He’s right. Everyone hated the idea of any always online DRM to play the disc you bought in a store. Steam backed off with options for a game to sometimes work offline and a pinky promise to free your games if Gaben died and the new owner decided you own nothing.
It’s weird, people hate the current DRM system for games and love Steam. Yet it was Steam that pioneered it. If Steam failed, there’s a chance we would still own games instead of them being tied to online DRM verification.
Steam is the benevolent dictator but that’s not going to last forever.
Steam is undoubtedly convenient.
But if any game you care about keeping is on GOG, it’s a good idea to buy a copy on there, and then squirreling away the offline installer files/extracted game files somewhere safe.
Steam is undoubtedly inconvenient. Imagine a third party proprietary launcher filled with ads was required to use your browser.
You can use steam without ever seeing an ad. Due to low internet bandwidth I just turned off the couple of popups and I currently see 0 ads if I don’t specifically go to the store part. Steam boots into library, so no ads, none in downloads. I don’t use the rest unless I’m actually looking for a new game.
The only “ad” steam pushes into your face is the startup pop-up, which can be disabled in settings.
Without that, you can use whatever you like to launch your games. Valve doesn’t care. You can have a desktop shortcut for every one of your games and never see steam open, or use something like PlayNite to aggregate the games from several services into one library.
No, that’s what consumers like you are thinking in hindsight and unrelated.
The context Gabe is talking about is when he was approaching publishers. They were just being anti tech and believing in traditional brick and mortar. They were definently pro-DRM. They just couldn’t fathom a digital marketplace.
Maybe you weren’t old enough to remember it, but people were pissed and swore they would forever boycott Steam when it released
This is revisionist history. Steam was not the origination of DRM or even online DRM.
I remember, buy game. Enter CD key “key already taken” Return game “sorry, box is open we don’t take media returns” Rage.
“Actually this disc is defective. I’d like to exchange it for a new one.”
This trick will be useful if you ever go back to 1999.
He didn’t say valve created DRM he said that steam pioneered it. Don’t revision people comments.
Had to google “pinoneered”, but it say: “developed or be the first to use or apply” and i do not think valve did either.
They have an easy way for developers to implemet drm by require steam services tho.
But in my opinion it is better there are few well understood methods instead of a million uniqe ones. Incase there is a world this have to be reverse engeneered.
I referenced DRM in the context of online DRM.
American pioneers didn’t discover that America existed. They went out with maps from earlier explorers and settled.
Can you name any online DRM single player game that came out before HL2 and was as popular as Half Life 2? I played fps’s and rts’s in 2004 and none of them required online DRM.
The Steam hate was huge on forums I frequented. (Arstechnica, Slashdot, Usenet)
To be a pioneer is to be the first to do something. In the context of American pioneers, they were Western settlers, who intended to actually live in the place rather than just chart it. If you put enough qualifiers in front of it that I don’t think are necessary to the argument, like “single player”, then sure, they were probably pioneers. I can find an old RTS from a failed digital distribution platform a few years earlier that also seems to qualify, but fine. Even still, there’s no world where we didn’t have Steam and then online DRM didn’t become standard, because you’d have to ignore the world we lived in post-Napster that led to iTunes, which had online DRM at the time. The lack of it in video games was likely due to middleware partners having not invented the solution for it yet, but I guarantee you they were working on it (SecuROM was only a few years later), as both piracy and used copies were the enemy of the video game industry for decades, and aggressive DRM measures at the time would even negatively interface with and end up breaking some users’ disc drives. Combine that with how lucrative MMOs were turning out to be for their recurring revenue, and there was no way we weren’t rapidly converging on exactly what Steam and live service games ended up being.
The Steam hate back then was as prevalent as you say, and it earned it, particularly back then.
Games used stuff like cd keys and even pieces of paper that deciphered codes as DRM. DRM was always something sought after by companies. Just take a look at Sony rootkit scandal for music CDs.
I referenced Online DRM. Can you name a single player game from before 2004 that required online DRM to play? (Not register. You needed to verify online almost every time before playing.si gle player HL2. )
It could last a very long time, though. It’s a privately owned company, so if they keep it that way, there’s no board to satisfy with big payouts and stock holders to appeas. There’s a lot less bullshit to deal with when you’re a private company.
Also, drm and online registering is way older than steam.
The best drm was back on floppy drives. You needed a piece of tape to cover the square hole so you could copy the game for your buddy. Lol.
