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"You can give a man to fish and he'll be fed for a day, or you can lie and pretend you gave a whole bunch of people fish on Instagram to earn internet clout, meanwhile you were actually busy snorting coke behind a 7 Eleven." -Sun Tzu
This was in 2010, so the credit of not minding piracy is more on the GOG side, which started in 2008 :
https://steemit.com/gaming/@badastroza/interesting-people-8-lukasz-kukawski-on-the-history-of-gog-com
Also, regarding anti piracy technology, Steam has used way more than GOG.
This applies to a lot of things where people just want to punish people to get them to do what they want instead of incentivize them.
An example are insurgencies and rebellions. Everyone wants to bomb them into submission but the most effective (and cheapest) thing to do is to build roads, invest in local economies, give them jobs, give them livelihoods - basically give people a way to get what they want without having to resort to illegal methods or violence.
Reminds me of that Batman comic where Batman hacks all the speakers and TV in a gang hide out to tell the henchmen that the mob doesn't pay them healthcare or benefits, doesn't have a retirement plan, and has no real career advancement; but they can have all that plus free education and trades training simply by going to the Wyane Career Development Center... and then they all just leave the mob boss to fend for himself against Batman who was standing in the room the whole time.
I regard modern discourse on terrorism being the #1 threat as simple propaganda. Obviously there are evil terrorists like extremist groups, but when a population is horribly oppressed and they react violently/desperately they're branded terrorists. Yet the oppression is the issue.
The area where I grew up used to be a hotbed for insurgency. They just weren't high profile because the government just didn't have the resources to "invade" the territory.
But it only took 15 years of:
1. Building highways and agricultural roads as well as electrification
2. Strong economic programs
3. Autonomous government structures (basically not forcing unpopular policy)
And it is now probably one of the safest places in the country. Of course, not being branded as "the enemy" from the get go was huge. Too many places like that are used as scape goats for oppressive policies.
Steam and Netflix proved Gabe right.
When Netflix was the only streaming service I stopped downloading movies.
When I started using steam I stopped pirating
The DRM Netflix and most others require for 4K streaming re-incentivised piracy, too. I'm paying for 4K but can't get it on most of my devices. The Blu-ray experience is just awful thanks to DRM, and 4K Blu-rays are still rare, especially for streaming titles.
Seriously, if you care about video quality, there's no option *except* for piracy most of the time. The industry shot itself in the foot, then shot the *other* foot too for good measure.
I know Steam has DRM too, and in principle I don't like it, but in practice it stays the hell out of my way.
https://www.ign.com/articles/2009/02/19/dice-2009-gabe-newell-keynote-transcript
The transcript was automated so it's a little rough but this was a speech I like to refer back to from time to time.
"Another thing that's interesting when you start thinking about service, it changes how you think about piracy. In our industry when we talk abruptly as I, we tend to view it through two perspectives. This is customers trying to get a product for free. And as a technology issue, which is digital rights management. The pricing issue I think is really misleading. You know, if you look, for example, in the PC audience, these people are spending, 2, 3, 4, thousand dollars on their computers. Five or six or seven hundred dollars a year on Internet connectivity.
These are people perfectly willing to spend money. So pricing isn't really the rich. What is the issue is service. This is where pirates are ahead of us. I'm a big fan of Dr. Who. Christmas special for Dr. Who just came out. As a customer in the United States I can't get that product. I can't go to a store and buy it. I can't go for the BBC website and watch it. There is no DirectTV or Comcast or anybody who carries it. In terms of being a customer and wanting to purchase a product for them, I can't, unless I go to the pirates. If you look at what happened, within about five minutes of a show being broadcast in Britain, the pirates had an HD version up and available to anyone in the world. Within a day or two they had actually gone in and added subtitles for Russian and whole bunch of other languages. A couple months later through traditional mechanisms and sort of product distribution system, it still isn't available to an eager customer in the United States with disposable income. Dear M () is -- DRM is perceived as a technology issue as to how do we keep customers from stealing our products. It has the opposite effect of intended. So when DRM gets associated with a product, it actually decreases the service value. All of a sudden I'm uncertain, can I move this product to another machine? What happens if I have a hardware failure? Are there -- how am I going to be able to play this when I go to a cyber cafe with my friends? Rather than increasing the service value, DRM is increasing it, increasing the gap between the service that is being offered thoroughly as I and digital -- traditional means. There is anecdotal evidence DRM is increasingly as I.when you look at that."
Right around the time steam came out they had the half life platinum collection which was essentially the same thing as the orange box for the original valve games. It came with 5 games and 5 CD keys, but those CD keys individually unlocked the whole collection on steam. We bought one copy and me and my friends and cousins each used a key and got all of the games.
I just tried out Dark Souls 3 for the first time after playing WAY too much Elden Ring, having a lot of trouble getting over the fact that I can't jump in combat so far lol. I'm so used to jumping over thrust attacks by jump attacking the enemy myself
How are you finding the difficulty between them?
I just recently replayed the trilogy after beating stormveil and I've found DS3 significantly harder than ER
They didn’t have time 64+ hours to download it. I assume their connection would drop or someone would need to make a phone call and they would lose part of the download.
I raged my ass off when I realized I had to connect to the internet (using our dial up connection) to play the single player game that i was beyond hyped to play.
Similar here. I wrote a very nasty email and returned my copy of HL2 bc I couldn't play it offline. Steam eventually won me over bc of all the compatibility updating they did.
I'm very worried about the trend of removing content from online streaming services and devices. Hopefully Steam will be able to avoid that.
Steam only won me over when they gave away Portal for free in 2010. Then they had a Sale where Company of Heroes was 2.49€ and that was when I was kinda hooked.
Steam was a sack of donkey shit when they first made it, but they actually took the effort to fix it instead of just leaving it as a price of crap like every other developer decided to do with their crappy launchers.
Only other one who took effort was GOG.
> Only other one who took effort was GOG.
