Valve Is Making All Their Games Free To Debian Developers

[PyroDevil]

PyroDevil: They did make a promise to provide backups in case the service closes down. Rather informally though. It's not part of any TOS or user agreement. Surely it's not a substitute for backups or something you should rely on if you own an extensive collection of games which can disappear in an instance together with the service.

Thanks.

If skimmed through 2 different FAQ's and the subscriber agreement now and haven't found any mention of this. Link would be appreciated.

[Kivada]

I'd argue that transparent DRM is even worse than one obviously standing in your way. It's like a hidden camera being more sinister than one which you can actually always see. It's because you feel too comfortable with it. While you shouldn't.

It's so transparent that if you unplug the network cable it still lets you play your games and doesn't give a damn that it can't connect back to Valve's servers.

[Temar]

I thought it's obvious. Inability to backup your games installers / packages means that if your account is closed (or the service closes down) you'll lose an ability to install (and in turn play) any of your games. Now imagine that without thinking, you bought hundreds of them there... Money lost. Here goes your "unobtrusive" DRM.

The same is true for any online Service. Also, you actually can make a backup of DRM-free games on Steam. No money is lost, as long as you don't buy those games which do make use of the DRM feature.

[PyroDevil]

I thought XCOM didn't actually have UnrealScript source? And it doesn't seem like it supports mutators, interactions, gametypes or total conversions, either. That's extremely different from Unreal series games, where you can change anything conveniently.

And thats the reason it's was a pain. Working with a hex editor to change compiled UnrealScript. I thought you meant you where a fan of the Unreal Engine. Concerning the modding capabilities I am not.

[shmerl]

Here are some references: http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/commen...o_my_games_if/



It doesn't look like any obligation or formal agreement.

[shmerl]

The same is true for any online Service. Also, you actually can make a backup of DRM-free games on Steam. No money is lost, as long as you don't buy those games which do make use of the DRM feature.

No, it's not true for services which let you making backups. Steam doesn't provide you a supported way of doing it. It might work manually, it might not. And you have no (official) way of knowing anything about DRM in advance as well. It's not how things should be done if the service claims to offer DRM-free options.

[GreatEmerald]

And thats the reason it's was a pain. Working with a hex editor to change compiled UnrealScript. I thought you meant you where a fan of the Unreal Engine. Concerning the modding capabilities I am not.

Yea, like I said, modding actually moddable Unreal Engine games is very nice. (It's all moddable by default, but some developers turn moddability off for some reasons.) For example, this is the complete source tree for Unreal Tournament 2004: http://greatemerald.xmpcommunity.com...classtree.html (press a class and then the Source tab at the top to see it)

[zanny]

You like not being able to play your games when Steam's services go down?

Not trying to justify Steam DRM here, but I thought you could play your games in Steam offline mode after the games been verified once? In which case you only need a computer to handshake with Steam once after the install to satisfy their DRM.

[Luke]

Hardly-ALL my games are DRM-free.

Um, Valve is both the developer and the publisher. Valve is the company that made and maintains Steam. Therefore, Valve is the publisher of both their own games released through Steam, and the games others publishers/developers sell through Steam. They are very permissive with other developers on how those developers wish to sell their games on their platform. If a developer wishes to sell a game that is DRM-free, they may do so. If they want to sell their game with Steam DRM + Additional DRM (Ubisoft mainly), they are free to do so.

Honestly, DRM-free is nonsense as you lose all the wonderful benefits of Steamworks and revert back to an older, colder era of gaming -- minus the CD keys.

I only play DRM-free, non-paid games that can be installed like any other package native to some Linux distro. I'm glad to see Valve treating Debian devs they way they treat other devs, and happier yet to see them use their power to interfere with Microsoft's ambitions of a walled-garden Windows 9, but paid games and media will never be part of my life, given that my income level is not even enough to qualify for Obamacare's subsidies to buy private heath insurance.

The more we can tempt the paid media folks to an unpaid and free OS, the better our chances of later promoting games, videos, and music distributed under the same ideals. To do this we need people like Valve to act on their own discontent with Microsoft and begin migrating their users to a permanently open platform. Our free games won't take away their audience, just add to their total list of games and increase the userbase of true FOSS games like 0ad. That in turn helps those of us who only use free games by increasing the number of players, speeding up debugging, and maybe getting them some new devs to boot. Enough and online matches will become a more realistic option.

Here's my take on the whole issue of the artists and recompense: For every rich "star" musician paid millions and supporting the RIAA, there are a thousand garage players who are at least as good and could not get themselves heard before Bitorrent and streaming services. I was a heavy metal guitarist and singer 1991-1994, but my band went nowhere with Hollywood as a gateekeepeer. With today's tools I would have simply ignored them. If I decide to make a music video today of one of my circa 1991 songs, I could put it on Archive.org and have someone upload it to youtube (liveleak doesn't do music videos) but could never put it on MTV.

[shmerl]

It's so transparent that if you unplug the network cable it still lets you play your games and doesn't give a damn that it can't connect back to Valve's servers.

Why would you want to unplug it? You should be able to use the service without any hidden surveillance bugs in it. That was my point. "Unobtrusive" DRM has even less reasons to be trusted. Not that any DRM should be ever trusted for that matter.