Valve CEO Steaming About DRM

Valve Co-Founder and CEO Gabe Newell, the great folks who brought us Steam, spoke at an award show about the downsides of heavily restrictive DRM. Anyone else think the timing is just perfect?

I think 'If you have DRM, just make it as painless as possible' is an axiom most of us can get behind, isn't it?

Good for Gabe. Maybe the only way there will be balance on this is if enough big wigs in the industry sound off and create pressure of sorts.

Newell is very right, which is why Valve is so successful and people buy Orange Box, L4D, CS, and other titles, because they know with Valve behind them, they will be supported, although in the case of the L4D series, maybe not as much as past efforts like TF2

Steam is DRM that I barely notice and it has great functions like the friends list, making it easy to see what your friends are playing and jump in games with them, plus it allows you to set up social groups like the one we have here on [H] for BFBC2

He's right, Ubisoft's brand of DRM isn't what customers want, and it's gonna show in the lackluster sales of AC 2 for PC, which of course they will blame on piracy

I don't pirate or buy products from companies like Ubisoft or Activision Blizzard

fuck em and I'm not paying for or pirating a damn thing from them.

Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 will probably be good, but I'll see them as shitty games simply because they came from Activision Blizzard.

Preach on Gabe, Steam provides just the right amount of DRM to be painless to me and still protect the publishers content. The problem will be all the people who will still pirate the Ubisoft titles in some kind of self-righteous protest. All this does is justify the DRM in the minds of the publishers, vote with your wallet and your principals.

Originally Posted by cygnusx-1

Preach on Gabe, Steam provides just the right amount of DRM to be painless to me and still protect the publishers content. The problem will be all the people who will still pirate the Ubisoft titles in some kind of self-righteous protest. All this does is justify the DRM in the minds of the publishers, vote with your wallet and your principals.

True, but in Ubisofts case seems the only people actually playing the games are the ones who pirate it

I was completely turned off any sort of DRM ever since the 200d release of "In Your Honor" from the Foo Fighters. When it was put into a PC, it caught me off guard by automatically installing (by way of autorun) some sort of Sony DRM program. I wasn't asked if I wanted to install it or was even notified until after the fact that it had installed.

Since then, I've been very wary of any DRM from Steam. Its also probably why the only games I have bought have been from Valve.

I know there was a recall (or class action lawsuit) on the Foo Fighters album to fix the issue, but I figured it was more hassle (paying the postage and being without the discs) then it is remembering to hold shit down before putting the disc in (or disabling autoplay). Besides, I've never had a need for the discs in my PC since I ripped the album to mp3's once I knew what it did.

Edit: 200d should be 2005.

What the hell does Sony have to do with Valve?

Originally Posted by Fail

Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 will probably be good, but I'll see them as shitty games simply because they came from Activision Blizzard.

Originally Posted by Zellio2010

What the hell does Sony have to do with Valve?

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Sony is the record label who chose a form of DRM that heavily restricted the use of the CD when played on a PC. Because of this bad experience, I have avoided any game (on CD or Steam) that uses its own DRM in addition to Steam (ie SecureROM). I'm sure one day I'll be forced to play a game that uses some sort of DRM in the future (due to me wanting to game with my friends) that will probably make me change my views on DRM, but for now, I avoid.

I am thankful that Valve doesn't rely on anything else but Steam as DRM.

Originally Posted by Doom4life

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Sony is the record label who chose a form of DRM that heavily restricted the use of the CD when played on a PC. Because of this bad experience, I have avoided any game (on CD or Steam) that uses its own DRM in addition to Steam (ie SecureROM). I'm sure one day I'll be forced to play a game that uses some sort of DRM in the future (due to me wanting to game with my friends) that will probably make me change my views on DRM, but for now, I avoid.

I am thankful that Valve doesn't rely on anything else but Steam as DRM.

There's a big difference between DRM (even the ubisoft bullshit) and the rootkit that Sony installed. There was a DRM from a few years ago Starforce that also was a rootkit.

If you've played pretty much any PC game in the past decade you've likely used some type of DRM even if it was just a CD check (usually securom based).

Originally Posted by darkpaw

If you've played pretty much any PC game in the past decade you've likely used some type of DRM even if it was just a CD check (usually securom based).