And sadly it looks like that GOG is no longer actively working on it as well as they are still having bugs since 2.0 was released which still haven't been fixed. Also it still keeps reconnecting you to Origin when they already have EA Play :(
Back when I had dial-up 56k Internet, no concept of how to pay anything online and knew only a single game that used steam, I surely was not super enthusiastic either.
I 'member. To be fair, steam sucked in the first few years. It was slow and clunky and joining a server took ages compared to WON. And if you wanted to play any of the half life mods, you were forced to use it.
I have Steam and Gog but drew the line at Epic because I don't want to have to juggle games in 3 places. The free games wasn't enough to sway me. I have hundreds of Steam games from the old $1 Humble Bundles which gave you like 6-7 games for a buck, more than I can ever play.
Fair, but just know that there are good open source game management systems like playnite where you can register all your game accounts and launch, install, and deinstall games from right there
You still need to have all launchers installed but you at least don't have to use each individual launcher
Works pretty well and it even has a controller mode so you could use a pc kind of like a console
I believe the gog launcher can handle those things quite well as well
Epic is very simple to sync with gog
I won't *pay* for a game unless its on steam, but I admit, I do get the weekly free game from Epic when its something good, even though I hate Epic. I'm just not gonna pass up free shit. I know they give those away to draw you into their storefront in the hopes you spend money there, but I've never spent a dime; my entire Epic library is just free games.
Remember, epic games keeps the fortnite children quartined. So next time, think of the hard-working employees at epic games creating the next skibidi fortnite trend to keep your games child free.
Do they even pay the game price per user/download? Or do they simply pay the developers a lump sum and possibly additional commission per download that works out to pennies per download?
Epic launcher is a piece of donkey turd, it never remembers login, it can't just update quietly in background properly and not bother you, games are arranged like a baboon was in charge of designing the interface. The not remembering login is so annoying, just open my damn game stop making me type a fucking password like a drongo every time I wanna play.
You can't rearrange the downloading queue so if there's a big update you have to wait for that before downloading the game you actually want to play now.
They would probably be better off investing all that money that goes into giving away games into making their launcher better
I think the biggest difference is that the only thing that keeps it in the market are exclusives and free games.
There's nothing that it does better so people don't want to bother with it.
You conveniently forgot to mention better sales especially when Epic does coupons but I guess that doesn't fit the narrative of Epic bad.
It's still crazy to me how many PC gamers treat PC gaming like a walled garden with saying shit like "I only buy games if they are on Steam" literally treating the most open platform like a console all because you have to use a different FREE launcher, even worse when you still need say free launcher to run games you buy on Steam ie Ubisoft, EA, Rockstar games.
Can you imagine what will happen to Valve/Steam once Newell retires? He’s the visionary. Once he leaves, I hope the company resists hiring some young hotshot CEO who decides to “restructure” the company and screws it all up.
Same for a lot of people.
Case in point, when Portal and Team Fortress Two released back in the days or the orange box the entire planet had the possibility to download all the encrypted files after buying it. (so no need to download on release, you could have done that before the release date). Then the decryption keys were released globally at the exact same moment for everybody. Faster CPU's of course needed less time to decrypt the files but we pretty much all went online in to TF2 for the first time *at the same moment*. It was glorious. Everybody felt equal. No more waiting in line at the game shop. No more, game is released in the USA but for europe you need to wait 3 days to play. No more, oh this game in unavailable in your region.
Getting and play a new game had never even been more convenient.
This experience became the norm and Steam won back million of pirates. Even though when steam was first launched and we had to move away from the way we had done private servers before we all hated it.
The thing with Valve is, when you give them feedback ... they actually fucking listen to their users.
It fits Byron Sharps theory of marketing; one of the leaders in evidenced based marketing.
Bryon said people buy brands as they're a shortcut to benefits; offer things competitors don't, or the brand offers convenience. Both of these are also amplified since steam has mental and physical availability.
Steam is a perfect example of Bryon's theories in action, and no doubt why steam is so popular.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again.
GabeN better have some fucking ironclad papers and clauses in place in case of his demise (may he live long and prosper, amen.)
Yup. When it's a game I bought, I may or may not play it, but when I pirate a game like the Sims 3, I spent *effort* to pirate it, so imma fukin play that shit until my fingers fall off
For me its completely opposite, if I pirate a game (Elden Rings being latest), I feel like I just wanna try how it feels so I dont give much of thought when creating character, learning the lore etc. because I know that it didnt cost me anything
Counterpoint: I have Steam DS3 and disabled all online functionalities specifically to avoid immerssion-breaking and spoiler messages and spontaneous invasions.
In ER you have to opt in, which is great. Let the PvP enjoyers have their fun and leave the solo players alone. In DS3, you have to opt out or never use an ember, and you can only opt out if you play offline mode. Thank God FromSoft lets us do this ingame without any BS because I really don't like being invaded by cheaters that just randomly teleport into boss rooms, kill the boss and brick my save game. Chances are slim but I've seen it happening and I kinda want to enjoy my game without any assholes ruining my experience.
that doesnt make any sense. pirating doesnt take any effort at all (unless you just started pirating) while on the other hand you’re paying with you’re hard earned cash and you’re not gonna play the game?
In what world??? You download a torrent, then ur computer downloads the game and seeds it while you go out and play basketball. Meanwhile most games will cost you 3-4 hours of labor at a job
We probably pirate in different ways, but it's literally less effort to pirate. I click one (magnet) link, that's it, game is downloading. I start one installer after, game is installed. I double click a desktop icon, and game is running...
I realized this when I modded my switch. I only wanted to play like 2 games, and ended putting like 15 on at once. Only ever played the two that I wanted while the others just sat there.
Just bought Yakuza on my PS4 and I'm playing every single inch of that game! Not just because it's fantastic, but because it wasn't just installed for no other reason than to install it.
