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Comment by BlueTemplar | Hacker News Reader

> So, a few early adopters of the technology started developing an alternative implementation of [Valve's] OpenVR called “Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR) which even had open-source hardware projects. Sadly, its development stalled and even today its main site is offline.

Ah, I didn't know that SteamVR could run without Steam. Can Alyx (once installed) ?

Still, this leaves the issue is that being theoretically Steam-free isn't enough, as the experience with AOSP/Google Play Store has shown.

Valve might be 'pretty good' with their own users, but still the result of Steam's dominance is that it's getting harder and harder to get mods and play multiplayer outside of Steam.

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Half Life Alyx cannot run without Steam due to Steam DRM, like most other steam games.

It's very, very easy to remove the DRM yourself, though. It's more a legal formality than an attempt at DRM and is pretty much never updated.

Yeah, Steam's DRM implementation is ancient and well known to be compromised. They never really push it, but publishers demand it to "feel" safe. The biggest hook is that many people prefer games on Steam due to the added benefits.

A large fraction of Valve's own games are DRM-free (despite using Steamworks when launched through Steam !) :

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_DRM-Free_G...

Also, there isn't a single Steam DRM, but multiple versions/layers :

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/how_to_run_steam_games_off...

The worst of which are Valve's own Custom Executable Generation, and Denuvo, which is third-party but (last time I checked) Steam doesn't warn you about as being a 3rd-party DRM.

Both of which make a game machine-specific.

To be honest though, the Valve Custom Executable DRM is pretty easy to bypass. There are automated tools that make it pretty much trivial. I won't link them because it's technically illegal in the US.

Denuvo is the most difficult one, yes. It's technically not DRM, but anti-tampering software that wraps around another DRM, that said it is really the worst.

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