[snet0]

This reminds me of something Gabe Newell famously said about Steam.

> "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."

I'd almost never pirate a game that was available on Steam. There are games I want to play that I don't see myself playing (unless I can be bothered to pirate), just because they're on some ugly, useless, slow, cumbersome and frankly worse-than-literally-nothing "launcher". I'd rather play a game through Steam than just through an executable, but I can't say the same for literally any other launcher/game service.

[mouzogu]

Afaik only GOG sells games without DRM. I have bought EA/Ubishit games on Steam which when you open the game, it installs Origin/UbiWhatever and then run through them only.

[dleslie]

A few years ago Steam began showing labeling on store pages for games that use third party DRM; and if you buy a game that has it and you did so unwittingly, then you can return it without issue provided you played less than two hours and you bought it within the last two weeks.

[karpierz]

This return policy is true regardless of whether it has DRM or whether you knew.

You can return any Steam game, for any reason, provided you've played it fewer than two hours and purchased it within the last two weeks.

[sorry_outta_gas]

the refund policy is one of the reasons I buy games on steam first over other stores, I tend to buy a lot of games for whatever reason and end up refunding 5-6 a year for various reasons after playing under two hours

Microsoft only allots you one or two a year or something which isn't enough considering how misleading game marketing is mixed with the prices

[nu11ptr]

+1 for GOG. I don't play games much anymore, but I still collect some of the older ones I enjoy on GOG knowing that there is no DRM. I tried steam and purchased a few games, but honestly I prefer to just have the game flat out without needing a "client" to get them, so while many people praise Steam... I'll pass.

[cruano]

Steam doesn't force you to be DRM-free like GOG, but they definitely do have DRM-free games. You can launch them from the .exe without internet or Steam installed, but it's up to the publisher

[goosedragons]

TBF Valve and Steam were IIRC the first or very close to first to have a game that required online activation (not including like MMOs) with Half-Life 2. Steam was incredibly frustrating for me as a kid stuck with dial up as the offline mode was tremendously broken and the install DVDs always fetched large portions (for dial-up anyways) of the game from some server. Plus you had to update games upon install even if you didn't want to which meant longer downloads.

[georgeecollins]

Steam has DRM, the Apple Store has DRM and other services like GoG don't. Where do game developers put their games? The places with DRM.

Unpopular opinion, down votes incoming: Just because you don't like the way a company chooses to distribute software doesn't make piracy right or justified.