Is the Steam DRM just a one-time verification check? Or is it much more?

[bigdog5994]

a squid unit would be pretty sweet

 

[tom2050]

Also requiring internet to uninstall is ridiculous.

So you are saying requiring internet to install is ridiculous also?

--------------------

Defending Internet to Install... but not defending Internet to Uninstall is hypocritical.

 

[Senethro]

Are you sure?

 

[Chalks]

So you are saying requiring internet to install is ridiculous also?

--------------------

Defending Internet to Install... but not defending Internet to Uninstall is hypocritical.

No, requiring the internet for installation is the minimum requirement for activation DRM.

Requiring it for uninstall is a random inconvenience that you just made up. You may as well have said requiring pants on head to uninstall. You're just making up random things then saying "these are exactly the same therefore your argument is invalid".

That's not how it works.

It's amusing that you've forgotten to pretext this argument by making someone say that it was different before bringing it up yourself. What if we both said we were happy with this because it was exactly the same? What would your argument be then? You know that it's an unreasonable link to make, which is why you made it. You knew we would not agree because no sane person would.

Transparent as usual, tom.

 

[tom2050]

If you think there is a minor difference to a one time internet connection for years of uninterrupted offline play and constant connection requirements, then why are you even attempting to make this point?

There is no difference. You have internet to install, therefore you have it while you play. It's your fault if you don't have internet.

You are the one who has helped me to 'see the light', now I want more. Don't start being paranoid over a tiny little increase in security for Firaxis and 2K games. Unless you are a Firaxis/2K hater?

a squid unit would be pretty sweet

Actually, a squid would be a nice unit to have as an ocean dwelling monster to seek and destroy the poor saps not paying attention out there. Only thing is, I would refuse to make a purple one

 

[Senethro]

You're being silly. You know you're being silly. Why?

Just assume we've fallen for your trap and so you can make your point.

 

[tom2050]

No, requiring the internet for installation is the minimum requirement for activation DRM.

Requiring it for uninstall is a random inconvenience that you just made up.

Are you paranoid?! You think everyone is out to get you or something?

Internet required for the whole thing ensures that people do not mis-use the software. Internet-for-uninstall was just a valid example of how to do that. Internet while playing ensures that updates are handed out as soon as released, ensures that individuals have access all the time to the many benefits Steam has to offer, including chatting with friends, special free DLC packages that may be available, and getting front line protection of their software from the evil 2nd hand / pirate market that is growing.

-------------------

It is hypocritical to defend Forced-Internet to Install; and not defend Non-Intrusive required Internet to play the game

 

[Chalks]

There is no difference. You have internet to install, therefore you have it while you play. It's your fault if you don't have internet.

You put shoes on your feet. Why don't you put shoes on your hands? There is no difference!

I'm not sure what you're trying to prove. I assume you don't have a piece of duct tape on your screen that blocked out the part when I said you needed it for DRM, so you must just be ignoring that because you've not thought this far ahead.

Did you know it's against the rules to call someone a mindless troll? Yep. Great things, rules.

Moderator Action: calling someone a mindless troll is against the rules, so stop trolling

 

[tom2050]

Did you know it's against the rules to call someone a mindless troll? Yep. Great things, rules.

You are a person of only hatred. I want to petition to increase the great things of Steam, and now you still hate. Do you hate yourself? Why is so much hatred filled up inside of you, and you vent it on CFC making other members feel horrible. What happened that made you this way?

Internet to play is perfectly valid, it makes it ever-so-slightly more difficult for pirates to pirate the game, and that is important. You have made the argument yourself.

It is hypocritical to defend Invasive Forced-Internet to Install, but not defend non-invasive internet to play

Moderator Action: don;t flame other members

 

[Senethro]

Seriously, the CFC rules are a little eccentric.

Take this little number

Guy makes disgusting statement about muslims

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9212441&postcount=6

Who gets infracted?
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9212452&postcount=10
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9212530&postcount=23
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9212538&postcount=24

You're allowed to express evil or simply keep spamming your viewpoint without contributing to the thread or answering challenges but god help you if you call someone on it.

Tom, do you really want to keep on with this tangent which you yourself know is bunk or would you like to make your point?

 

[tom2050]

That post was about Radical Islamic Terrorists that have killed countless thousands worldwide from a huge number of nations because they misinterpret the "Book" and have waged war against any who disagree using any and all weapons including WMD's if they can obtain them against civilians (and any other target).

Majority of Muslims do not speak out against this. And it is disgusting to strap bombs on your child, send them out and detonate the kid, killing as many others as possible, so the Islamic Terrorist thinks he is doing "good" and therefore will get more whores in heaven.

