How Steam stopped me from pirating games and enjoy the sweet DRM kool-aid

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/07/05/how-steam-stopped-me-from-pirating-games-and-enjoy-the-sweet-drm-kool-aid/

by silvia77 • 16 years ago

85 59 16 years ago

jac_no_k• 16 years ago

Steam's pragmatic approach to DRM is okay with me. They make the whole flow from finding the game, purchasing, and launching easy and straight forward. It's one of the rare instances the Management is a two way street. I don't need to keep physical copies of the games or track the serial numbers. I can move from computer to computer and the games that are enabled for my account are available. I'm really impressed that they don't charge extra for games that run on OS X, that was originally purchased for Windows.

What does irk me still is the third party publishers on Steam that use region lockouts. Steam's DRM does make it easy for publishers to not allow games like Modern Warfare 2 to be sold in Japan. I understand it was licensed to a publisher local in Japan and that is why Steam can not distribute. But this crosses the line of my tolerance. Same with other media such as music and videos. I wish publishers would set a global price, based on one of the major currencies, and just let us purchase and use in any region.

w1ntermute2• 16 years ago

You might be interested to know that they unofficially tolerate players having someone in another country (usually the US) buy the game and gift it to them, as long as the middleman isn't making money off of it (only equal reimbursement). If you're interested in getting the US version of Modern Warfare 2 (or any other game) via Steam, contact this guy: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/cklqm/steam_day_7_ma...

Obviously this isn't a justification for their actions, but it is an available workaround.

benologist• 16 years ago

I bought $170 worth of games today through a friend in the US. :)

The only thing I don't like is PC games are stupidly complicated with add ons, expansions, packs, chapters, bla bla bla. I don't have time to keep up with gaming to know what I need, what order I should do it in etc.

rkowalick• 16 years ago

I remember back in 2003 when steam came out along with the release of CS v1.6.

The whole community complained for a long time, setting up private v1.5 servers and doing anything in their power to avoid steam.

The naysayers had their points, but now the bloated software,buggy friends list and LAN party issues have morphed into a model content distribution network making tons and tons of revenue. Who'd a thought?

Valve probably knew this all along.

Groxx• 16 years ago

Steam also had at least a couple orders of magnitude more problems with crashing, corrupting files, and as it was new the (sometimes incorrect) account banning had a lot of weight. It's much better now, and look what's happened: people actually support it.

Valve may have "known it all along", and it's a huge thing to attempt, so I give them a lot of slack for their earlier problems. But it's succeeding today in large part because it's not a steaming P.O.S. like it was when it started.

gregn2• 16 years ago

You notice how Half Life development slowed to a virtual crawl after the launch of Steam? I'm sure it was obvious to them that they had just invented the most awesome source of revenue since WoW, and everything else shrank in comparison. If not for Steam we would have seen HL3 w/ a much improved source engine by now for sure.

starnix17• 16 years ago

Steam is awesome.

I used to never play PC games, and when I did I usually pirated them for convenience and simply because I couldn't legitimately purchasing the PC games I play (many of them are older and no longer in stores).

However, since this Steam sale came around I've been addicted. I ended up buying like 6 games with an average price of about $5 a game. It's just easier than pirating and it's cheap very easy just to click the buy button and charge my credit card.

Overall it's a great way to distribute new PC games and it definitely keeps the income coming in (although it might not be as much) for older games that no longer get shelf space in brick and mortar retail stores.

robryan2• 16 years ago

Might not be much but it's a hell of a lot more than the $0 they get for pirated copies.

noonespecial2• 16 years ago

So if they make obtaining games legitimately easier than pirating and make sure that the DRM doesn't needlessly hassle the end user, people will do that instead?

Stop the presses.

noonespecial2• 16 years ago

So -4 then? Was it because I advocated a form of DRM (and all DRM is bad m'kay), endorsed Steam even though lots of people dislaike it, or just used too much sarcasm because I thought this was self-evident to this crowd?

Steam seams like a faltering step in the right direction. Its quite a bit better than the "cripple the whole experience and make the user stand on his head while playing our game" DRM that's included in too many games today. Its not perfect but for the first time, moral judgments aside, it makes obtaining and playing a game as easy as pirating it. Its good to see people warming to this and validating the model.

matwood2• 16 years ago

I agree with you, now if only the movie studios got on board. The day a movie comes out on DVD it should also be available to rent through every digital service out there including Netflix.

ars• 16 years ago

Too much sarcasm.

ohwaitnvm• 16 years ago

At work, a typical response I've received upon mentioning that I get most of my games through Steam is "Oh. Isn't that the one with DRM?"

At first, this threw me; I wasn't even aware that there was DRM on Steam. Well, of course I intuitively knew it, but I never associated it with the issues that people usually complain about regarding DRM.

