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Comment by lmkg | Hacker News Reader

I still think that the Steam platform is the golden standard for DRM. The Assassin's Creed 2 DRM still comes from the old-school plan of restricting the legitimate needs of cash-paying customers, which makes the cracked version superior to the original. Steam, on the other hand, gives me more features rather than less: I can install the game on multiple machines, or the same machine multiple times, even if I lose the hard copy. It saves me a trip to the store, which was half the reason I pirated games back in college. I can pre-load the game and play it literally the second it comes out without having to camp outside a Fry's two hours away. They're by no means essential features and I rarely use any of them, but that whole thing about making sure your copy is legitimate is a hell of a lot easier to swallow when it's sold as the price of a new feature.

(obligatory: http://xkcd.com/488/ )

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In other words, Steam DRM comes with some carrots, instead of just extra sticks.

I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere...

I'm a fan for the same reasons you listed. Also, their aggressive sales and price reductions on older archival titles significantly increases my buy-in of the Steam service, which in turn makes me far more willing to turn to them when I am buying a full-price, day 1 title.

It's not just that Steam has carrots and Ubisoft used sticks. The point of introducing a stick is to hit the people who are misbehaving, so that they'll want to stop. But Ubisoft is inconveniencing the paying customers more than the pirates. They're using the stick on the wrong people altogether! That creates an entirely backwards incentive scheme.

Meanwhile, DRMing a game through Steam makes it more convenient for the consumer rather than less convenient[1]. They turned the protection scheme from a hindrance into a feature, and a desirable one at that. Most importantly, the carrot wasn't just stapled on to sweeten the deal, the features of Steam are leveraging the DRM itself. I have never heard anyone say "man Steam is awesome, but they should take out the DRM"--it's an intrinsic part of the additional features. That's what makes it so impressive to me.

[1] There are tradeoffs so YMMV, but the tradeoffs are easily worthwhile for the majority of players, which is Good Enough.

Steam is kind of like the old iTunes of software (or the Kindle store). Sure, there's DRM, but it's not too bad -- actually, it's often more lenient than what you'd get in the plastic version of the same software. In exchange, you get all of your games backed up remotely for the life of the service with zero re-install headaches.

Keyphrase being for the life of the service.

For people like me who have grown with computers and games things like original disks, standalone copies, and accessible abandonware is like the National Archives.

I still play games from the 90's, even 80's, thanks to emulators. I don't want to buy something that won't run properly after 20 years which itself is about 15 years since any reasonable commercial interest.

To each his own, I guess. While I started playing in the 80s and still have a rotting away C64 in the attic (the floppies are probably beyond rot) storing and archiving the media, to me, is just darn painful.

So the fact that I have an implicit backup of all my games with nill re-install headache is the killer argument for Steam.

I'm fully aware of the drawbacks (including the, alas remote, possibility of the service going down, but am willing to chance this for the convenience received.

OTOH: Ubisoft just said hello to Sony (remember the rootkit fiasko, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_rootkit ) and a couple other companies on my eternal shitlist. Since it's eternal there's no escape and they won't see one mor Eurocent from me, no matter what. I also won't pirate anything Ubisoft for that matter.

@I have an implicit backup of all my games

Until Steam 2 comes out and they discontinue Steam 1 servers. Or the company gets bought by Fox/Disney/Sony etc and they disconnect the old cost base.

Imagine if you had to repurchase all your DVDs/CDs everytime a singer/actor switches agent/label?

strangely, I agree, I love using steam, even though its completely DRMed and I don't get any control over the game -- but at the same time I can download games on new computers, pre-load games before release day, and do it all painlessly.

Yes, the first versions of steam were pretty terrible, but they have turned it into my preferred way of buying PC games over the years -- it really is a great platform now days.

They don't do stupid shit with DRM affecting the rest of your comptuer, or hacks on the DVDs, etc. They keep it clean and simple for the user.

Apart from the fact that Steam versions are typically 80-100% markup in price over shrinkwrap versions.

For example, Bioshock 2:

30GBP, "down" from 40GBP http://store.steampowered.com/app/8850/

16.74GBP http://www.amazon.co.uk/Take-2-Bioshock-PC-DVD/dp/B00175SOS2...

This may be true in the UK, but in the US Steam games are price-competitive with shrinkwrap versions.

Competitive feels like not low enough, to me.

After all, you don't get any physical copies, which is something a collector may like.

I vastly prefer being able to redownload software that I've paid for, but some people may prefer physical copies.

You do get other perks though - not having to keep track of discs, not susceptible to damaged disks, download-anywhere, unlimited times... etc.

The online features are also not too shabby - being able to join a friend's game in a single click is a pretty nifty feature that I use often.

Also, Steam generally gives 10% off for preorders, which is something brick and mortars aren't doing.

Aye, you cannot sell your games anymore. But i'm still a Steam fan, probably cause i'm older and not as skint as I once was.

In Australia, I've found that steam games are often significantly cheaper (10-20%) than their retail counterparts, and the sales are cheaper still.

In Australia, I see a mixture of: 1. reasonably priced games - often cheaper than physical copies, and, 2. ridiculously overpriced games - same price as RRP for a physical copy, even months later when physical copies are going for much less.

These days, less and less games fall into category number 2. At the moment its mainly Modern Warfare 2 and Borderlands.

Not only is it a great platform, but they're improving it regularly. The beta version running Webkit is so nice.

The strength of Steam lies with the fact that Valve has created a service that people want to connect (and authenticate) with, and tying all your games together makes it a real loss if your account is banned.

Obviously online games are hard to crack on Steam (it was developed for Counterstrike). However, single-player games are as easy to crack on Steam as any other DRM system. All you need is a dummy account and a crack not to have to authenticate online.

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