mrkgnao: ...
All I can say is that I bought exclusively from GOG from 2009 to 2020 (my library is close to 2,000 items), whereas in the last year, 98% of my DRM-free/client-free purchases have been on steam (and its key resellers).
klgore: If the purchases are on steam, how are they drm & client-free? I presume steam installed and then played directly w/o steam? If so, how do you know ahead of time if it is one of the games that will work that way?
My experience with steam:
1. I have a steam library of ~
370 games, almost all of them DRM-free and client-free (or -freeable). It's small compared to my GOG library (~2000 games), but mostly because for many years I was under the impression that steam's client was mandatory (which it is not). I have bought only GOG games from 2009 to 2020, beginning to buy on steam only in 2021 (primarily because games there are often much cheaper (when sold in bundles) and more likely to be kept up-to-date, while still being DRM-free and client-free).
2. I have never installed the steam client (I don't like GUI clients, or GUI interfaces in general). I use a command-line tool called SteamCMD (like a dumbed down gogrepoc, which is what I use for GOG) to download and install games, which I then backup. I play only from the backups (just like I do for GOG). I don't consider command-line tools to be clients, as they are essential for being able to maintain one's library updated. I don't believe it's feasible to maintain it manually via a web browser, not for large libraries such as mine, so having that option on GOG is almost meaningless for me.
3. As for the question of knowing whether a steam game is fully DRM-free or client-free ahead of time (assuming there is no demo), it is indeed something of an issue (as it is for GOG games too, to a lesser degree). If one buys the game on steam itself, there is a simple solution --- buy it, test it, and if it is not DRM-free, immediately return it (I don't do that myself). But if one buys it elsewhere (I buy most of mine on Fanatical), one cannot do that. There are lists that people and websites maintain of such games, but they are woefully incomplete. I had looked at them initially, but don't bother any more. I do, however, check the steam game page, as steam does often (but not always) list major DRMs, such as Denuvo, there. It's my experience that only a small portion of steam games cannot be played without the client (i.e. the vast majority can). Of the ~
370 games I have on steam, only
5 proved unplayable without a client. That's a much much lower percentage than that of (steam and GOG) games I had bought and then abandoned because I ended up not liking them (or simply did not work on my PC). So my impression is that while it is a valid theoretical concern, it is not --- for me --- an actual one. Mind you, I'm not really interested in new AAA games, many of which are presumably DRM-protected, but then these are for the most part not available on GOG either.
4. When I say client-free or DRM-free, I don't necessarily mean free out of the box (hence the -freeable above). In my limited sample, about
63% are indeed so out of the box, the rest requiring some trivial non-game-specific modification (see below).
5. I use two tools to modify steam games that are not client-free or DRM-free out of the box:
- The goldberg/gbe DLLs (a pair of DLLs (32-bit and 64-bit) that replace the game's corresponding steam_api/_api64 DLLs, to remove client dependencies, such as achievements or leaderboards or cloud saving or DLCs or multiplayer,
not related to DRM). As the original goldberg tool is no longer being maintained, I am now using its successor gbe instead.
- The steamless program (an application that removes basic (and only basic) steam DRM (a.k.a. steamstub) from game exes)
6. My procedure for testing a steam game:
- try it as is; if works, done (about
63%)
- if not, try the goldberg/gbe DLL; if works, done (about
24.5%)
- if not, try steamless, with/without goldberg/gbe; if works, done (about
11%)
- if not, give up and ignore the game (only
5 so far, i.e. about
1.5%)
7. So, to summarise:
-
87.5% of my steam games were DRM-free out of the box (and an additional
11% were easily made so)
-
63% of my steam games were client-free out of the box (and an additional
35.5% were easily made so)
8. These statistics are based on games I have bought since 2021 (when I first began using steam) and have not changed significantly over the years.
9. An interesting observation: All
5 games that ended up not being DRM-free were from Far Eastern countries (
2 from China,
2 from Korea,
1 from Japan).
10. Details:
SteamCMD can be found here:
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamCMD and
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Command_line_options GBE can be found here:
https://github.com/Detanup01/gbe_fork Goldberg (no longer recommended, as it if fully superseded by GBE) can be found here:
https://gitlab.com/Mr_Goldberg/goldberg_emulator Steamless can be found here:
https://github.com/atom0s/Steamless/releases