So, I bought the current Humble Bundle because I knew Scribblenauts Unlimited was DRM-free going into it (it even tells you certain things can't be saved without Steam running, but you can play the entire game without a problem), and I wanted to support that. To my surprise, though, I found a way to run Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY DRM-free without Steam, and without any cracks.

Go into your Binaries folder where Arkham Asylum GOTY is installed and make a shortcut to ShippingPC-BmGame.exe. When that's made, right-click the new shortcut and click Properties, and add " -nosteam" (without quotes; space before hyphen) to the end of the Target field. The game will launch without Steam. I just took a shot in the dark, almost jokingly, and it actually worked.

There is one small catch: Save data saves and loads perfectly, but the files are kept in a completely separate folder than if you're launching the game through Steam. The save data created when logged into Steam and the save data created when playing without Steam CANNOT be switched, or the game will crash. In other words, if you want to play the game without Steam, you need to play the WHOLE GAME without Steam, or you'll need to start a different save file.

Personally, I don't care about Steam achievements or anything, so playing without Steam is definitely what I'm doing. I bought the bundle for Scribblenauts, but the fact that Batman can be played without Steam is also fantastic news.

Nice catch. Might be worth trying this with other games not on bazilisek's list. It's not entirely unthinkable that developers may have made it possible to run release builds without Steam for testing purposes.

Don't be too loud about it. They might patch it out! ;)

I'm just curious - is this something that worked on some other game before, something that you found through inspecting the binaries (like using a 'strings' utility), or you actually just tried it out of the blue?

Disappointed, I thought this thread might have been about Humble trying to redeem themselves.

There are a couple of games that don't need the Steam client to play, and while that is certainly better than having to, I still wouldn't call it DRM-free. You still need the client to get access to your game and there is no clean way of backing it up. At this points it's just a one-time online authentication, but it is still DRM.

Actually, you can just zip the game and do whatever with it. I just copied the entire installation folder to an external hard drive, and I was able to play the game straight from that drive on a PC that never had Steam installed on it in the first place.

I do agree that it sucks that you NEED Steam to get the game in the first place, but it's really no different from making an account on GOG to purchase and download games. A one-time activation is certainly much different than a one-time-per-installation activation.

I specifically said clean backup, as opposed to such a solution, which would be "dirty". If the installer is used to install any frameworks, DLLs or create necessary registry entries, then the dirty way won't work.

Secret BTA bonus.

Thanks for telling us. I might reinstall Steam later tonight on one of my systems and go ahead and download the games before they find out and patch it out.

Edit: Oops, City is the BTA one. Still nice info to hear about.

You get a +1, just for going the distance :-)
That's grand to hear!

So even if we happened to have the Bat via Steam outside of the bundle this should still work right? I assume it all ends up being the same version.

I will be trying this over the weekend.

Yes always nice to know about tweaks to make our lives as the consumer easier! Thanks for sharing

Ah yes. This appears to work just fine for AA at least. Sweet catch.

Hopefully they won't patch it out before I get AC downloaded.

Why would they even bother now. They know what people think.

EDIT::: They could not even be bothered to throw in any soundtracks with this bundle.