Some game developers advertise this as a feature of their game on Steam. There are a couple lists out there that help find DRM-free games on Steam, etc. I would roughly estimate that more than 20% of my Steam library does not have DRM attached to it. That was a Linux game, though, and could be slightly different. I also recall "Tyranny" doing a free week-end, after which I could still launch the game trough the executable (although steam refused to launch it). I don't have good examples in mind right now, and I would need to double check, but I am pretty sure I was able to launch Supreme Commander 2 trough wine directly with the game executable, without launching Steam some time ago. Valve has their DRM solution (, "CEG"), but the DRM is fully optional, as it needs to be applied by the game developer to their executable before they upload their game. People look at services like Steam and think, "yeah, this is acceptable. You can take a great product and add DRM in a way that doesn't completely break it, but it's still pretty much always a strict downgrade in user experience. That's what people mean when they complain about DRM. So while Steam is an excellent product, Steam without DRM would still be a better product than it is right now. The DRM part of it doesn't add any value to the consumer. But Steam's DRM isn't essential for cloud saves, or for the community workshop, or for the storefront, or for the library management tools. Of course, platforms like Itch don't have cloud saves. Steam is arguably one of the best DRM solutions out there, but even the best solution on the market still has worse uptime and reliability than a store that just provides users with a bunch of DRM free downloads that they can launch offline whenever they want. I would generally agree that this is acceptable, but it's still a step backwards from Itch and GOG, where my library literally never has a lapse in service. > A very occasional lapse in service is acceptable for entertainment platforms. Steam had a network problem and didn't even let me enter the offline mode. A few hours ago, I wanted to play a game, but guess what. Nevertheless, that would not be a problem if I could listen to 'my' music with a normal mp3 player. The good news is that it seems to happen less frequently lately. Every few weeks, Spotify pushes a broken version of their web player to the website and from one moment to the other, I can't listen to 'my' music anymore until they fix it. On Netflix, I don't get 1080 at all with my browser, even if I pay for 4k. The problem is that I can't see if I can watch the HD version before I buy the movie. When I want to watch movies on Amazon Prime Video, there are some movies I can't watch in HD, even if I paid for HD (so the movie obviously exists in HD probably dependent on the rights holder). I mean, if it would actually work I would say okay, at least we have a solution that everyone is somehow happy with. Super Smash Bros.DRM is just a huge pile of shit.Star Wars Battlefront Renegade Squadron (Emulation).Star Wars Battlefront Elite Squadron (Emulation).
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