I just hope that enough people understand that SecuRom is not just a CD Check. It wouldn't even be necessary to have it on Steam as well (since you get no CD/DVDs) but games on there will have it, too. (Bioshock, for example)

If you are any person who likes to keep close tabs on what is running on their system, SecuRom will break apps on your OS (Process Explorer) or if you like to have separate drives for separate purposes... say... A DVD Recorder for burning and a DVD Rom for playing to keep the recorder from getting too much wear and tear, or dirt and dust inside... SecuRom will also bitch at that and refuse to let the game run.

Because EVERYONE who has two Rom drives is a dirty pirate.

Like most in here, Steam is as far as I'm willing to go. If it involves any additional DRM, I don't get it. Period.

Video of the full speech is here.

Originally Posted by Kaleb_Abebe

Valve Co-Founder and CEO Gabe Newell, the great folks who brought us Steam, spoke at an award show about the downsides of heavily restrictive DRM. Anyone else think the timing is just perfect?

Gabe is dead on. I don't think requiring a user to log on to play a game is bad, but requiring them to be logged in 100% of the time to play is. The former is a generally reasonable method that may slow down the pirates and thus increase sales (which is good if you want PC gaming to live on forever). The latter means that when my internet goes down, I can't play my favorite game, even though there's nothing in the game that really requires an internet connection, other than the DRM.

Originally Posted by Kaleb_Abebe

True, but in Ubisofts case seems the only people actually playing the games are the ones who pirate it

So far in the case of SH5 and AC2, the DRM seems to be holding pirates at bay and many people are enjoying the game.

I don't like the DRM nor will I support it nor purchase any more Ubisoft games that have this, but your comment is purely fud at this time.

Originally Posted by Fail

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Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 will probably be good, but I'll see them as shitty games simply because they came from Activision Blizzard.

You are of course entitled to your opinion, but I think it's a huge mistake to discount Blizzard games simply because they are owned by Activision. What has Blizzard as a developer ever done to doubt them, or is it just the Activision thing?

Originally Posted by techrat

If you are any person who likes to keep close tabs on what is running on their system, SecuRom will break apps on your OS (Process Explorer) or if you like to have separate drives for separate purposes... say... A DVD Recorder for burning and a DVD Rom for playing to keep the recorder from getting too much wear and tear, or dirt and dust inside... SecuRom will also bitch at that and refuse to let the game run.

Because EVERYONE who has two Rom drives is a dirty pirate.

An example (NSFW and might wanna turn down the volume a bit).

u know i've always found gabe to be very level headed when he speaks up. the man makes a lot of sense. and some great games too, love me some HL, HL2 and L4D!

Originally Posted by techrat

I just hope that enough people understand that SecuRom is not just a CD Check. It wouldn't even be necessary to have it on Steam as well (since you get no CD/DVDs) but games on there will have it, too. (Bioshock, for example)

If you are any person who likes to keep close tabs on what is running on their system, SecuRom will break apps on your OS (Process Explorer) or if you like to have separate drives for separate purposes... say... A DVD Recorder for burning and a DVD Rom for playing to keep the recorder from getting too much wear and tear, or dirt and dust inside... SecuRom will also bitch at that and refuse to let the game run.

Because EVERYONE who has two Rom drives is a dirty pirate.

Like most in here, Steam is as far as I'm willing to go. If it involves any additional DRM, I don't get it. Period.

There's a lot of different variations on securom and what it does. I've never had any issue with securom bitching about 2 different drives. I've always had at least 2 and sometimes 3. That said, I did have an issue with the version that came on Civ4 where it would not work at all with my original SATA DVD drive. I had to leave an IDE drive hooked up for a long time just to play that so I'm not saying these types of DRM cause no problems because they still do.

I also will not buy anything with either a) limited installs or b) any kind of permanent authentication check ala the new ubisoft BS. I buy every game that Stardock releases just to support their model even if I'm not a huge fan of that particular game genre.

Originally Posted by cygnusx-1

Preach on Gabe, Steam provides just the right amount of DRM to be painless to me and still protect the publishers content.

Oh, come on...

The only reason Valve's Steam releases doesn't have more draconian DRM is because Gabe ate it...