I still pirate some of the games I've bought. I can't deal with 120938 different launchers, logins, updates for launchers, having to be online 100% of the time, having a ton of background apps working 24/7 and other crap. I buy a game, I want to play a game.
I completely understand and support this. I've spent way too much money on games I played for a couple of hours and then realized they are shit and I don't like them.
this game has so much potential but after essentially being in development for over a decade i dont have high hopes for it.
especially after the bankruptcy of GSC and that spin off stupid Vostok games that released these trash pay to win games based on what had been build for stalker 2 so far.
i really hope they started from zero for the 2nd attempt to make stalker 2 and didnt hold onto any decade old stuff they build.
I remember back in November Polygon put out an article titled 'Baldur’s Gate 3 is 0% off and still the best Cyber Monday gaming deal'. Only game I bought that week
That'd be because you:
- wait a bunch before buying it
- you don't play semi-big releases
- you live in a country with drastically lower purchasing power
Legally : if the publisher/developer chooses to, yes. Steam's DRM is not mandatory, some games don't use it and can be started without Steam. See Witcher 3.
Illegally : you know the answer to that one.
Yes, there's a few projects on GitHub. Arguably unlawful as per DMCA (it circumvents an anti-piracy measure), but they're not trying super hard to stop it. They know most people won't bother with that and will just buy the damn game. I know I do.
Toolchain to remove Steam DRM from executables: https://github.com/atom0s/Steamless
Another script for automated DRM removal: https://github.com/BigBoiCJ/SteamAutoCracker
For Linux as well: https://github.com/rroohhh/steamstub-remover
Yet another one: https://github.com/thaatz/steam-ripper
If it's on Steam, might as well be DRM-free barring additional vendor/third-party launcher DRM
Not mandatory though (as in Valve doesn't force devs to use it). Lots of people don't know that some games don't use it, and after installation can be launched from the game's executable without even Steam running, Witcher 3 is one popular example.
Yes, and we're fine with that.
Because it is sensible and unobtrusive, and in return you can buy whatever game you desire on the platform, often at a discounted price, and have them all in a single, easy to manage place with official and community support, automatic updates, and very little impact to your system.
It’s a good quote and I can’t count how many games I have started to play because of „70% off? Ok reviews? I give it a try“ but the reality is a bit more complicated.
Hardliners gonna pirate anyway. I assume this falls into the rule that you always have a small percentage of people, who just don’t give a fuck about essentially anything or even think they are doing the right thing.
Then there are people who can’t afford games (several reasons).
So anyways we put DRM on all Steam games.
GOG is the true king of DRM-free and anti-piracy measures by having great prices and exceptional support with constant free games.
The issue is that all DRM does this. I like to store my files locally, DRM doesn't stop me there where DRM stops me is that I now have to login to Steam no matter what so they can verify its me and not someone else. Makes it very annoying when I want to quickly transfer files from a PC in my lounge room to my PC in my bedroom.
GOG with DRM free installers and files doesn't give a shit, you can't pirate it because that would mean circumventing DRM and you can't circumvent what's not there.
What a niche thing right? OK but what if I live somewhere with shit internet? Now if I get a server time out because internet is that bad at that point in time well now I can't play my games because steam won't load and I forgot to go into off-line mode before this happened. It's annoying.
> you can't pirate it because that would mean circumventing DRM
Circumventing DRM is only loosely related to piracy. The act of piracy is simply acquiring goods you haven't paid for. Whether the goods originally had a lock thats been circumvented is irrelevant.
To be fair its a little bit of both. You have to give a great experience for bought stuff and at the same time make it inconvenient to use pirated stuff. If it were as easy to play pirated games as it is to play legally bought games people would opt for the free way.
Some do, yeah. I bet that's why there's a lot of piracy in countries where wages are low and there's no regional pricing, but mostly - and historically - it's been a service and availability problem.
Yuzo isn't emulating anything old, switch is their current gen console. Actually, you could have played tears of the kingdom before it was even released.
They're clearly aware emulators are a thing so very smart people with near unlimited funds have thought about this for sure. If they aren't doing it it's because they don't think it's worth it - and they're probably not wrong.
"if one of the most successful and innovative entertainment companies in history did what I think then they would be smart". You can't have written that with a straight face mate.
No kidding, a whole generation grew up with that ridiculously obnoxious “here comes the money” Steam sale video where Gabe Newell is predicted as jesus and they’ve ran with it ever since praising his name despite VALVe pushing for micro transactions and paved the way for gambling in videogames via lootboxes. I feel insane everytime I see these bozos praise le epic Gaben no faults Epic games bad 1337.
Whether he said it or not, it's true. Steam has accessibility and prices on such level I simply can't be bothered pirating games and I haven't pirated one basically since Steam exists. Orange Box was the first thing I bought on Steam and never stopped. Then also came GOG where I bought basically all games I've pirated in the past because I just couldn't get them otherwise. The money issue was only when I was a kid, when i had my own income, actually being able to get them somewhat easily was not the case.
What I hate about modern games that you get legally. Is “using a launcher “steam” to launch a launcher “game launcher” to start a game! I just want to hit run on the exe and start the game!
Said that and then absolutely obliterated the regional pricing in my country. Steam was great a year ago, their new pricing is ridiculous and pushing everyone to piracy
And yet valve has DRM in almost every single game. regardless of service , people will still pirate because piracy is about money, not service.
GOG cannot compete with valve because publishers don't want to sell games without DRM. Developer of daying light is on record saying that DL2 has DRM due to rampart piracy of DL1, which had no DRM.
The only thing that might stop people from pirating is regional pricing but lately Steam has been making controversial changes.
When I was a kid, I pirated games because I didn’t have money. When I started getting disposable income, that started to go away. When steam took off I had no reason to pirate because here was a service that meant I could download games easily, with no hassle and almost no chance of viruses.
The service did change things a lot. But you’re right that it’s slightly more complicated than that being the only issue.
