Understood.

I just think it is always relevant to point out that there is an underlying objective guiding those decisions, and that underlying objective is improvement of the core product...which is Steam the DRM system.

When gamers say "gosh why is this the way it is, it seems like they could fix it?" they are demonstrating that they misunderstand the main point. If you look from Valve's actual point of view rather than the "hey we are gamers too" pretense it becomes really easy to see why they do what they do and don't do what they don't do. Resolving whatever the complaint gamers have is not a priority. It may get done sometime if they just have time on their hands and cannot think of anything they could be doing to make Steam more invasive, more ubiquitous, more indispensable to their actual customers (who are distinctly not gamers), but that is the only way petty problems that bother gamers are ever going to be addressed.

Sure there are technical reasons for the way things are done, but if they were being done in a more gamer friendly way there would be technical reasons that apply there as well. The reasons that matter, the reasons that drive decision making, are not the technical reasons. The reasons that matter are the reasons that matter to the primary customers...the DRM buyers.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I remember when some other game publishing came out (was it Epic? I don't remember) and some developers jumped over to it because it gave a better cut of money to them, gamers were complaining because it meant that they had to install another client. That kind of is reeks because gamers should be encouraging competition to make all the platforms better.

 

[Synobun]

I remember when some other game publishing came out (was it Epic? I don't remember) and some developers jumped over to it because it gave a better cut of money to them, gamers were complaining because it meant that they had to install another client. That kind of is reeks because gamers should be encouraging competition to make all the platforms better.

It was Epic Games, yes. They're heavily incentivizing in order to up their numbers. The issue, for me, is that their platform simply sucks. I gave in due to the incentives eventually, but I think they're doomed to fail unless they put serious work into improving the platform.

If people want to decry Steam, that's fine, but these would-be competitors are dooming themselves if they can't muster an equivalent quality to the baddie.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

It was Epic Games, yes. They're heavily incentivizing in order to up their numbers. The issue, for me, is that their platform simply sucks.

And their client has that beautiful chat.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

It was Epic Games, yes. They're heavily incentivizing in order to up their numbers. The issue, for me, is that their platform simply sucks. I gave in due to the incentives eventually, but I think they're doomed to fail unless they put serious work into improving the platform.

If people want to decry Steam, that's fine, but these would-be competitors are dooming themselves if they can't muster an equivalent quality to the baddie.

I think gamers should just say "fudge all you guys, if you don't put your stuff on GoG or other non invasive distribution platforms we aren't gonna buy them," but that's just me.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Yeah, lots of (unintentional im guessing) falsehoods here from people not using the software properly (both gog and steam tbh). Just tick the boxes re updating/ads/Game library as default page whatever.

If you can help us with some of our problems, why not do so instead of talking down to us? I know you can disable auto-updates for example, and have done so, but only after Steam already ruined both Civ and Skyrim SE and I had to spend days to fix that. Time I will never get back for updates I never asked for.

I think gamers should just say "fudge all you guys, if you don't put your stuff on GoG or other non invasive distribution platforms we aren't gonna buy them," but that's just me.

I would also love if people stopped buying cars altogether, but I am not very hopeful. Pretty sure it's simply going to get worse with every day in regards to Steam/video games in general. The silver lining is that the more people like us there are, the more companies like GOG are rewarded. The majority of people is incredibly complacent in their own downfall.

Oh well, board games still exist right? They can't take away my Go or my Chess. Yet.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

You can disable auto-updates on Steam? I never saw that option.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I would also love if people stopped buying cars altogether, but I am not very hopeful. Pretty sure it's simply going to get worse with every day in regards to Steam/video games in general. The silver lining is that the more people like us there are, the more companies like GOG are rewarded. The majority of people is incredibly complacent in their own downfall.

Oh well, board games still exist right? They can't take away my Go or my Chess. Yet.

I couldn't play chess without the internet.

 

[Senethro]

I would also love if people stopped buying cars altogether, but I am not very hopeful. Pretty sure it's simply going to get worse with every day in regards to Steam/video games in general. The silver lining is that the more people like us there are, the more companies like GOG are rewarded. The majority of people is incredibly complacent in their own downfall.

What is the downfall that is going to happen?