It's not a viewpoint, it's pretty darn close to reality from observing world events. That is why he did not get infracted.

I don't have a problem with Muslims, but the radical ones have a problem with me for no reason (just because of my European background). They are full of hatred. If radical Christians were running around with bombs blowing up kids, I'm sure people would see them as they do the radical Islamic Terrorists (probably worse).

 

[Chalks]

You are a person of only hatred. I want to petition to increase the great things of Steam, and now you still hate. Do you hate yourself? Why is so much hatred filled up inside of you, and you vent it on CFC making other members feel horrible. What happened that made you this way?

Internet to play is perfectly valid, it makes it ever-so-slightly more difficult for pirates to pirate the game, and that is important. You have made the argument yourself.

It is hypocritical to defend Invasive Forced-Internet to Install, but not defend non-invasive internet to play

Yes, I am the embodiment of evil and hatred. You have finally uncovered my secret.

 

[bigdog5994]

omg now we're debating something Dom3000 said

seriously though guys Steam sucks

 

[Commander Bello]

You will get this thread closed very soon if you let yourselves flow away from the topic.

 

[tom2050]

Yes, I am the embodiment of evil and hatred. You have finally uncovered my secret.

But if you are a Demon, how can you love Steam? Evil does not know love.

Ahhh! That must be why even as I am being proactive in improving Steam with internet requirements, you still prefer to bash on my views. Thank You for your explanation. The "lost squid" unit for Senethro will be made in your honour also.

EDIT: Sorry all! My off-the-topic stops now!

 

[mjs0]

Sorry to have to put you into the same boat as the others, but you are answering questions which have not been asked.

(...) when I was told not to be on the air?

That, in my example, was the analogy to Steam's so-called "offline mode".

Bello looking at your info I suspect you are not a native English speaker.
I hate to nitpick given that fact but the sentence you highlight just doesn't scan right in English so I may have misunderstood its intent...
To me it looked like you were saying you had no control over what parts of what you said went on air and I was trying to point out that unless you took control of the situation by insisting on a contract then you actually do not have control and the TV company can show recordings that you had not intended to include.
I apologize if I misread your intended meaning...as I say the sentence didn't quite scan right although approximately 99.9% better than any German sentence I might attempt so please don't read any criticism in this.

Also, I am not sure what you mean by answering questions I have not been asked. I try to be clear in my communications and I apologize if I have again misinterpreted something. I do volunteer my opinions based on my personal experience in the software industry but that is purely in an attempt to add what I hope is interesting insight.

I know, now somebody wants to jump out of the bush and tell me that Steam has never excluded the option to establish internet connection while the software runs in the so-called "offline mode".

Yet, they are nowhere stating that they shall be allowed to do so, either.
Therefore, it is the common understanding of the term "offline mode" which is important to decide what Joe Average will expect the software to do.
To me the whole thing is near to unadvertised, unheralded, yet intentional behaviour and that is something, which in the context of possible - unannounced - changes of the privacy policy is not acceptable.

In our German forum we are discussing this topic as well and have been told, that allegedly this "seems" to be a bug within Steam. In case this would be true, anybody appreciating Steam should be glad that a heated debate finally will lead to the correction of such a bug.

Interesting as that might support the interpretation I gave above of the inadvertent interaction of layers of the Steam software. Still I would be hesitant to characterize it as a bug it is probably more a quirk caused by the way Steam participates in Windows Startup (i.e. the infrastructure waits for an available socket then sets internal status when the socket becomes available and is demonstrated functional). Things happen in the infrastructure layer of operating systems and applications that are not part of the intentional actions of the user facing parts of the software, I honestly do not see how that affects the genuine intent (and success) of the offline mode to work without an internet connection.
Another analogy might be when I put a vacation hold on my mail, in doing so I have told the post office I don't want to interact with them via my mailbox for a week, but even if the mail carrier is not given mail to deliver to me (because it is held) they may still check my mailbox for outgoing mail because that is what they are trained to do and they have never been told about the vacation hold.
I cannot guarantee the situation with Steam is the same but I consider it, based on my knowledge of how such applications are built, to be extremely likely.

But no, people who allegedly don't have any connection to Steam as company are whining about people pointing out such behaviour of the software.
Furthermore, they are repetitively avoiding a simple answer to the question, which I have stated a lot of times now: Does a user have the right to choose which software on his computer (especially one which is offering a so-called "offline mode") shall establish internet connections while technically being connected with the internet?