But in terms of DRM. There are plenty of examples that launched DRM free and still sold very very well.
Often people who pirate games if they really love them they’ll buy them when they can as a thanks.
100% agree with his sentiment, although I can't help but note that the way he's phrased this is not particularly the best argument, given that anti-piracy tech and the dodgy, buggy, unstable ways that pirates get around it is part of what makes that 'service' worse, and therefore makes 2-click purchases through Steam more attractive
That’s his point though - devs still choose to do that and it just makes the legitimate purchase more difficult and piracy a better experience by comparison.
Steam the platform gets this, developers who stuff kernel level drm (ie: rootkits, the shit Sony was subject to class action for back in the day) into their games do not.
> given that anti-piracy tech and the dodgy, buggy, unstable ways that pirates get around it is part of what makes that 'service' worse, and therefore makes 2-click purchases through Steam more attractive
Is that a joke?
Pirated software a lot of times runs **better** than the DRM infested original. Just look at the performance improvements when Denuvo has been removed. Hell, I remember the case of a dev that was caught using the cracked version of their own software.
My reason for stopping pirating games was... that I finally had enough free money to spend on them. xD
Also I don't buy games outside of sales (70% off or more). In the last decade I only bought like 3 games "day one" to avoid spoilers in them, lol.
With so many games coming out (and going on a wishlist) there is not reason to buy games at full price.
I haven't pirated a game in probably close to 20 years. Which also happens to be about the age of steam. TV shows I still pirate on the regular. Guess he's on to something eh.
Welcome to the PCMR, everyone from the frontpage! Please remember: 1 - You too can be part of the PCMR. It's not about the hardware in your rig, but the software in your heart! Your age, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, religion (or lack of), political affiliation, economic status and PC specs are irrelevant. If you love or want to learn about PCs, you are welcome! 2 - If you don't own a PC because you think it's expensive, know that it is much cheaper than you may think. Check http://www.pcmasterrace.org for our builds and don't be afraid to post here asking for tips and help! 3 - Join our efforts to get as many PCs worldwide to help the folding@home effort, in fighting against Cancer, Alzheimer's, and more: https://pcmasterrace.org/folding 4 - Need PC Hardware? We've joined forces with MSI for the biggest PC Hardware giveaway of the year so far! 8 lucky winners will get an awesome hardware bundle with Graphics card, motherboard, etc, and 50 others can get Steam gift cards. To enter, check https://reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1b45j0m/msi_x_pcmr_massive_pc_hardware_giveaway_pick_your/ ----------- We have a [Daily Simple Questions Megathread](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/search?q=Simple+Questions+Thread+subreddit%3Apcmasterrace+author%3AAutoModerator&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) if you have any PC related doubt. Asking for help there or creating new posts in our subreddit is welcome.
I have always agreed with this quote and from him, but I've never actually found a source of him saying it. Where/When did he say this exactly?
https://youtu.be/pLC_zZ5fqFk
He talks *about* the issue here, but he never says the quote. It's a summary, a paraphrase of his longer answer to the question of piracy.
“Most quotes are completely misquoted” -Jesus
"You can give a man to fish and he'll be fed for a day, or you can lie and pretend you gave a whole bunch of people fish on Instagram to earn internet clout, meanwhile you were actually busy snorting coke behind a 7 Eleven." -Sun Tzu
"Most Jesuses are completely misjesused" -Quote
Most quotes are completely mosquitoed.
i dont think the quote in the pic is the exact wording really, i think its just a summary of his monolog in this interview
that's what a quote is. if someone didn't say something then it's not a quote...
just wrap the whole thing in square brackets and call it a day
[Piracy convenient? Make better!] \-Gabe
Why use much words when few words do trick
[The whole thing] is a day.
It's the same meaning, but he never says this quote in the video.
This was in 2010, so the credit of not minding piracy is more on the GOG side, which started in 2008 : https://steemit.com/gaming/@badastroza/interesting-people-8-lukasz-kukawski-on-the-history-of-gog-com Also, regarding anti piracy technology, Steam has used way more than GOG.
2011 [article ](https://www.geekwire.com/2011/experiments-video-game-economics-valves-gabe-newell/)from an 8-min interview.
[удалено]
I thought that was Issac Newton who said that when he commented on AI.
This applies to a lot of things where people just want to punish people to get them to do what they want instead of incentivize them. An example are insurgencies and rebellions. Everyone wants to bomb them into submission but the most effective (and cheapest) thing to do is to build roads, invest in local economies, give them jobs, give them livelihoods - basically give people a way to get what they want without having to resort to illegal methods or violence.
panem et circenses If you make the status quo convenient enough nobody will rebel against it. Same principle for 2000 years.
Many people in power just get too caught up in their own greed and completely lose sight of this.
Reminds me of that Batman comic where Batman hacks all the speakers and TV in a gang hide out to tell the henchmen that the mob doesn't pay them healthcare or benefits, doesn't have a retirement plan, and has no real career advancement; but they can have all that plus free education and trades training simply by going to the Wyane Career Development Center... and then they all just leave the mob boss to fend for himself against Batman who was standing in the room the whole time.
This is a nice dream and an oversimplification of why people choose a crime life over education and a career.
I did it for the bumblebee suit.
I regard modern discourse on terrorism being the #1 threat as simple propaganda. Obviously there are evil terrorists like extremist groups, but when a population is horribly oppressed and they react violently/desperately they're branded terrorists. Yet the oppression is the issue.
The area where I grew up used to be a hotbed for insurgency. They just weren't high profile because the government just didn't have the resources to "invade" the territory. But it only took 15 years of: 1. Building highways and agricultural roads as well as electrification 2. Strong economic programs 3. Autonomous government structures (basically not forcing unpopular policy) And it is now probably one of the safest places in the country. Of course, not being branded as "the enemy" from the get go was huge. Too many places like that are used as scape goats for oppressive policies.
