The nice thing about Steam, is that it’s “too big to clamp down”:
People used to 🏴☠️ on the high seas, for many reasons.
Steam came up as a “single point of sale”, at the same time as Netflix was doing the same for movies and series.
Over time, companies tried to carve out chunks of the pie, restoring some of the original fragmentation…
…but while Netflix has been torn to shreds of its former glory, Steam is still the main “single point” for games…
…with a “single point” DRM
Steam’s DRM only exists because game updates keep coming out with constantly updating DRM versions. The moment Steam tried to act against its clients, and they decided to leave Steam, every Steam game copy at that moment, would get cracked all at once.
Maybe EA, MS, Nintendo, Sony, etc. don’t see that as a great thing… and that’s why they’ve been setting up their own stores… but I think it’s AWESOME! 😁
Most single player steam games are cracked anyway. The real danger of steam is the reliance on it for most multiplayer games. Though if it were to get particularly nasty I imagine adding aftermarket multiplayer functionality would probably be in the realm of possibility. If private WoW servers are a thing, it stands to reason that the same can be done with a lot of other games.
Some games already use P2P, or provide servers for the community to run, so only the private servers would need replicating. Even in that case, I’d argue that having “some” common API, would make it easier than chasing around everyone’s different implementations.
The nice thing about Steam, is that it’s “too big to clamp down”:
Steam’s DRM only exists because game updates keep coming out with constantly updating DRM versions. The moment Steam tried to act against its clients, and they decided to leave Steam, every Steam game copy at that moment, would get cracked all at once.
Maybe EA, MS, Nintendo, Sony, etc. don’t see that as a great thing… and that’s why they’ve been setting up their own stores… but I think it’s AWESOME! 😁
Most single player steam games are cracked anyway. The real danger of steam is the reliance on it for most multiplayer games. Though if it were to get particularly nasty I imagine adding aftermarket multiplayer functionality would probably be in the realm of possibility. If private WoW servers are a thing, it stands to reason that the same can be done with a lot of other games.
Steam supports different multiplayer server modes: Steamworks Multiplayer
Some games already use P2P, or provide servers for the community to run, so only the private servers would need replicating. Even in that case, I’d argue that having “some” common API, would make it easier than chasing around everyone’s different implementations.