Agreed. I don't understand how people can think that the Steam Workshop has been anything other than an unmitigated disaster for the modding community. It gates off a load of content that you can only get by having a game on Steam - the entire point of it is to force people to buy from Steam rather than competitors.

just a techniality - Valve only get get your monies if buy the game on Steam. if you get the game from anywhere else (as the developer here is offering steam keys to people who have bought it), then Valve is not getting a single cent, so that will not fund "Gabe Newell's monopolistic empire "

I'm referring in this case to the black market of CS:GO skins, with which Valve makes an avalanche of money by being the source of said skins and which it does nothing to stop, but rather indirectly promotes it.

which has nothing at all to do with this thread.

and you are wrong - if these items are sold on the black (or even grey) market, then Valve does not get a cent from it either. they only get monies on items sold via the Steam market.

Yes, I was sleep deprived when I wrote that. I'm really not trying to come here and beat anyone over the head that steam is better or anything. I was just trying to back up Sun and help alleviate confusion. It sucks that the game is being removed from your preferred platform, I really do feel bad. I'm also not trying to talk sense into anybody here, I just want people to still, if possible, give the game a shot since there have been a ton of updates to the in progress build of the game. And since Andrew is willing to give keys to anyone who bought it here I figured it would be best to help spread that message. Once again apologies if it came off as me being rude, im just really passionate about this game!

They were discussing reasons to avoid Steam, so this may be an additional one.

The skin one is a complex system and Steam still benefits because as long as there's interest on the game it continues to make exorbitant amounts of money on the resale of these useless skins, but yeah that's a whole other off-topic discussion.

Fair enough, I'll stop being snarky then. But I have used Steam in the past and I really have no interest in doing so again. If Andrew feels like releasing the game on any DRM-free store (i.e. one that doesn't require a client to install the game or lock mods behind a wall) then I'll take notice.

if Steam do not see a single cent of the sales outside of the steam marked, just how do they make " exorbitant amounts of money on the resale of these useless skins"? or are you goiing back on your previous "black market" statment now?

and if people want to buy and sell these skins and find enjoyment in doing so - who are you to say they are having fun the wrong way?

I don't have the time and desire to discuss it, there have been journalistic investigations and there are plenty of videos on Youtube on the issue if you are interested that explain the phenomenon much better than I could.

For the rest, everyone can do what they want, but that market is the progenitor of NFTs, created to make money on idiots except for the fact that for the transactions you don't need complicated algorithms that increase the global warming.

This is your personal experience.

Most indie games are actually using the Steam DRM wrapper. As I mentioned before you just have a look at certain websites to see this. It doesn't matter here how easy it is to circumvent a DRM method. In the past you had games where you just had to change one byte to remove the copy protection method. But this doesn't change anything. These games were sold with a copy protection method. And this is also true with the "light" DRM method of Steam. I am using a technical definition of what is DRM or not. Important here is the state after you are doing this: buy the game, download the game, install the game, run the game executable. The game should run without an internet connection and any form of additional software like the Steam or EGS client. If this fails the game is DRMed. (Of course, you have to exclude game bugs or hardware problems here.)

There are games on Steam where you can change a DRMed state by just removing a file. But even then the game is DRMed, the manipulated version is not. The technical state after the installation is what matters and not the state after any kind of manipulation.

I don't criticize anyone here who is trying to buy DRM-free games on Steam/EGS or games where you easily can remove the DRM. The only thing I criticize is "Most Steam games are DRM-free". This is a completely false impression. Most Steam games are not DRM-free. If you had written that you have found lots of games on Steam that either DRM-free or are easy to crack then I wouldn't have said anything here.

you can't do this without fallacies, can you? NFT's has (again) nothing to do with this, neither the original sibject nor the sale of CS:GO skins

There are many things Steam is doing wrong, and many things you can critsise Valve for, but making up shit do your stance more harm than good. 3

Ok CS:GO skins reseller. XD

Not to be the devil's advocate, but how is it a "Black Market", when you are officially allowed to trade these things via Steam for real money? It's simply a "market". Heck, I wish it allowed users to trade owned games too (transfer ownership), that would be the digital equivalent of "used game discs", especially for games that are no longer for sale.

Yeah, I'd gladly re-buy it on any other DRM-Free platform, as long as it's DRM-Free with an offline installer. Maybe when the game's finished.

This video analyzes how Valve is profiting from the unregulated gambling scenes surrounding games like CS:GO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMmNy11Mn7g

i don't think you understand what that video is about. can you explain in your own words how Valve are actually making mony from the gambling scene?