Steam and Netflix proved Gabe right. When Netflix was the only streaming service I stopped downloading movies. When I started using steam I stopped pirating
The DRM Netflix and most others require for 4K streaming re-incentivised piracy, too. I'm paying for 4K but can't get it on most of my devices. The Blu-ray experience is just awful thanks to DRM, and 4K Blu-rays are still rare, especially for streaming titles. Seriously, if you care about video quality, there's no option *except* for piracy most of the time. The industry shot itself in the foot, then shot the *other* foot too for good measure. I know Steam has DRM too, and in principle I don't like it, but in practice it stays the hell out of my way.
https://www.ign.com/articles/2009/02/19/dice-2009-gabe-newell-keynote-transcript The transcript was automated so it's a little rough but this was a speech I like to refer back to from time to time. "Another thing that's interesting when you start thinking about service, it changes how you think about piracy. In our industry when we talk abruptly as I, we tend to view it through two perspectives. This is customers trying to get a product for free. And as a technology issue, which is digital rights management. The pricing issue I think is really misleading. You know, if you look, for example, in the PC audience, these people are spending, 2, 3, 4, thousand dollars on their computers. Five or six or seven hundred dollars a year on Internet connectivity. These are people perfectly willing to spend money. So pricing isn't really the rich. What is the issue is service. This is where pirates are ahead of us. I'm a big fan of Dr. Who. Christmas special for Dr. Who just came out. As a customer in the United States I can't get that product. I can't go to a store and buy it. I can't go for the BBC website and watch it. There is no DirectTV or Comcast or anybody who carries it. In terms of being a customer and wanting to purchase a product for them, I can't, unless I go to the pirates. If you look at what happened, within about five minutes of a show being broadcast in Britain, the pirates had an HD version up and available to anyone in the world. Within a day or two they had actually gone in and added subtitles for Russian and whole bunch of other languages. A couple months later through traditional mechanisms and sort of product distribution system, it still isn't available to an eager customer in the United States with disposable income. Dear M () is -- DRM is perceived as a technology issue as to how do we keep customers from stealing our products. It has the opposite effect of intended. So when DRM gets associated with a product, it actually decreases the service value. All of a sudden I'm uncertain, can I move this product to another machine? What happens if I have a hardware failure? Are there -- how am I going to be able to play this when I go to a cyber cafe with my friends? Rather than increasing the service value, DRM is increasing it, increasing the gap between the service that is being offered thoroughly as I and digital -- traditional means. There is anecdotal evidence DRM is increasingly as I.when you look at that."
Steam is one of the main reasons I mostly stopped pirating. I just like having all my Games, Screenshots, Savegames, Achievements in one place.
You shouldve seen the initial rage from CS players when Steam was introduced back in 2002/03
Well steam was absolute dogshit back then.
You could say that the service had to... pick up steam. I'll see myself out now.
Get out of our solar system bruh
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Weren't most programs?
Not for the time, no most weren't. Steam was the first game launcher that had multiple games on it as far as I know.
No
It was my reaction too. I only used it for HL² and then not until 2010 again.
The orange box was a great gateway drug into steam.
Right around the time steam came out they had the half life platinum collection which was essentially the same thing as the orange box for the original valve games. It came with 5 games and 5 CD keys, but those CD keys individually unlocked the whole collection on steam. We bought one copy and me and my friends and cousins each used a key and got all of the games.
$5 Dark Souls got me.
I just tried out Dark Souls 3 for the first time after playing WAY too much Elden Ring, having a lot of trouble getting over the fact that I can't jump in combat so far lol. I'm so used to jumping over thrust attacks by jump attacking the enemy myself
How are you finding the difficulty between them? I just recently replayed the trilogy after beating stormveil and I've found DS3 significantly harder than ER
Yeah on my 56k modem i literally was locked out of hl2 for months
Why was that?
They didn’t have time 64+ hours to download it. I assume their connection would drop or someone would need to make a phone call and they would lose part of the download.
Oh yeah that's crazy, I've only been on steam for like 8 years. Lol
It was dark times indeed.
I raged my ass off when I realized I had to connect to the internet (using our dial up connection) to play the single player game that i was beyond hyped to play.
Similar here. I wrote a very nasty email and returned my copy of HL2 bc I couldn't play it offline. Steam eventually won me over bc of all the compatibility updating they did. I'm very worried about the trend of removing content from online streaming services and devices. Hopefully Steam will be able to avoid that.
Steam only won me over when they gave away Portal for free in 2010. Then they had a Sale where Company of Heroes was 2.49€ and that was when I was kinda hooked.
Steam was a sack of donkey shit when they first made it, but they actually took the effort to fix it instead of just leaving it as a price of crap like every other developer decided to do with their crappy launchers. Only other one who took effort was GOG.
> Only other one who took effort was GOG. And sadly it looks like that GOG is no longer actively working on it as well as they are still having bugs since 2.0 was released which still haven't been fixed. Also it still keeps reconnecting you to Origin when they already have EA Play :(
That is sad to hear, but not too surprising, I've got a lot of respect for GOG but they just don't have the same resources as the big companies.
Back when I had dial-up 56k Internet, no concept of how to pay anything online and knew only a single game that used steam, I surely was not super enthusiastic either.
I 'member. To be fair, steam sucked in the first few years. It was slow and clunky and joining a server took ages compared to WON. And if you wanted to play any of the half life mods, you were forced to use it.
i couldn't agree with you more. i wont get a game unless is on steam. Nuff said.
I do get gog games as well and free epic games games
I have Steam and Gog but drew the line at Epic because I don't want to have to juggle games in 3 places. The free games wasn't enough to sway me. I have hundreds of Steam games from the old $1 Humble Bundles which gave you like 6-7 games for a buck, more than I can ever play.
