The point is that Steam itself is DRM. Even if game itself can work standalone you can't install or update it without Steam client. This is the difference between Steam and GOG.
How is it different than having to use GOG's website to install a purchase you made or download an updated version?
Developers on Steam can ship their own update mechanism separate from Steam if they want to.
I feel like people don't actually know the policies of Steam and how it mostly just leaves it up to the developer, for better or worse.
If Steam decided to block developers from being able to do DRM, it wouldn't mean all the games would go DRM free, it'd mean the games wouldn't go on Steam, like they don't go on GOG - they'd go to their own launchers.
As much as people like to believe Steam has a monopoly, publishers have been able to bring out their own launchers reasonably successfully. People will go to their launchers if that's the only way to get anticipated games. Some of the most successful games started and remained outside of Steam.
The industry would look significantly different if Steam had an actual monopoly.
>How is it different than having to use GOG's website to install a purchase you made or download an updated version?
You buy game on GOG, dowload the installers, move it to a external HDD and you can install that game forever. This is the only thing that is actually DRM free.
Needless to say, you can't to that with ANY other store (be it Steam, Epic etc). All of them requires you to install their crap to access your bought games and they don't give you full offline installers.
> Needless to say, you can't to that with ANY other store (be it Steam, Epic etc). All of them requires you to install their crap to access your bought games and they don't give you full offline installers.
You don't get an installer but many games are DRM-free on Steam so you can just zip up the directory under steamapps/common and you're good to go. I have ~180 games on my storage HDD from Steam.
I always try to have an offline copy of every game i buy (and i try to buy them from "proper" DRM-free stores than Steam where possible) and while it'd be nice if there was an offline installer, it isn't really much of an issue in practice. The biggest issue with Steam is that you don't know if a game is DRM-free or not before buying it and trying to figure out yourself (which is why i prefer other stores like Zoom Platform and GOG in the first place).
When I hear this complaint it usually refers to games that provide certain features, multiplayer, rewards like skins, etc., only through the use of an online account.
I’m not saying those things aren’t worth complaining about, but frankly, they aren’t what come to mind when I think of problematic DRM in video games. What comes to mind is the inability to install and play a game without an internet connection. GOG still provides real installers, and remains the most prominent platform committed to it.
I think having an online account for multiplayer is a categorically different kind of requirement than having an online account for single player.
Until there’s a storefront that only sells games that include multiplayer servers that can be self‐hosted on your LAN, I think GOG’s explicit policy of no‐DRM installers is worth praising.
> Until there’s a storefront that only sells games that include multiplayer servers that can be self‐hosted on your LAN
IIRC from a discussion in their official Discord (by one of the people who work there) that is basically Zoom Platform[0]'s approach - if a game has a multiplayer component it has to allow you to run your own server.
Yes, that was mentioned in the thread I linked. According to the thread, both GOG and the game developer claimed it was a bug, and fixed it. This does not convince me of your statement that GOG has de facto eliminated its no‐DRM policy. A more plausible explanation is that GOG, not rolling in money like Steam, is subject to a certain amount of jank including high‐impact bugs that take longer than they should to get fixed. And GOG’s jankiness is a common complaint throughout these HN comments. I don’t think anyone contests that Valve provides a generally slick experience in comparison to its competitors.
> but their definition of optional includes "no multiplayer" as well.
I don't think this is ideal by any means, but I do think it's a reasonable compromise.
For better or worse, many/most modern multiplayer games are architected to use a centralized, company-run software. The server software is not built to be deployed by end-users, and getting it to that state would involve very significant engineering effort. It's just not a reasonable ask.
Steam also allows DRM free games, it's probably just not very popular with game developers.
One advantage of GoG is that they seem to actually care that old games on their store are actually working on new Windows versions, while on Steam it's more or less a gamble (at least you can return broken games though).
Like making me login again into Steam at random for whatever reason Valve come up with? I guess there was bug on older macOS where it asked me for password every single time I restarted Steam. Now this is fixed though. There is offline mode, but it's unreliable.
I know that some games might run without Steam, but it's not comfortable at all.
And yeah It's not a problem. It's just a difference between Steam and DRM-free platforms like GOG.
Even when it's working, eventually it stops working and you'll be forced to connect to the internet. I learned this the hard way once. When you're already dealing with the fact that you don't have internet access, having your access to your single player offline games taken from you is just cruel!
