And those never check license online? How can they be sure it’s not just a rip or copy? Still the same old mechanisms that didn’t really work on PC 20yrs ago?
So I just pull the net-cable and it continues to work forever? (Minus updates and such)
That’s correct. You can play it just fine unless you’re playing a multiplayer game or DLC. You put the disc in, it installs what it needs to install in order to run, and you play the game.
That way, when the servers go down, you can still play it.
That’s nice. A wonder this survived so long. On PC it died 2 decades ago. Except for old games and some rare special ones like witcher3.
Legally at least.
I boycotted steam for years when it started because I knew this was the end of trading games or owning them.
Then I gave up because resistance was futile and now I have like 100k in games I will never own and would loose if steam was gone.
You can still buy lots of DRM-free games today, most notably on GOG, but many offline games on Steam also ship without DRM and can be launched without running Steam.
Yeah, a lot of people don’t know that a decent number of games on Steam have no DRM and you can just archive the installation (make a portable copy so to speak).
In another answer I named gog for that. But…it’s mostly older games, so not really helpful if You also like new games or even AAA.
But you also could “crack” most steam games so easily it’s absurd. So, every installed (or archived) game would still run without. The steam-drm is trivial.
And those never check license online? How can they be sure it’s not just a rip or copy? Still the same old mechanisms that didn’t really work on PC 20yrs ago? So I just pull the net-cable and it continues to work forever? (Minus updates and such)
That’s correct. You can play it just fine unless you’re playing a multiplayer game or DLC. You put the disc in, it installs what it needs to install in order to run, and you play the game.
That way, when the servers go down, you can still play it.
That’s nice. A wonder this survived so long. On PC it died 2 decades ago. Except for old games and some rare special ones like witcher3. Legally at least. I boycotted steam for years when it started because I knew this was the end of trading games or owning them. Then I gave up because resistance was futile and now I have like 100k in games I will never own and would loose if steam was gone.
You can still buy lots of DRM-free games today, most notably on GOG, but many offline games on Steam also ship without DRM and can be launched without running Steam.
Yeah, a lot of people don’t know that a decent number of games on Steam have no DRM and you can just archive the installation (make a portable copy so to speak).
In another answer I named gog for that. But…it’s mostly older games, so not really helpful if You also like new games or even AAA.
But you also could “crack” most steam games so easily it’s absurd. So, every installed (or archived) game would still run without. The steam-drm is trivial.