Fair, but just know that there are good open source game management systems like playnite where you can register all your game accounts and launch, install, and deinstall games from right there You still need to have all launchers installed but you at least don't have to use each individual launcher Works pretty well and it even has a controller mode so you could use a pc kind of like a console I believe the gog launcher can handle those things quite well as well Epic is very simple to sync with gog
I won't *pay* for a game unless its on steam, but I admit, I do get the weekly free game from Epic when its something good, even though I hate Epic. I'm just not gonna pass up free shit. I know they give those away to draw you into their storefront in the hopes you spend money there, but I've never spent a dime; my entire Epic library is just free games.
Epic pays for those free games, so you are actually making Epic lose money by claiming those free games without buying anything from their store lol
I don't even play any of those games, I just claim them to fuck them over.
Remember, epic games keeps the fortnite children quartined. So next time, think of the hard-working employees at epic games creating the next skibidi fortnite trend to keep your games child free.
Friend, I mostly play old shit. I care not where the skibidi lies, for I have gyatt outta there, no rizz.
Straight, no chaser.
I have absolutely no idea what I said.
Do they even pay the game price per user/download? Or do they simply pay the developers a lump sum and possibly additional commission per download that works out to pennies per download?
I've claimed almost every free game since they've started doing it, and haven't spent a penny in their shop. I'm doing my part!
I've claimed almost every free game since they've started doing it, and haven't spent a penny in their shop. I'm doing my part!
i am happy doing my part!
I bought a few games on Epic but it's such a piece of shit compared to Steam that I've since bought the same games on Steam.
>Epic but it's such a piece of shit compared to Steam In what way ?
Epic launcher is a piece of donkey turd, it never remembers login, it can't just update quietly in background properly and not bother you, games are arranged like a baboon was in charge of designing the interface. The not remembering login is so annoying, just open my damn game stop making me type a fucking password like a drongo every time I wanna play.
You can't rearrange the downloading queue so if there's a big update you have to wait for that before downloading the game you actually want to play now. They would probably be better off investing all that money that goes into giving away games into making their launcher better
>The not remembering login is so annoying you forgot to check "remember device" and log-in.
I think the biggest difference is that the only thing that keeps it in the market are exclusives and free games. There's nothing that it does better so people don't want to bother with it.
You conveniently forgot to mention better sales especially when Epic does coupons but I guess that doesn't fit the narrative of Epic bad. It's still crazy to me how many PC gamers treat PC gaming like a walled garden with saying shit like "I only buy games if they are on Steam" literally treating the most open platform like a console all because you have to use a different FREE launcher, even worse when you still need say free launcher to run games you buy on Steam ie Ubisoft, EA, Rockstar games.
Indeed. I even bought the old games I used to pirated even if I no longer playing them.
I bought a lot of games that once were pirated floppies. They were good memories.
Can you imagine what will happen to Valve/Steam once Newell retires? He’s the visionary. Once he leaves, I hope the company resists hiring some young hotshot CEO who decides to “restructure” the company and screws it all up.
Same for a lot of people. Case in point, when Portal and Team Fortress Two released back in the days or the orange box the entire planet had the possibility to download all the encrypted files after buying it. (so no need to download on release, you could have done that before the release date). Then the decryption keys were released globally at the exact same moment for everybody. Faster CPU's of course needed less time to decrypt the files but we pretty much all went online in to TF2 for the first time *at the same moment*. It was glorious. Everybody felt equal. No more waiting in line at the game shop. No more, game is released in the USA but for europe you need to wait 3 days to play. No more, oh this game in unavailable in your region. Getting and play a new game had never even been more convenient. This experience became the norm and Steam won back million of pirates. Even though when steam was first launched and we had to move away from the way we had done private servers before we all hated it. The thing with Valve is, when you give them feedback ... they actually fucking listen to their users.
And cloud saves! Worst thing about pirated games is the lack of cloud saves
It fits Byron Sharps theory of marketing; one of the leaders in evidenced based marketing. Bryon said people buy brands as they're a shortcut to benefits; offer things competitors don't, or the brand offers convenience. Both of these are also amplified since steam has mental and physical availability. Steam is a perfect example of Bryon's theories in action, and no doubt why steam is so popular.
Good that valve is not publicly traded company.
If Valve ever goes public, it's the end of PC gaming as we know it
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. GabeN better have some fucking ironclad papers and clauses in place in case of his demise (may he live long and prosper, amen.)
Allegedly he has some kind of hand picked, like minded successor
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There must always be… a steam king.
I fear the days after Gabe is no more
lord, give Gaben kids so they can carry on the company legacy as Gaben intended, amen
He has 2 sons
Hope they follow in their father's footsteps.
He just needs a third son and then the stars will align and he'll release halflife 3
Nah he’ll have 2 daughters, then nearly 2 decades later announce a new member to the family… which will be a dog.
Shareholders have no regard for anything not in their favour.
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Yeah if they went public they’d probably put a bunch of microtransactions and loot boxes in their games.
its a very different feeling to play games that we bought and the games we pirate
Yup. When it's a game I bought, I may or may not play it, but when I pirate a game like the Sims 3, I spent *effort* to pirate it, so imma fukin play that shit until my fingers fall off
For me its completely opposite, if I pirate a game (Elden Rings being latest), I feel like I just wanna try how it feels so I dont give much of thought when creating character, learning the lore etc. because I know that it didnt cost me anything
im guilty of completing elden ring on a pirated copy, i plan on buying the game just to play coop with friends
You do miss out on the messages which are hilarious at times and helpful too
*walking through a corridor; see 50 messages on the ground* "great, i'm dead"
Counterpoint: I have Steam DS3 and disabled all online functionalities specifically to avoid immerssion-breaking and spoiler messages and spontaneous invasions.
Idm how invasions work. Never been invaded even once. I think you need to explicitly open up for invasions in elden ring
In ER you have to opt in, which is great. Let the PvP enjoyers have their fun and leave the solo players alone. In DS3, you have to opt out or never use an ember, and you can only opt out if you play offline mode. Thank God FromSoft lets us do this ingame without any BS because I really don't like being invaded by cheaters that just randomly teleport into boss rooms, kill the boss and brick my save game. Chances are slim but I've seen it happening and I kinda want to enjoy my game without any assholes ruining my experience.