There were some very elaborate copy-protection schemes. Like, “go to page 12 in the manual and enter the word at the bottom of the page”. Of course, people could just share what the word was, so some games did stuff like having a fucking codewheel in the manual, instead. So you had to take the code the game gave you, turn the wheel to the correct spot, and then enter the result the wheel gave you.
One of the most famous moments of Metal Gear Solid is an anti-piracy measure.
Can you name a big single player game from before 2004 that required online DRM?
Because you originally couldn’t play single player HL2 without internet. They slowly backed off the DRM but it wasn’t like you needed to register once and could play forever. You needed Internet to play single player.
I don’t remember needing a constant internet connection to play hl2. I just remember needing it after the initial install. 20 years was a long time ago, so I don’t remember if it was the first single player game that had to be activated online first to run or not. I remember a lot of cd keys and ban type stuff for multi-player games pre hl2, but I don’t recall any single player ones.
Steam pioneered always on drm? Do you have a source? I thougt that was ubisoft and maxis primarily. That developers use steam services to implement their always on drm is something else. But it is the developers that have to click that checkbox.
I remember hating the idea, during the age when games came in boxes. Now i support Steam with the tremendous support they’ve given the Linux platform. Most games i have are games on Steam, but i do have a bunch on GoG, as well as Itch.io. Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket, but have to admit the Steam basket is humongous.
GOG is pretty good but they have zero Linux support that I’m aware of. Had to return a game I bought off there last year. Bought it through Steam and it worked seamlessly.
Some of their games have Linux support but also it seems very much that they do not care about going out of their way for Linux so it gets forgotten about for most titles
In GOG’s defense, they don’t have the resources that Steam does but it’s still pretty annoying. I have no plans to personally seriously use Windows ever again for personal use but Linux desktop usage is low and not something I’d expect a company that’s GOGs size to spend much time on yet. Steam can and does. I respect that a lot.
Relatively is the key word. I haven’t had a serious issue with anything running on Proton and the way Steam implements it. I’ve had one issue out of one trying to play a game on GOG. Don’t get me wrong, I think GOG is great though.
But that’s just a happy little accident. Gabe is too much of a good guy, so he actually built a good distribution platform that also pushes for improvements for the whole ecosystem (like the Linux thing).
When he’s gone, capitalism dictates that enshitification must ensue in order to squeeze out every single cent of short term profit, and we’ll be screwed.
I remember hating the idea, during the age when games came in boxes. Most games i have are games on Steam
If they are yours can you send me a copy as proof that they are actually yours?
I know you’re just trying to prove a point about physical disks, but if you actually wanted to borrow a copy of someone’s game, Steam will let you do it
I still have a bulk of those CD’s (not the boxes anymore). I keep them in a binder with the CD holder sleeves. Same for my drivers, and operating systems. I have disks of going back to NT, 95b, and 98. I only started in to PC’ in 1998/9. I wish i had my original Voodoo3 driver disk. I remember buying that card in my way back from school one afternoon. I was so excited to install it.
I was skeptical of Steam when it launched as well. It has proven to be a good service.
Beware bit rot.
Granted most of those are going to be archived anyway but I wouldn’t count on them being useable indefinately.
That tracks, everyone still owned their games back then. At least Gaben got his 8 yatchs though.
Remember when you could sell games you’d never play again and people less fortunate than you could have their fun with them for a much lower price?
Yeah, but now at least the games still go on sale for a cheaper price and there isn’t a rare game that you can’t find anymore and if you do it’s $130.
Fun fact: if you want Harvest Moon for snes the game will cost you about $400. Good condition with the box and papers will go over a grand. Snes Aero Fighters is $1,500 for an ok cartridge.
True, that’s a point. Though we don’t know if it would be that way now too with ownable physical stuff. Gaming became waaaaaay more mainstream.
Also, steam inventory-gift-games are equally priced now. For collectors. At least thrice the original asking price for stuff you even can get for free. Last one i sold was 15 when it came out, was already in bundles a lot and it went for 100 moneyz.
Yeah I am old enough to remember it being just a launcher (ala Ubisoft or EA games) for Half life 2 and a way to counter-strike with no mods. TBH I thought it was gonna fail hard and then after a decade of success, even I was stuck on steam. Also to add originally they only sold valve games as literally no third party was willing to give them a cent and they were short on IP.
Reminder that at $9.5 billion in net worth, Gabe Newell would be part of the ultra wealthy class that would be eaten first whenever we get organized enough to overthrow the wealthy.