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Comment by Mindwipe | Hacker News Reader

> Gabe correctly identified piracy as a service problem a decade ago.

Gabe literally built a DRM platform.

But he correctly identified that if you just said something people want to hear in an interview then even if you operate in literally the exact opposite fashion people adore it.

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He literally built a PC game distribution platform that made buying games so convenient it sparked a PC gaming revival and still completely dominates the market. Note that Gabe didn't say DRM was the problem per-se, he said that inconvenience was the problem. Steam's DRM is unnoticed in the vast majority of circumstances.

DRM isn’t a bad thing per se. It’s intrusive DRMs that are the issue. Steam isn’t intrusive; I can launch a game using my start menu and never interact with Steam or worry about the DRM. DRM requiring people to insert the CD to play is intrusive.

i can’t play a game on my steam account while my son plays another game on it.

You can in offline mode.

I don't know how complete this list is but there are some games you can just launch directly:

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

There is a solution for that: family sharing. Make him his own account, activate it as family on yours, and the only limitation will be that you can’t play the same game at the same time.

Another limitation is that this sharing isn't enabled for all games especially competitive online games (the system was widely abused by hackers to avoid bans).

Maybe something changed but last time I used family sharing would allow only one active game per account at a single time. But you can't go offline and keep playing while slightly risking an abuse detection. You can do the same, or at least could, with 'free weekend' games and play as long as you don't go online.

Gabe's DRM platform isn't as bad as the rest! That's the thing: he saw a service problem and tried to solve it best he could. Steam's DRM is way less intrusive than Denuvo.

Does valve even really try to counter the steam DRM defeats?

I know like a decade ago, steam emulators existed that could replace the steam DLLs for offline games (or potentially, but more risky: online games that don't rely on valve's servers).

I've not looked into it since, but honestly I'd be totally unsurprised if they never engaged in a war with the pirates on those tools, and they are no harder these days. My impression has always been that the Steam DRM is more intended to prevent casual copying than to be a real piracy deterrent. (This meshes with games on steam often including more invasive DRM systems on top of the Steam one.)

I can confirm that cracking the Steam DRM is as easy as ever.

>the Steam DRM is more intended to prevent casual copying than to be a real piracy deterrent.

What about all the piracy that happened because of intrusive DRM? It certainly prevented that kind of piracy.

In this case Denuvo isn't intrusive either. Even the cracker says that. The DRM causing the issue is a piece of Capcom software.

Steam's DRM is nothing like the DRM which is causing constant issues on AAA titles. Of course you can apply Denuvo over top of Steam's DRM, but the 'normal' Steam DRM is very easy to remove or emulate (if you're learning to reverse-engineer it's actually a pretty good commercial target to learn on) and doesn't contain a bunch of dumb triggers executing huge chunks of virtualized code constantly during gameplay.

Opposite of what? He identified a service problem, he solved a service problem. It worked. DRM is unrelated

A lean DRM platform that doesn't get in the way and it's not mandatory. There are DRM free games on Steam.

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