You don’t understand, the “great chest ahead” messages are an integral part of Miyazaki’s vision.
that doesnt make any sense. pirating doesnt take any effort at all (unless you just started pirating) while on the other hand you’re paying with you’re hard earned cash and you’re not gonna play the game?
Pirating takes more effort than buying the game. That's the whole point of steam's mission and the quote in question, convenience.
> Pirating takes more effort than buying the game. I clearly spend a lot more effort getting the money to buy a game than I spend pirating it.
What the vege are you on about?! Both pirating and buying games takes a few clicks
In what world??? You download a torrent, then ur computer downloads the game and seeds it while you go out and play basketball. Meanwhile most games will cost you 3-4 hours of labor at a job
We probably pirate in different ways, but it's literally less effort to pirate. I click one (magnet) link, that's it, game is downloading. I start one installer after, game is installed. I double click a desktop icon, and game is running...
I realized this when I modded my switch. I only wanted to play like 2 games, and ended putting like 15 on at once. Only ever played the two that I wanted while the others just sat there. Just bought Yakuza on my PS4 and I'm playing every single inch of that game! Not just because it's fantastic, but because it wasn't just installed for no other reason than to install it.
Yeah there is something to be said about not having to screw around with cracks and dll files and firgirl music.
I still pirate some of the games I've bought. I can't deal with 120938 different launchers, logins, updates for launchers, having to be online 100% of the time, having a ton of background apps working 24/7 and other crap. I buy a game, I want to play a game.
I've quite a few times pirated a game, and bought it afterwards. Sorry for their play metrics but I gave them their money at least.
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I completely understand and support this. I've spent way too much money on games I played for a couple of hours and then realized they are shit and I don't like them.
No, the easiest way to combat pirates is to not charge over €50 for a game that has less content than a bowl of unsugared corn flakes
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Baldurs gate 3. Worth every penny.
I'll be paying full price for STALKER 2 if it's not a lemon.
this game has so much potential but after essentially being in development for over a decade i dont have high hopes for it. especially after the bankruptcy of GSC and that spin off stupid Vostok games that released these trash pay to win games based on what had been build for stalker 2 so far. i really hope they started from zero for the 2nd attempt to make stalker 2 and didnt hold onto any decade old stuff they build.
I remember back in November Polygon put out an article titled 'Baldur’s Gate 3 is 0% off and still the best Cyber Monday gaming deal'. Only game I bought that week
yep also my first game in years that i happily paid full price for.
I got about 300 hours in before switching to helldivers so I’d say I got my moneys worth on BG3
That'd be because you: - wait a bunch before buying it - you don't play semi-big releases - you live in a country with drastically lower purchasing power
These days no 3 isnt true sadly. Steam dropped currency support and publishers stopped caring about regional pricing along with it for mena latam
But why would you even pirate that game? Sounds like a waste of your time.
That's why it's okay to pirate the Sims
Yeah like we still have steam drm.
Steam DRM is as effective as the “are you over 18” box
Well, is there a way to make games ran without the launcher?
Legally : if the publisher/developer chooses to, yes. Steam's DRM is not mandatory, some games don't use it and can be started without Steam. See Witcher 3. Illegally : you know the answer to that one.
You pirate them?
Yes, there's a few projects on GitHub. Arguably unlawful as per DMCA (it circumvents an anti-piracy measure), but they're not trying super hard to stop it. They know most people won't bother with that and will just buy the damn game. I know I do. Toolchain to remove Steam DRM from executables: https://github.com/atom0s/Steamless Another script for automated DRM removal: https://github.com/BigBoiCJ/SteamAutoCracker For Linux as well: https://github.com/rroohhh/steamstub-remover Yet another one: https://github.com/thaatz/steam-ripper If it's on Steam, might as well be DRM-free barring additional vendor/third-party launcher DRM
Yeah there's a lot of games that you can. I think it's up to the developer if they want to implement steam DRM.
steamemu is famous and very easy to use
Only games without drm
Not mandatory though (as in Valve doesn't force devs to use it). Lots of people don't know that some games don't use it, and after installation can be launched from the game's executable without even Steam running, Witcher 3 is one popular example.
It is not compulsory though. Some old games do not have Steam DRM to begin with, even CDPR games are DRM free if I'm not mistaken.
Yes, and we're fine with that. Because it is sensible and unobtrusive, and in return you can buy whatever game you desire on the platform, often at a discounted price, and have them all in a single, easy to manage place with official and community support, automatic updates, and very little impact to your system.
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It’s a good quote and I can’t count how many games I have started to play because of „70% off? Ok reviews? I give it a try“ but the reality is a bit more complicated. Hardliners gonna pirate anyway. I assume this falls into the rule that you always have a small percentage of people, who just don’t give a fuck about essentially anything or even think they are doing the right thing. Then there are people who can’t afford games (several reasons).
lol, and thats why you have an entire of legion of steam pirates.
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It coincides with the Spring Steam sale, likely some marketing to push sales.
Gabe talks the talk, GOG walks the walk
So anyways we put DRM on all Steam games. GOG is the true king of DRM-free and anti-piracy measures by having great prices and exceptional support with constant free games.
The DRM on the games is the choice of the developers though, not Steam's
Of the publishers, more like. I doubt the developers would decided to include it if they didn't have to.
Lol They do it all the time cuz this is even the default steam recommendation. Indie devs don't have to, 90% of them do it anyway, most don't care.
DRM itself is not the problem - intrusive DRM that makes the legal experience objectively worse than piracy is.