I've never had the DRM get in my way... My experience with iTunes has been that when a bad bump on an airplane toasted my external hard drive and lost me every piece of legitimately paid for music and every legally purchased TV episode on it, I would never be able to download those purchases again. Steam, on the other hand, has let me download the same game as many times as I've found necessary, external to external, computer to computer.

matwood2• 16 years ago

Apple doesn't advertise the fact that they do keep a list of your purchases. If you call them you should be able to get them to let you re-download all the content you have bought through ITMS.

IMHO, Apple should be putting a feature like this front and center, but my guess is that the labels are against it. Who else wants you to buy the same song first on vinyl, then tape, then CD, then digital, then...

masklinn7• 16 years ago

> Apple doesn't advertise the fact that they do keep a list of your purchases. If you call them you should be able to get them to let you re-download all the content you have bought through ITMS.

yeah but sadly:

1. the list of stuff bought is pretty well hidden, and it's a pain to get back to the media from there. Steam gives you your library front and center, and from there it's a right and a left click to reinstall

2. for everything other than apps, you can't just re-download the stuff you lost. You have to re-buy it. That sucks. A lot. Here's hoping that improves with a hypothetical iTunes 10 / iTunes Cloud.

natmaster• 16 years ago

"In order to counter piracy.... It’s this sort of scheme that forces people to pirate games."

For publishers to understand why restricting rights of their customers is bad for them, they need to understand this. Steam, and other systems like it are the future. Those who do not understand this will (and should) be swept under the rug.

teamonkey3• 16 years ago

Of course, first there will need to be some evidence (other than anecdotal) that shows that DRM actually reduce more genuine customers than it does force casual pirates to buy the game. Or, specifically, that

cost_of_sales_lost + cost_of_drm_tech > revenue_gained

Sure, DRM is unpopular (among the tiny proportion of users who know what it is), but does it affect the bottom line?

chc• 16 years ago

I can't imagine the review-bombing on Amazon helps sales.

masklinn7• 16 years ago

> For publishers to understand why restricting rights of their customers is bad for them, they need to understand this. Steam, and other systems like it are the future.

Steam does restrict customer rights (can't resell games for instance). The truly important thing is that the rights your DRM scheme restricts should not be rights the user cares for or wants to use.

At the end of the day, experience is king, and Steam's great because the experience is better than piracy's.

jasonlotito3• 16 years ago

I know you aren't arguing against Steam. I just wanted to expand/respond to a part of your comment.

Steam does require giving up certain rights you'd have if you had purchased the game from a store, true. However, it also provides you rights you wouldn't otherwise have. For example, I can reinstall games without having to worry about finding that CD/CD Key. If I lose the game DVD, I can't play it anymore. With Steam, I now have that right.

Steam might take away rights, but in doing so, it rewards me with other rights that are if not equally as valuable, are more valuable then the rights they are removing.

frio2• 16 years ago

What gets me about Steam are the extra layers of DRM crud games get layered with by publishers. I recently purchased Arkham Asylum in a sale; to play it, I need Steam, GfWL and SecuROM activation. I understand that in this instance Steam is merely the distribution tool, and that the extra DRM is installed by the publisher for retail sales, but it sure is a pain in the arse to get the game loaded.

The same could be said of GTA IV (Steam, Rockstar Social Club, GfWL) or Riddick (TAGES). I wish publishers would just give up on these other activation methods altogether.

stonemetal• 16 years ago

Also note that if you pickup the add ons for GTA IV then you get to download the game twice(sure connections are fast these days but an extra 16GB really?). It doesn't integrate with GTA IV. So if you load up GTA IV and click on the expansion pack it takes you to a screen to buy it and vice versa.

teamonkey3• 16 years ago

Yes, you don't get the two episodes as DLC over Steam, you get the standalone SKU "Episodes from Liberty City". Just the same as if you bought the EfLC retail box on PC.

ElliotH• 16 years ago

Agree 100% - the layers of DRM detract from what makes Steam's DRM tolerable - the user experience. Particularly games like GTA when they require a login. Global logins with Steam are one of the best bits.

jcl• 16 years ago

To GTA IV's credit, if you click the right options when starting the game, you can play a single-player, local game without setting up a Rockstar Social Club or Windows Live account. They still present the login each time you run it, though.

rufugee• 16 years ago

I installed a dual-boot of Vista so I could install Steam and play BioShock. I'd love Steam if it didn't crash every twenty minutes or so. Granted, it could be Vista...I had problems with Call of Duty 4 as well.

I really, really wish a gaming virtual machine would catch on. Of course it won't because it would defeat platform lock-in, but one can dream, right? Rebooting Ubuntu into Windows just to catch a 30 minute break gets old fast.

wwortiz• 16 years ago

I don't have a problem with the dual boot thing because I only play games like once every other day or so, but I am almost certain something is wrong if steam is crashing so much (I can't say anything about cod4 but I do own bioshock) as I haven't had it crash for almost a year.

gridspy2• 16 years ago

It sounds very likely that you have faulty ram (use Memcheck) or an overheating graphics card. It could also be an old Motherboard BIOS.

