Finally having a chance to play with SteamCMD, discovering its quirks.

First off, I discovered I need to provide the game title as the final folder name, and whatever path you provide a 'steamapps' folder gets created there as well ... so no point me using the path E:\GAMES\steamapps\common as I ended up with E:\GAMES\steamapps\common\steamapps

I'm still playing around with what I can do path wise, as my next attempt ended up with the game being installed in an almost random folder of the drive I ran SteamCMD.exe and my BAT file in. I am guessing that might be the current working directory.

D:\Projects\12 is better than 6

https://store.steampowered.com/app/410110/12_is_Better_Than_6/

I am running SteamCMD with a BAT file from - D:\Projects\SteamCMD

I could not login as anonymous and I also needed to provide a Steam Guard code, all on the command-line. Interestingly I had to pick a game that had two install options, so I got both (Low & Hi), and two ZIP files were downloaded and both automatically extracted, leaving the ZIP files behind.

D:\Projects\12 is better than 6\12ibt6Hi.zip
extracted to D:\Projects\12 is better than 6\12ibt6Hi

D:\Projects\12 is better than 6\12ibt6Low.zip
extracted to D:\Projects\12 is better than 6\12ibt6Low

Both folders contain lots of OGG files and an EXE file etc.

The Steam Fandom page says this game is DRM-Free, and I got it as a freebie some time ago, and was trying it first, because it said I only needed 300 Mb of space for it. In reality I needed almost 4 times that ... so lucky it ended up where it did, as the drive I wanted it to go to may have been pushing the space limit.

I've not tried running the game yet.

So anyway, having the ZIP files clearly means I don't need to use my program to ZIP the game folder up. Though I could contain both zip files in a self-extracting EXE file I guess.

No shortcut files were created, so to play the game I guess I just need to run the 12ibt6.exe file in either folder.

EDIT
Second game I tried, there was no ZIP file involved or left behind.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/435790/10_Second_Ninja_X/

Also listed as DRM-Free and just needed 307 Mb of space, though 350 Mb listed as required.

And yes I did need to use the full path in my BAT file, to get it where my other installed Steam games reside.

"E:\GAMES\steamapps\common\10 Second Ninja X"

And once again a 'steamapps' sub-folder was created, though it only contains 662 bytes after the game finished installing.

Anyway, I seem to have it all sussed now. Though how long that Steam Guard code works for I don't know.

Next thing to do, is to implement all that into my program, including the facility for specifying a Steam Guard code.

Steam Games List v1.0 has gone live.

This is the first release of the fully working program.

DOWNLOAD - https://github.com/Twombs/Steam-Games-List/releases/tag/v1.0

Please see prior posts for further detail or post a question here.

I've done minimal testing so far, especially with downloading of games from Steam, just repeating the two earlier games mentioned, but with my program second time around.

I've made some additions to the program for correcting illegal file name characters, using my own judgment in regard to replacements, if any. There is still the very real probability that any changes won't align with what Steam does when your games are downloaded using the Steam Client, but at least they should work okay with my program using SteamCMD.

Feedback is welcome, especially if you can improve something.

Enjoy!

Shadowgate https://store.steampowered.com/app/294440/Shadowgate/ is DRM free.

Thanks. Already have it on GOG (since 2014). Never even installed it. Sigh.

Real talk, though, how do you handle this in practice?

I've noticed that you can personalize a news page on Steam, which includes patch notes. Presumably devs would have to do these manually, so I don't know if that's a reliable source for getting notified of patched in DRM. Would steamcmd have a function to display these patch notes and roll back versions if necessary?

Point being: it would be very nice to have a practicable DRM-free option besides GOG, though up until this point you could be reasonably sure of your games not being DRMed after the fact here. So far it seems like you'd have to backup your games with Steam before each update to be on the safe side. Which is doable, but suboptimal. Is there a way around that or would you treat the few times you might be hit with post-launch-DRM as a "shit happens" scenario?

I have very little experience of steam (only four months). Was there ever a case where steam actually introduced DRM into a previously long-time-DRM-free game?

For me, steam and GOG are more or less the same - mixed DRM-free and DRM stores with no guaranteed way of knowing which is which. The big difference is that steam games (with bundles) cost about 5-10 times less than GOG games (and steam games are much more likely to be up-to-date). So if I buy a bundle and one of the games ends up being DRMed (which has already happened to me), I simply delete the game from my steam library (another thing that cannot be done on GOG) and forget about it. And if I buy the DRM game directly from steam (also happened to me once), I can immediately refund it and get my money back within hours (not weeks).

One of the reasons I used to buy games on GOG, rather than elsewhere, is so I wouldn't have to check whether a game has DRM when I buy it or whether it is up-to-date when I want to play it. If I have to anyhow, I'd rather not pay GOG's exorbitant prices and suffer its poor service.

Dex¹ was mentioned here and that's also what happened with Doom Eternal². I might be mistaken, but I could have sworn Crysis got Securomed in an update, too, though I don't have any source for that. I would assume it's the exception, not the rule, but it can and does happen.

¹ https://www.gog.com/forum/general/drm_free_on_steam_vs_gog_poll/post7
² https://www.pcgamesn.com/doom-eternal/denuvo-review-bomb

Yeah, that's quite understandable. I'm slowly getting there myself.

Updated to Steam Games List v1.1

DOWNLOAD - https://github.com/Twombs/Steam-Games-List/releases/tag/v1.1

It occurred to me I should add another couple of features and a change to an existing one. Something I noted while downloading another game, is that even though my program specified 'Aegis Defenders' the actual folder name created by SteamCMD was 'aegis defenders'. I did not pick up that change to lower case before. I have no idea why it is doing that, and the path is specified in quotes too.

Please see prior posts for further detail or post a question here.

Feedback is welcome, especially if you can improve something.

Enjoy!

Yes quite a few times. I already mentioned Dex. If you manage to wade through the 1,700 posts on the Steam games you can play without the Steam client list, you'll see quite a few more examples such as Superhot, Oxenfree, Wuppo and Deponia The Complete Journey that all had DRM patched in. I know there are more though I can't remember off the top of my head. Others still on the list had DRM patched in to just the Windows versions but not Linux (eg, possibly Penumbra's, Shadowrun Hong Kong, etc).

Thank you. That's good to know.

Not before time I guess, I have now relocated discussion about my Steam Games List program to its own thread (topic), which is not just about my program.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/getting_drmfree_games_at_steam_making_it_simpler_better

A bit troubling and problematic that.
We are already trusting those who have listed Steam games as DRM-Free, and the only way to know for sure, is to test them yourself on a pristine non Steam PC ... to be entirely sure that is. It would never be wise to overwrite an earlier backup either after dealing with some update, so even more storage space needed or more time testing.

One could be backing up a whole lot of the games, never really knowing whether a lot of the storage space being used, is just being wasted. That Steam Fandom page, says quite a lot of my games at Steam are DRM-Free, such that I would need to dedicate an external drive to them, and then at least one more for a second backup.