[dfox]

I have for a long time avoided steam because of this perception of it being an DRM loaded bunch of crap. Then I had actually done some analysis on steam and found out, that the whole thing does not do anything that can be called DRM, it is in fact really an package manager and framework for network/social functionality. As mostly fulltime linux user and developer I´d rather see software from steam than software using flex-lm (which is the case for most commercial software for linux now and great pain in the ass).

[shardling]

There was a point in the past when you needed an internet connection to play downloaded Steam games -- I think that's where the DRM rep comes from.

But for at least a few years, you've been able to launch steam without an internet connection.

[Deestan]

Unless the steam process shuts down unexpectedly, or you suddenly lose internet connection, or your computer reboots too quickly for Steam to keep up. Then Steam will decide it needs to ... validate something ... with the online servers before allowing offline mode. Far from idea.

[ZoFreX]

That is up to the games - they can choose to hook into Steam's API for that DRM, or roll their own DRM (or both, thank you Ubisoft), or they can ship without any protection.