I say this because I have had the same thing (crashing games) on my own computers and eventually traced it to those causes.

CaptainZapp• 16 years ago

It does sound like a hardware problem. It could, however, also be the game, which is corrupt.

Fret not, there's an app^H^H^H solution for that:

- Right click the game in your games list - Select properties - Select "local files" tab - Click "Check integrity of game cache" (or so)

This can take some time, but will re-download corrupted game components. I ususally have to do this with Dirt, when it dies ungracefully on me.

recoil• 16 years ago

I've used a Steam a little over the last couple of years (bought maybe 3 or 4 games), but with this recent summer sale I've added another 15-20 games to my collection, and all for around $60 total. When the price is right, I'm very happy to use a service like this, despite the DRM. The user experience beats anything else out there, including going to the local mall and buying a game boxed.

The key is the price though. With Steam games, I lose the ability to sell the game on after I'm finished it, and publishers of all kinds (music, movies, ebooks, videogames) need to understand that I'm not going to pay them the same (or more) for something that doesn't give me the same rights as the physical media.

The policy of certain publishers to charge considerably more for the same game in different regions (in my case Australia - see e.g. the price of Mass Effect 2 in Aus here: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/clwk1/steam_final_da...) is also something I'm not going to tolerate. I didn't buy any of the games in the Steam sale that were priced higher in this country, so those publishers lost out.

I presume that this is due to the way publishing rights are apportioned internationally, and I've seen similar problems afflict other media (particularly ebooks, where the availability of a particular Kindle title varies a lot depending on whether you're in the UK, US or Aus). Again, publishers need to understand that consumers really couldn't give a toss about this sort of thing: we just want to buy their product, not have to worry about some international publishing agreement bullshit. If somebody can't buy something on Amazon/Steam/iTunes/whatever in their region, that's driving them towards the pirates, not towards the locally-published version.

lionhearted• 16 years ago

> Again, publishers need to understand that consumers really couldn't give a toss about this sort of thing: we just want to buy their product, not have to worry about some international publishing agreement bullshit.

Firmly agree. This nonsense is a relic from an earlier age - back in the day, you'd sell the rights to a book to a local publisher/distributor. Back then, an American publishing house might have minimal contacts in Australia, so you'd license or sell to an Australian company with better local contacts and an understanding of the local market.

Mind you, this dates back to before long distance calls were possible, let alone the internet, and it made sense back then. Now it's mostly just hassle, nonsense, and bureaucracy. It'll eventually get more sensible, either because the old guard will wake up or some new players will emerge to eat their lunch.

robryan2• 16 years ago

I think for some games they are charging as much as they can get away with, maybe it's to reinforce some of the crazy pricing you get in Australian retail that they use exchange rates to justify but then don't pass on the savings when the rate changes.

I think they try and target parents that don't know any better, regularly a game will come out retail here for $120 when it would be on steam for $60USD, so maybe $70AUD.

pmjordan• 16 years ago

Agreed. I haven't used Steam much because newer games tend to be much more expensive on there than if you buy it on disc. And it's not just you Aussies that get screwed over, we have the same problem in central Europe.

Examples:

- Bioshock 2 (PC): €29.99 on Steam, €19.97 on amazon.de. If I didn't already have it, I'd import it from amazon.co.uk, as it's much cheaper at £9.95 even with extra postage to Austria. (plus I don't risk getting badly translated German voiceovers)

- Anno 1404 a.k.a. Dawn of Discovery: Steam: €49.99, Venice expansion: €29.99; amazon.de: €34.90/€25.59; amazon.co.uk: £11.99/£8.97. Note that this is even a game developed in Germany.

I can't work out who decides that this is a sensible pricing scheme. I paid less than the current steam price for these games when they were still new releases.

Bizarrely, even Valve's own games are cheaper at amazon than on their own distribution channel. (Orange Box: €29.99 vs €19.99/£14.99) As far as I know, the retail versions of Valve games run on Steam anyway, so you're literally paying for the questionable privilege of downloading a couple of gigabytes of data overnight. And Amazon is still cheaper if you opt for next day delivery.

frio2• 16 years ago

Living in NZ, we get the regional prices too. It boils down to publishers attempting to protect brick and mortar stores; if a game is no cheaper on Steam, then the thought goes that more people will go to the store and buy it as they see no advantage.

As far as I'm concerned, it's costing them sales. If I want a physical copy of a game - like a Collector's Edition - I'll pay the extra. If I don't, then pricing the digital download that's served off the steam cache at the ISP I work for in the same region just costs them a sale. Case in point right now is Bad Company 2, but the same can be said of Borderlands (nabbed it in the 4-pack preorder for a reasonable price, then at launch it shot to $79.99USD :/) and many other titles.

