[wuest]

> Steam's DRM is reasonable.

This has yet to be seen. For a while, Steam was seen as a way to keep other DRM at bay. Bioshock changed that (I'm not aware of 3rd party DRM on steam titles prior; open to correction here). Now Steam is a distribution platform which also incorporates DRM which may, or may not, result in customers getting screwed, while games distributed through Steam may choose to incorporate additional DRM. The sad truth is that we simply don't know if Steam's DRM will ultimately screw over their customers. That will be seen at some point in the future, when maintaining servers is no longer financially viable.

[networked]

>I'm not aware of 3rd party DRM on steam titles prior; open to correction here

I normally check The Big List of 3rd Party DRM on Steam [1] before I buy a game there.

I also have to note that Steam itself doesn't mandate DRM and can be used to distribute DRM-free games [2]; the DRM component is called Steamworks.

[1] http://steamdrm.flibitijibibo.com/index.php?page=DRM_Lists/T...

[2] See http://www.gog.com/forum/general/list_of_drmfree_games_on_st...

[talmand]

Compared with what's out there, Steam's DRM is quite reasonable. The main reason is that you can install your games as many times as you want on as many computers as you want, it just attempts to limit how many computers can access the game at the same time. It would be even more reasonable if it allowed two computers to be signed into the same account at the same time and allow two different games to be played at the same time. For now you have to set one computer to offline mode to make this work, but even then that's a decent compromise.

But the main difference with Steam is that it offers features that are beneficial to the gamer that excuses the DRM in the first place. Plus there's the fact that for the most part the DRM is hidden from the gamer, it just works.

Although, it does allow for another third-party DRM to be involved which just sucks. Especially when the extra DRM actually cancels out features of Steam such as limited number of installs. The worst is when a game is on Steam and has Windows for Live involved. GTAIV was just awful; sign into Steam, sign into Windows for Live, sign into Rockstar's Social Club to get full functionality. Now that's just stupid.

Where Steam can possibly screw their customers is if you piss off Valve for some reason then they can ban your account, which means you lose access to all of your games. But this policy exists on other similar platforms such as Origin. Personally I think this would eventually not hold up in court as I can see them removing your access to a particular game for some reason, but not the whole collection you paid for. Especially since Steam is a delivery platform; it would be as if you did a credit card chargeback on the game store that cheated you in some way and then they somehow took back every game you ever bought from them. But so far, this type of case hasn't entered into the court system as far as I know.

[manicdee]

Yeah, that little bit about "piss off Valve, lose access to everything you bought through Steam" also translates to, "Valve goes out of business, lose access to everything you bought through Steam".

Sure, they promise that if they do shutter the business they'll unlock all purchases. But that assumes the business is closed down in an orderly fashion.

[talmand]

You are quite right. It's also a good strategy to stay in business, "Buy your games from us to insure we stay in business so you can continue playing the games you bought from us."