this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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In this thread: People that disagree and then turn around and play games they don't truly own on Steam
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My argument against this is that at least I own a license to the game rather than just a subscription. Steam still has and updates games that were made unpurchasable a decade ago. Hell, people still play rocket league on steam.
This is a separate argument altogether. Theres "own physically" and theres "own a license" to. If you own it physically and your physical media corrupts (which happens often to digital discs) did you own it any more than if you had it on steam? It's also illegal to make a copy of a console disc, btw.
What the article is talking about is not even obtaining a license for at all and games just being attached to a subscription
Yup. Physical media has its own disadvantages.
If I scratch a disc, or my house gets robbed, burns down, etc, it's gone forever and I need to buy a new game (or hundreds!) If I have a digital copy, I still have it.
I actually had to contend with this when my house was robbed and I lost all my DS, GBA, Dreamcast, and N64 games.
Plus, this idea that physical media doesn't have DRM is a complete falsehood. Discs and cartridges come with copy protection, region-locking, forced always-online DRM, etc. If that's not digital rights management, I don't know what is!
I pirate, and also pay for games I think the devs should make money on. I happen to like bioshock and la noire enough to pay for them on steam, with cracked copies to keep.
Why not buy from a DRM free platform or one where the devs make a bigger share of the profit?
It depends on the game. I also don't want to create many accounts all over the place. I don't think gog has bioshock?
It does.
You literally said in another comment that DRM-free storefronts are still DRM. Which is it?
Still better than the alternative which is 100% dependence on the platform you bought from. Even the backups you can create from Steam require Steam to unpack, if it stops existing or they stop supporting it then your backups are useless.
No they don't, not for the DRM-free games on steam. I can copy the files and run the executable, just as I can from GOG.