Basically, it's a compromise I imagine Valve had to make to get large publishers signing with and selling their games on Steam. I'd prefer them to now use some of their critical mass to lean on the next contract they sign and say "we're a competitor to brick/mortar stores, we're losing sales because of your high pricing, and from now on we're going to compete".

omgsean• 16 years ago

I can't wait until something like this comes out for my Xbox. I can't tell you the number of times I've been bored enough to shell out $60 bucks for a game I heard was good but was way too lazy (or slightly too inebriated) to drive to the store.

Sometimes I feel like companies just don't want my money.

isamuel3• 16 years ago

This exists. It's how I bought Mass Effect for the 360.

chadgeidel2• 16 years ago

Website/explanation please? I wasn't aware you could buy non-Arcade games digitally.

isamuel3• 16 years ago

Steam doesn't even feel like DRM. The hallmark of DRM is always that there's some thing you run into that you want to do but can't: you can't play your music on THAT device, you can't convert your video to THAT format.

But the only thing I want to do with PC games is play them, and on any PC that I want to play them on. Steam lets me do that. It's copy protection, no doubt, but it's a bargain where I actually win in the exchange.

gridspy2• 16 years ago

The main price is waiting for steam to login and initialize before you can start loading the game.

masklinn7• 16 years ago

Offline mode works if you want to go faster and/or need it though. Didn't work a few years ago, but works like a charm nowadays, it's a pleasure.

malbiniak• 16 years ago

i owned counter-strike: source for windows. i was AMAZED that i didn't have to purchase it for mac.

this particular kool aid is delicious.

cturner• 16 years ago

Something interesting about Steam - it is a business model that creates a software distribution business without leveraging copyright. The guys at Valve have taken responsibility for their business model, rather than insisting that the government do it. Positive.

blub• 16 years ago

There's another online games store that deals with older games: www.gog.com aka Good Old Games. What's interesting is that it doesn't have DRM.

ajuc• 16 years ago

There is also "good old games" ( www.gog.com ) - steam like site that sells old games without DRM and tuned to run in modern OSes. Sorry for advertising, I'm not connected to them in any way, just like this company (they made The Witcher) and wanted to promote DRM less online software selling.

lambda• 16 years ago

The question is, what's the point of the DRM once you have something like Steam? The DRM is not actually preventing people from pirating the games; you can still download them from Torrent sites. And you can prevent people from playing online if they haven't paid without any DRM; you just keep track of that on the server side.

So, by still including DRM, you are limiting users freedom, installing crap on their machines that they don't want, for no particularly good reason. The essential part to keep people buying your games instead of going to torrents is not the DRM; it's offering a good service that's competitive with the torrents. The convenience of fast downloads, of being able to reinstall the game on a new machine without keeping track of physical media and keys. And with a service like Steam, you can offer more than that, such as a nice option for online play, tournaments, leaderboards, and the like, updates that add value and keep your interest in older games.

While some people are just so cheap that they'll go with the torrent no matter what, I think there are a lot of people who would be willing to buy DRM free games if they offer a compelling enough experience. The reason that media loses sales to piracy is that they offer so much of a worse experience than just doing a search and a download. See iTunes, for example. The music isn't DRMed any more, and it's the largest music retailer in the world; it offers a wide selection and easy download and no crappy DRM hassles.

Steam is not successful because of the DRM. It's successful because of the service and convenience. They could drop the DRM, and be even better off than they are today, and not have to spend all the time and money writing the DRM that will just be cracked anyhow.

drewcrawford• 16 years ago

> The question is, what's the point of the DRM once you have something like Steam?

These decisions aren't made by programmers or people who otherwise deal with facts.

The point is that when your boss's boss asks why it's showing up on TPB, your boss can say "Look, we put DRM in it. We did the best we could. With more funding we could make the DRM system better."

The next project gets a few more hires (probably only DRM-related on paper), your boss practiced CYA, his boss practiced CYA, and everybody's doing great except the legal consumers of the product, who nobody really cares about anyway.

gregn2• 16 years ago

I just want to point out quick that what's so awesome about Steam is it's apparent longevity. They provide the convenience of the App Store: you see something, 2-or-3 clicks and it's yours, but the greatest value that Steam offers is the fact that THE GAMES YOU BUY ARE ALWAYS THERE. 5 years down the road, you will still be able to download and play the games you have bought, onto a different computer with possibly a completely different OS, all patched up. It's in Steam's best business interest to continue and grow and maintain a presence, possibly forever, so they will always be there, and the game you have bought and paid for the one time, you will always have, always. Try and say that about a physical copy or the stupid App store.

How Steam stopped me from pirating games and enjoy the sweet DRM kool-aid

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