I agree but would add that there are people on both sides who have used hyperbole and been over-aggressive. A calm conversation that allows people to understand each other is so much better. I would prefer not to continue such a meta-conversation and focus on the subject rather than the participants. In that spirit...
I thought I had given my answer to this quite clearly. Was I unclear? Do you disagree with my answer? I would like to understand how and why.

Answers which were given on the whole topic of the so-called "offline mode" range from "misusing technical features" to "disallowing Steam to check for validity of accounts".

Actually, this is quite confusing. But they may have their reasons and don't want to tell us, which is fine for me. Honi soit qui mal y pense.

Again I would prefer not to speculate on the intentions of others whose motives are not under my control.
I do not consider myself a Steam proponent or opponent, I am very much neutral on the subject. I play SP and local LAN coop multiplayer with family, I have never played online MP and frankly have no interest in it so Steam has very little benefit to me, other than it is not SecuRom which I dislike for complex highly technical reasons. However as a person who has managed and been responsible for delivery of large software projects I understand the reasoning behind integrating third party offerings that reduce the size and complexity of deliverables. I also understand that sometimes in software innocuous things happen unintentionally that when viewed from outside the black box appear suspicious. I am in the innocent until proven guilty camp and at the moment I simply don't see anywhere near enough evidence to convict.

Incidentally I do not entirely concur with your supposedly common definition of offline. In my mind offline means you do not have an active internet connection. Steam have reused this term as some psuedo-offline definition where you may be online (in the network sense) but Steam will not use that connection for certain things. This reuse of a common word with yet another definition is confusing and leaves it open to interpretation. It seems to me that all sides of this debate are throwing the term around with different definitions in mind and then not recognizing the distinction and refusing to acknowledge there may be a middle ground between the definitions. I don't blame you for that because some of the answers given by Steam and 2K and especially some of the Steam defenders have been rather high-level and lacking in detail and glossed over the nuances but it is clear to me that there is some fuzziness over the precise meaning of the term. The Steam page on offline mode is decidedly unclear on this also...the key phrase being

Offline Mode allows you to play games through Steam without reconnecting to the Steam Network every time you wish to play - this is particularly useful if you do not plan on playing over the internet and would prefer not to download new updates for your single-player games

I do not read this as 'absolutely under no circumstances will the steam client generate network traffic when in offline mode'. It does precisely what it says it will, it allows you to play without overt connections and downloading of updates. You aluded to absolute interpretation of offline in your comment above when stating "Yet, they are nowhere stating that they shall be allowed to do so, either." This is pedantic to the extreme and I have a real problem with this viewpoint as it implies a simple FAQ should spell out in excruciating detail every aspect of what the software does and does not do. I can't imagine any software product committing itself to that level of description. You believe the function should do X, therefore you want it to explicitly say it will only do X and nothing else. There are probably dozens of things the client does (store values in the registry, accesses the hard drive etc) which are not spelled out either. No reasonable person would expect this level of detail.

Incidentally I think what you want (an option for the Steam client that means never ever attempt to connect under any circumstances unless I tell you to) is reasonable I just don't believe the offline mode they provide was ever specified to be that absolute and that the implementers of the offline function were honoring the settings that told them they were running without an internet connection and avoiding any overt attempts at communication which frankly is good enough for 95%+ of the games on Steam. I believe the demographic of the Civ community is somewhat unique and accounts for the higher profile these issues have here.

Even if Steam claimed some guaranteed totally network-silent offline mode I still believe that if your privacy is important to you it is your responsibility to learn how to actively block potential connections rather than trust their software to be bug and quirk free in that regard.
Phew...sorry for the brain dump.

 

[ori]

Steam does indeed not actually say they never connect - they do imply it in their description but its fuzzy enough to allow its behavior.
2KElizabeth on the other hand is on record for a behavior of the offline mode for the Civ5 connection that is very clear that it will not communicate with the servers - so you are right that Steam is fuzzy enough that the behavior could be reconciled with their description - 2kgames through their spokesperson on this site (until today the only one) tried to sell it in a way that cannot.
I posted quite a few times that I don't mind the software doing what it does - I mind the companies involved telling their customers either implying (steam) or outright stating (Take2) that offline mode won't ever communicate with the servers - while it in fact does. I expect a company to be forthright about the behavior of its product. Customers should be able to choose based on correct information. If someone wishes to avoid a game that calls home everytime it can but would accept a one-time activation - they should not be sold a game that calls home everytime it can with the promise of a one-time activation.

