Have you people heard of Steam's new sharing-feature?

If they really do this, then anybody who has shared access to my library can play the games I own. To play those games, they must be downloaded and installed. I don't think Valve will create a CEG-based starter for every shared-accessed game, because that would be a huge amount of work. So in theory the borrower can start the games on our list and play them even when the lender is playing.

As I see it, that could be legally ... not so great. I don't want to do that but the possibility came to my mind. Any opinions?

No we haven't, please tell us more about this wondrous new feature.

You can't play when the owner is playing. It's one person accessing the library at a time, it's not per game. I'm actually expecting it to only work if you're online.

Easiest comparison is probably to look at it like a console with different user accounts. Each has their own User name and stats/achievements etc, the games on the console are shared for the accounts, but only one person can use the console at a time.

Man, no need for sarcasm. Have you read my post entirely? My first question was an introduction, you usually write something like that at the beginning of a text.

Anyway, I wanted to point out the outcome of this feature according to this specific thread-topic. The terms of sharing shouldn't be discussed here - the link you posted should be sufficient for that. So my question from last post was: Is it possible to bypass the sharing-restriction by means of the list of this thread?

I think it's inteded this way, but you can't stream a 10GB game every session, so it has to be installed on your PC. That means the data are local on your HDD and you can work with them offline. And when the games are CEG-free, you could play them as well offline.

Basically you mean pirating the game....

not really. If that was the case, then any list of any DRM free software is a list to pirate. You could also argue that this list already exists, much more conveniently at Pirates Bay, since the pirates would not bother that much with steam to start with anyway. All the DRM free games are already floating around, "free" to grab for anyone.

Bottom line is, and always will be, pirates will pirate, and honest people will not, no matter what you do.

Every Steam game is DRM free on the pirate bay. That's what makes DRM so stupid.

Do games with legal workarounds qualify?

If yes - Tropico 3 Steam Special Edition.

1. Download game from Steam

2. Download 1.17 patch from http://games.softpedia.com/progDownload/Tropico-3-Patch-Download-51508.html

3. Extract the zip file but DON'T install the patch, Open the patch installer with 7Zip and extract the "Tropico3.exe" file
only.

4. Replace the exe and you're done.


This will still require a Legal Serial Key to play.

With the death of GFWL and a lot of those games getting moved over to Steamworks stuff, I'm curious if anyone has gone back and double checked Fallout 3. Also, is Fallout 3 GOTY Edition in the same boat as Fallout 3 for being DRM-free outside of the Steam client?

Alright. I can confirm that Fallout 3 GOTY Edition does work DRM-free. However, you have to run it through Steam at least once to activate it. After that, you can pull the folder out of the Steam folder and it will function fine.

The Steam version of Don't Starve does NOT work like this, however. It is a version specific to Steam (even has Steam in the .exe file name!).

The real test to know if it's really DRM-free or not would be to copy the folder to another computer on which Steam was never installed (and not connected to the Internet) to see if it's still working.

There are several games that works outside of Steam, that even work if Steam it not loaded, but who will refuse to start and requires online activation when moved to another computer.

Under a technicality, no, it will not. You have to run it once through Steam. After that, you can move it out of the Steam folder and it works just fine.

Therefore, yes, it still has SOME form of DRM that must be used on it to activate, but after that, it doesn't require Steam at all, even after you uninstall Steam.

There are several games using 3rd parties DRM, especially those using Securom as on-line activation DRM, where you can install them and activate them through Steam, then uninstall Steam and still play them.

But it doesn't mean that they are DRM-free; it simply means that they don't use Steamwork as their DRM but use something else instead.

There are also several older games found on Origin who does that too, IRC Dead Space 1 (and maybe also ME1) where once they are installed and activated you can remove Origin and still play them. But try to move the game to another computer and you will have a nice Securom pop-up asking you to re-activate the game.

X Beyond the Frontier, X Tension and X2 the Threat are also DRM free, but for some unknow reason, X3 Reunion and X3 Terran Conflict steam versions have DRM, when in retail versions the DRM has been removed years ago.