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Comment by jakeec | Hacker News Reader

Because in practice that "always-on DRM" is actually just purely an advantage for the customer with zero downsides. It only sounds like you're making a good point when you frame "provides the best shopping and library experience in gaming" in the least charitable way possible. The Valve hate-boner is so weird.

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There are disadvantages. e.g. if you don't want to update a program (maybe the new version breaks your modded setup), too bad. Or if you need Windows still for compatibility, it no longer supports Windows 7, so you have to go hunting for old versions of the client and fiddle with it to prevent updates (if that still even works), at which point you'd might as well just mod it to remove the DRM instead.

Basically, it creates a failure point for setups that should otherwise last and be stable several more decades.

Can't you run old versions by setting the version in the game properties?

Not that I see. The publisher can add old versions as a "beta" that you can select if they want (e.g. Kerbal Space Program and Factorio do this), but otherwise you can only run the latest. Your choices for updating are "when launching", "when Steam decides", and "immediately". There is no "when I decide" or "never". e.g. Bethesda has apparently broken Fallout 4 multiple times over the last 1.5 years with no ability to revert after it had been stable for 5 years.

> always-on DRM is actually just purely an advantage for the consumer

Look me in the eyes and read this quote to me again. Then think about how yourself from 20 years ago would feel about reading this quote from someone else. You've gone so far down the rabbit hole but you don't realize you're in one.

Yeah I remember PC gaming 20 years ago, it sucked. Thank god Steam exists and made PC a real gaming platform.

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