this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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i'm away from my pc for the week but does steam not require you have it running for basically every game? even if it's a switch devs can flip it still falls under the same category imo but i am curious and don't know the full facts here
It depends on whether the game wants that or not; it must explicitly opt-in to that. If it wasn't Steam offering their extremely nonintrusive DRM, those games would likely use more intrusive DRM systems instead such as their own launchers or worse.
It also somehow doesn't feel right to call it "DRM" since it has none of the downsides of "traditional" DRM systems: It works offline, it doesn't cause performance issues and doesn't get in your way (at least it never even once got in mine).
I'd much rather launch the games through Steam anyways though. Do you manually open the games' locations and then open their executables or what? A nice GUI with favourites, friends and a big "play" button is just a lot better IMHO.
i see. as i said, i'd still consider it drm even in a case like yours where it never gives you trouble. i find performance suffers mostly in edge cases for me but it's often enough that i prefer to simply take steam out of the equation entirely.
i just keep a folder with shortcuts to the games i play on the desktop tbh, i am a bit of a slob that way. anyway this is all very no-stakes so i'm not trying to convince anyone of anything here. if you like something and it works for you then you should use it! i will continue to pirate because that's what works best for me.