There are better things, just like modular phones are better than iPhones, but consumers are driven by propaganda and herd mentality and they don’t care the least if the product they are buying denies them autonomy. If consumers were smart, pay-to-win features and battle passes would have never become a thing.
“You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”
You can buy a game license on Steam. Your only access to it is through them, you can only install and play it through their store. You need to have their program running to check your license and also probing your system to see what you are running and logging your activity. If the company so decides, they can remove your access to the game because you never bought it, they only gave you a license. This market model removes player’s autonomy and keep everything locked out of players control.
Or you can buy a game on GOG. After you buy the game you don’t need GOG for anything, you have full control of the installation file and can back it up however you want and install wherever you want. You can use their launcher if you want to log your activity for social features but that’s optional. You bought the game and have your copy, publisher and distributor can fuck off forever.
Yet, people believe not owning and controlling the games you paid for is “better”…
(not knowing how games used to be, and what online stores have taken from you, is a tragedy)
Oh, the game is not available on GOG? That’s because the publisher doesn’t want consumers to have any control over the game, they want to control how, when and where you can play it, including revoking licenses if your own self-hosted private servers don’t follow the moderation rules the company wants, and if you still buy it you are just keeping this anti-consumer market model viable - just like consumers made lootboxes, pay-to-win, battle passes, single player games requiring online verification, and everything that enshitified gaming viable. Market share is no metric for service quality.
Iv been just zipping up my steam games and removing the single dll that hooks the overlay from my games for literally over a decade and those games just work on any computer I put them on basically.
The only steam games that it doesn’t work are ones that dev opted into the steam drm. It’s not remotely mandatory, it’s a developer choice.
Valve gives zero fucks and steam could be entirely drm free right now if devs just choose to not use the drm option.
Valve is a market place, they make no actual perfect or pressure towards drm or no drm. Which frankly is what it should be. The marketplace shouldn’t be forcing it’s view point on the people selling their goods there if the marketplace didnt make or help make it.
Functionally the only difference between steam and gog is steam allows drm games. They arnt mandatory.
Valve is the ONLY optional marketplace like this. Every other market is either no drm no matter what which is fine, or only drm which is awful.
Seriously the majority of what steams “drm” people think of is just the fucking dll hooking into the client for the overlay, cloud, community, and market place. If you don’t need that shit you can just remove it and you have a portable game.
There are better things, just like modular phones are better than iPhones, but consumers are driven by propaganda and herd mentality and they don’t care the least if the product they are buying denies them autonomy. If consumers were smart, pay-to-win features and battle passes would have never become a thing.
lol the downvotes
“You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”
You can buy a game license on Steam. Your only access to it is through them, you can only install and play it through their store. You need to have their program running to check your license and also probing your system to see what you are running and logging your activity. If the company so decides, they can remove your access to the game because you never bought it, they only gave you a license. This market model removes player’s autonomy and keep everything locked out of players control.
Or you can buy a game on GOG. After you buy the game you don’t need GOG for anything, you have full control of the installation file and can back it up however you want and install wherever you want. You can use their launcher if you want to log your activity for social features but that’s optional. You bought the game and have your copy, publisher and distributor can fuck off forever.
Yet, people believe not owning and controlling the games you paid for is “better”…
(not knowing how games used to be, and what online stores have taken from you, is a tragedy)
Oh, the game is not available on GOG? That’s because the publisher doesn’t want consumers to have any control over the game, they want to control how, when and where you can play it, including revoking licenses if your own self-hosted private servers don’t follow the moderation rules the company wants, and if you still buy it you are just keeping this anti-consumer market model viable - just like consumers made lootboxes, pay-to-win, battle passes, single player games requiring online verification, and everything that enshitified gaming viable. Market share is no metric for service quality.
Iv been just zipping up my steam games and removing the single dll that hooks the overlay from my games for literally over a decade and those games just work on any computer I put them on basically.
The only steam games that it doesn’t work are ones that dev opted into the steam drm. It’s not remotely mandatory, it’s a developer choice.
Valve gives zero fucks and steam could be entirely drm free right now if devs just choose to not use the drm option.
Valve is a market place, they make no actual perfect or pressure towards drm or no drm. Which frankly is what it should be. The marketplace shouldn’t be forcing it’s view point on the people selling their goods there if the marketplace didnt make or help make it.
Functionally the only difference between steam and gog is steam allows drm games. They arnt mandatory.
Valve is the ONLY optional marketplace like this. Every other market is either no drm no matter what which is fine, or only drm which is awful.
Seriously the majority of what steams “drm” people think of is just the fucking dll hooking into the client for the overlay, cloud, community, and market place. If you don’t need that shit you can just remove it and you have a portable game.
People really hate hearing facts that disagree with their preconceived notions.