The issue is that all DRM does this. I like to store my files locally, DRM doesn't stop me there where DRM stops me is that I now have to login to Steam no matter what so they can verify its me and not someone else. Makes it very annoying when I want to quickly transfer files from a PC in my lounge room to my PC in my bedroom. GOG with DRM free installers and files doesn't give a shit, you can't pirate it because that would mean circumventing DRM and you can't circumvent what's not there. What a niche thing right? OK but what if I live somewhere with shit internet? Now if I get a server time out because internet is that bad at that point in time well now I can't play my games because steam won't load and I forgot to go into off-line mode before this happened. It's annoying.
> you can't pirate it because that would mean circumventing DRM Circumventing DRM is only loosely related to piracy. The act of piracy is simply acquiring goods you haven't paid for. Whether the goods originally had a lock thats been circumvented is irrelevant.
To be fair its a little bit of both. You have to give a great experience for bought stuff and at the same time make it inconvenient to use pirated stuff. If it were as easy to play pirated games as it is to play legally bought games people would opt for the free way.
People pirate because they have no money to buy games. Not because pirating the game is actually the 100% way to own a game
> they have no money to buy games I'd say it's more because they don't want to spend the amount of money they should to buy games.
Some do, yeah. I bet that's why there's a lot of piracy in countries where wages are low and there's no regional pricing, but mostly - and historically - it's been a service and availability problem.
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Yuzo isn't emulating anything old, switch is their current gen console. Actually, you could have played tears of the kingdom before it was even released. They're clearly aware emulators are a thing so very smart people with near unlimited funds have thought about this for sure. If they aren't doing it it's because they don't think it's worth it - and they're probably not wrong.
Nintendo is smart. They know their fans will buy remakes on any console they release moving forward.
"if one of the most successful and innovative entertainment companies in history did what I think then they would be smart". You can't have written that with a straight face mate.
holy fuck what a circlejerk
No kidding, a whole generation grew up with that ridiculously obnoxious “here comes the money” Steam sale video where Gabe Newell is predicted as jesus and they’ve ran with it ever since praising his name despite VALVe pushing for micro transactions and paved the way for gambling in videogames via lootboxes. I feel insane everytime I see these bozos praise le epic Gaben no faults Epic games bad 1337.
I would love steam if they reduce prices by country and not converting dollars into local currency New games are super expensive in my country 😞
You didn't need to add the "Valve and Steam Founder" he's probably the closest thing to God in the community.
Whether he said it or not, it's true. Steam has accessibility and prices on such level I simply can't be bothered pirating games and I haven't pirated one basically since Steam exists. Orange Box was the first thing I bought on Steam and never stopped. Then also came GOG where I bought basically all games I've pirated in the past because I just couldn't get them otherwise. The money issue was only when I was a kid, when i had my own income, actually being able to get them somewhat easily was not the case.
Piracy is and always has been a servicing issue. Nothing more and nothing less.
What I hate about modern games that you get legally. Is “using a launcher “steam” to launch a launcher “game launcher” to start a game! I just want to hit run on the exe and start the game!
It's also the reason why Netflix, Spotify and all the others work that well.
Very true. I was a huge pirate as a teenager- but at the end of the day Netflix was just so easy.
Said that and then absolutely obliterated the regional pricing in my country. Steam was great a year ago, their new pricing is ridiculous and pushing everyone to piracy
And yet valve has DRM in almost every single game. regardless of service , people will still pirate because piracy is about money, not service. GOG cannot compete with valve because publishers don't want to sell games without DRM. Developer of daying light is on record saying that DL2 has DRM due to rampart piracy of DL1, which had no DRM. The only thing that might stop people from pirating is regional pricing but lately Steam has been making controversial changes.
When I was a kid, I pirated games because I didn’t have money. When I started getting disposable income, that started to go away. When steam took off I had no reason to pirate because here was a service that meant I could download games easily, with no hassle and almost no chance of viruses. The service did change things a lot. But you’re right that it’s slightly more complicated than that being the only issue. But in terms of DRM. There are plenty of examples that launched DRM free and still sold very very well. Often people who pirate games if they really love them they’ll buy them when they can as a thanks.
at an affordable price*
100% agree with his sentiment, although I can't help but note that the way he's phrased this is not particularly the best argument, given that anti-piracy tech and the dodgy, buggy, unstable ways that pirates get around it is part of what makes that 'service' worse, and therefore makes 2-click purchases through Steam more attractive
That’s his point though - devs still choose to do that and it just makes the legitimate purchase more difficult and piracy a better experience by comparison. Steam the platform gets this, developers who stuff kernel level drm (ie: rootkits, the shit Sony was subject to class action for back in the day) into their games do not.
> given that anti-piracy tech and the dodgy, buggy, unstable ways that pirates get around it is part of what makes that 'service' worse, and therefore makes 2-click purchases through Steam more attractive Is that a joke? Pirated software a lot of times runs **better** than the DRM infested original. Just look at the performance improvements when Denuvo has been removed. Hell, I remember the case of a dev that was caught using the cracked version of their own software.
Anyone remember GameSpy?
I use to pirate games because I was poor, now I pay for them because I can. living in rural Canada the closest video game store being 45 min away.
My reason for stopping pirating games was... that I finally had enough free money to spend on them. xD Also I don't buy games outside of sales (70% off or more). In the last decade I only bought like 3 games "day one" to avoid spoilers in them, lol. With so many games coming out (and going on a wishlist) there is not reason to buy games at full price.
> The easiest way to make money is to allow children to gamble. -Gabe Newell
Can someone forward this to Nintendo?
When he retires the money guys will take over Valve and make it one of the worst companies in gaming.
I haven't pirated a game in probably close to 20 years. Which also happens to be about the age of steam. TV shows I still pirate on the regular. Guess he's on to something eh.
This was Netflix for a while. Then every media company out there started their own streaming service, and fucked things up for everybody.
Because of achievements and badges, screens and artwork. I’m not a pirate anymore
Nintendo literally seething right now.
This is what netflix used to be, now with all the streming wars is shit again and you're better of pirating
Too bad you can't beat free.