 

[mjs0]

Steam does indeed not actually say they never connect - they do imply it in their description but its fuzzy enough to allow its behavior.
2KElizabeth on the other hand is on record for a behavior of the offline mode for the Civ5 connection that is very clear that it will not communicate with the servers - so you are right that Steam is fuzzy enough that the behavior could be reconciled with their description - 2kgames through their spokesperson on this site (until today the only one) tried to sell it in a way that cannot.
I posted quite a few times that I don't mind the software doing what it does - I mind the companies involved telling their customers either implying (steam) or outright stating (Take2) that offline mode won't ever communicate with the servers - while it in fact does. I expect a company to be forthright about the behavior of its product. Customers should be able to choose based on correct information. If someone wishes to avoid a game that calls home everytime it can but would accept a one-time activation - they should not be sold a game that calls home everytime it can with the promise of a one-time activation.

It is easy for someone, in good faith, to state the specified design goal of a piece of functionality as fact when they do not know that at a lower level the software performs innocuous functions that could be interpreted as violating that design goal.

Innocent until proven guilty is a good motto and there has been no evidence that the statements from 2K are deliberately misleading, possibly misinformed by Valve but most likely the data exchange in question was never considered relevant to the question.

There is no reason to believe that the exchange of data is anything more than a simple "Hi it's me, are you available". This is quite common in software communications infrastructure to be prepared for when the user requests a connection.

In Windows Live Messenger for example even though I set it to 'Offline' it still goes out to the network and gathers a list of available contacts. I am invisible to them but I can instantly connect to them if I choose.

Edit: Once again, it may appear I am defending Steam at every turn...I am not...I am merely attempting to keep the conversation neutral without any hasty assumptions and encouraging people to calmly look at it from both sides.

 

[tom2050]

Innocent until proven guilty is a good motto and there has been no evidence that the statements from 2K are deliberately misleading, possibly misinformed by Valve but most likely the data exchange in question was never considered relevant to the question.

I don't think 2K is misinformed, they say they have direct lines of communication with Firaxis and Valve in 2K threads... and that they can discuss information at any time; and keep in contact often.

They even stated that what they say can be seen as Firaxis saying it themselves, since they are "one and the same".

This leaves out misinformed. Which brings up the possibility that Valve is deliberately misleading everyone. We all know that lawyers writing legal jargon do this intentionally to safeguard themselves while keeping all abilities to maximize their own freedoms intact, so consumers do not know the whole truth.

 

[Commander Bello]

Bello looking at your info I suspect you are not a native English speaker.

Unfortunately, this is true. I am trying hard to find the correct expressions and terms, but for sure sometimes I am just translating a German expression word by word which then may cause confusion.

(...) so please don't read any criticism in this.

I am absolutely fine with this. I am always trying to improve my English, which for sure has suffered since during the past years I have spoken English mainly with other non-native speakers from varioius countries.
Anyway, any meaningful criticism and correction is highly appreciated.

This is pedantic to the extreme and I have a real problem with this viewpoint as it implies a simple FAQ should spell out in excruciating detail every aspect of what the software does and does not do.

I agree to this. It was caused by others which have taken this section as "excuse" on behalf of Steam.

Even if Steam claimed some guaranteed totally network-silent offline mode I still believe that if your privacy is important to you it is your responsibility to learn how to actively block potential connections rather than trust their software to be bug and quirk free in that regard.

Well, in this regard I still cannot agree with you.
Most probably just because we have different technical understanding of network technologies and I will admit that in this area am very much the "Joe Average".

But "Joe Average" - about this I am pretty sure - does understand "offline" as "no connections will be established; even not just for checking what kind of service might be available".

And, as Ori has put it into words above, this is what is my concern with Steam as far as this special topic is concerned.
A company shall be clear in their statements - meaning that "Joe Average" has to have a chance to understand what they are talking about.
If this means that an additional paragraph has to be included in the EULA, privacy policy or whatever, then it has to be done.
Especially, when the customers on average are of an age of 20 or younger, as Steam states.

And one last thing: if Steam starts with Windows, yet has been set into the miraculous "offline mode", then all this accessing of sockets is not needed.
Yes, it looks like the Steam engine has a history of having been developed for online access. Therefore, it may be very difficult to drive around these things and - maybe, maybe not - not really worth the effort.

But again, then I would expect a paragraph somewhere which reads:
"Although due to technical restrictions the Steam software will access existing internet connections when started, no data will be transferred. Such access will be only an availibility check and is performed only once during the start sequence."

Phew...sorry for the brain dump.

No matter. As I said, it is highly appreciated.