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Comment by shmerl | Hacker News Reader

I never liked their DRM stance and personally not using Steam and buying games in DRM-free stores instead, but Valve gained a lot of goodwill by backing Linux gaming and important gaming related FOSS projects like Mesa, Wine, dxvk, vkd3d and advancing Vulkan and OpenXR in general.

They are still lacking effort in marketing of Linux gaming, but their technical backing is really great.

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Why exactly do you dislike their DRM stance? AFAIK devs don't have to use it.

I don't like stores that proliferate DRM. GOG has the right approach about it. They simply don't allow DRMed games in their store and actively work with publishers to dispel their messed up DRM mentality.

> GOG has the right approach about it. They simply don't allow DRMed games in their store

This is definitely not true. There are DRMed games in their store right now. Yes, at the same time the homepage says "We are GOG.COM, the DRM-free home for a curated selection of games."

Are there? Which ones?

Well it's matter of comparing it to their competitors. GOG actively advertises and encourages devs to eschew DRM, lots of games became DRM-free just to appear on the store. Humble also actively advertised DRM-free games, and even source-available games, though granted, nowadays it's more of alternative steam store interface with charity, with very few direct download titles. itch.io, due to the area they operate in -- niche indies -- it's pretty much cultural standard to have no DRM, so they don't even have to mention it.

This is a completely valid asessment. While I do not personally see much of a problem with valves implementation, I'd still prefer no DRM at all.

I suspect DRM was necessary to get publishers on board in the beginning when digital distribution/stores wasn't really a thing. Steam might never have taken off without it and the big publishers would've just rolled their own clients with DRM earlier.

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