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originally posted in:Comet
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Edited by VIC:
2/7/2013 3:08:03 AM
13
Gamer-Rage (The DRM Edition)
[b]tl;dr at the bottom[/b]
Today was a fantastic day to internet. Aside from National Signing Day being today (this is sports related for those of you who are comfortable under your non-sports rock), the internet burned with a bright white-hot rage as rumors about Microsoft's upcoming console shook them to the core. My Facebook and Twitter feeds were full of rage-filled entertaining posts; the same goes for game-related message boards.
And who can blame them? I'm not a fan of "online only" play or DRMs...or any of that stuff, either but what bothers me most is that I see people threaten to abandon console gaming and "to/stick with Steam."
Regardless of your opinions on Steam (I think it's a great service) or your opinion on Console vs PC gaming [url=http://i.imgur.com/Ytl7W.jpg](inb4 PC Master Race)[/url], doesn't this threat seem a little asinine? As far as I understand it, Steam uses DRMs to prevent the sale of secondhand games and it ties any content purchased to the purchaser's account. As far as I understand the rumors that circulated today - and the ones surrounding Sony's next console, that we heard about a few weeks ago - this would mean that console games would adopt a similar approach. I've seen the argument that "MS/Sony wouldn't have sales the way that Steam does." That's possible but unless anyone here is a fortune teller, nobody knows for sure.
[I](And if you are a fortune teller, please PM me next week's winning lottery numbers!)[/I]
I'm not knocking Steam and I';m not knocking those who choose PC gaming over consoles. This is a legitimate question that I have: [b]what's the difference? [I]Why is this threat an actual thing?[/I][/b]
Oh yeah, someone mentioned on Twitter earlier that the rumor was busted. This is the first opportunity I've had to sit at a computer since I read about those rumors but this discussion still has merit whether or not the rumor was busted, as it's a discussion that we will likely have several times over in the future.
[quote]tl;dr ([url=http://www.doesoustillsuck.com]per Butane123's request[/url]): Why do people protest DRMs by threatening to switch to a service that also uses DRMs?[/quote]
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Steam does not allow you to sell your used copy of a game and you can't share a disc like you mention, other than that it has very few flaws. Computers are different then consoles, you're going to need two pieces of hardware to play at the same time anyway, which means two downloads of the software, it makes sense when you boil it down to "owning" the software. I can discuss more in depth the kind of tricks and cost savings you can do if you have only one computer but I don't think that adds anything to this conversaion. The important thing is you can play in offline mode any game you want, something that isn't allowed with many current DRM systems (lookin' at you EA), you can even log in as a friend download his games and then switch to offline mode to play as much as you want. The bottom line is that Steam's DRM is non-invasive and very rarely impacts the user experience. I haven't looked at the rumors mainly because, they're rumors, but any kind of extensive DRM that is causing this kind of stir is rarely rational. We'll see how Valve treats software ownership with the upcoming steambox, that will be interesting, GabeN is a smart guy caught between consumers and corporations.
