More likely the game was only on the front page of steam for a blip, and then nothing...

Well, it was meant more as bait for people who would block just based on your views of Steam. But I suppose I should also add an addendum that awesome people shouldn't add me to their block lists, because I like awesome people :P

Damn. I put a lot of thought into this message, and... here I am writing its second iteration of it. The first iteration being lost to oblivion. That game from those mediocre rogues. Bethesda jabbing aside... @sunshinecorp, looks like I don't agree with you at all for your "Steam has DRM-free games" thing.

Steam is pretty much a DRM method. And that's thanks to the CEG component in the games, if you'll come up and talk about it. Without Steam, is your CEG supported game able to carry out its DRM job? Simply say, CEG cannot carry out its task on its own. It needs to fall back on something to do that. It needs a partner in crime. That partner in crime, is Steam. Without Steam, your CEG game won't play.

But okay. I heard you. You say it offers DRM-free games. You are technically right, if we assume you will step down all the conveniences that GOG provides normally and as a standard. Going to Steam to obtain DRM-free games however, is quite the lovely life... you see, as nightcraw1er.488 said, you have to install the client, which can act as telemetry, analytics and whatnot, in order to obtain the game (EDIT: this point may differ from a person to another. For example, I'm only neutral to telemetry, but perhaps you aren't so you're okay with it, or you are so you hate it to the death, so it depends on you)... there is always SteamCMD but that is an obscure solution, and it isn't as attractive as a web download for DRM-free games... after all, a good half of the client is an overglorified web browser, so what stops them from presenting web downloads for DRM-free games other than forcing you to either use the client or SteamCMD?

The second obstacle is while they are nice enough to say which games require third party DRM to be played (which can include lots of absurd DRM), they are not nice enough to tell you which games are DRM-free... To properly show this, I will make it clear with an example.

I'll ask this question. Is Freedom Planet on Steam DRM-free? So first of all, how can I tell whether Freedom Planet on Steam is DRM-free or not? Opening the Steam store page for the game does not hint at all that the game is DRM-free. No. HINTS. So, utilizing the Steam store page for a hint is not effective. So you have to ask people who already bought the game to figure it out for you. However, you can't tell their exact OS setups or hardware setups to boot. They may tell you a game is DRM-free on Linux, but turn out to not be the case on Windows (the same exact game). Some of these people however, go ahead and make it clear in the list you brought up above, which is much appreciated. But still. In order for me to know whether Freedom Planet on Steam is DRM-free or not, I have to go and find people's past experiences with it. So yeah. There are probably more DRM-free games on Steam than there on this list! And judging by how Steam game updates are handled, you might find a DRM'd game suddenly become DRM-free, and a DRM-free game suddenly becoming DRM'd! So the list needs manual updating, on a per title basis. According to this list, and a friend's experience with the game, the final answer to the initial question in this paragraph is that, yes, Freedom Planet on Steam is DRM-free... but just after how much research did I get into that conclusion?

I'll ask another question now. Is Freedom Planet on GOG.com DRM-free? The answer is that, yes, Freedom Planet on GOG is DRM-free. How did I reach that conclusion that quickly? The game is on GOG.com, and GOG.com only sells DRM-free games, so the conclusion is reached. See the difference?

In the end, Steam is all about that, if you excuse the metaphor, the 'social brainless piece of crap for brainless people'. It depends on people being brainless, so it doesn't tell you if a game is DRM-free, they only did the whole "game X is DRM'd" bit because everyone complained about how Ubisoft games on Steam forced them to get Uplay, but that's it.

Finally, you get rid of the client, good luck even knowing the update exists. Unless you are subscribed to any sort of Freedom Planet news outlet, you probably won't know if the upcoming update is already released. You'll remain in the dark. Unlike on GOG, which kindly puts a number near your Account button to nag you that an update for a game exists, all without downloading the client. Steam doesn't do that clientless. To add insult to injury, itch.io goes a step further than GOG does, and I wish GOG does it. They send out e-mails for every update for every game. I need to be real deep in the dark in order to miss those notifications even as a client-less user.

TL;DR - Steam is DRM because CEG doesn't work without Steam, Steam's DRM-free titles aren't as attractive as GOG's because there are no official lists for DRM-free games on Steam and there is no web download method for them; both of which make the process of finding DRM-free games a really not worthy hassle. And updates for Steam DRM-free games are not as lovely.
(Okay, the first iteration of this post was much shorter...)

well he can blow the piracy all he wants

SteamSpy says there are about 66000 owners of the game. I would say that isn't bad for a $40 indie game. I can't believe he's still complaining.

Please give a complete story, please!

http://www.gamewatcher.com/news/2016-01-02-blow-the-witness-to-sell-more-in-one-week-than-braid-did-in-one-year

http://www.gamewatcher.com/news/2016-03-02-jonathan-blow-offers-details-on-the-witness-sales-success

He got scared at first and then he saw the sales and made a 180 degree turn.

The Witness breaks $5 million in sales in its first week

So why he's upset?!

I agree. I've heard so many pro-Steam people proclaim that Steam somehow "isn't DRM" because they can backup the game's folder. But if it's a Windows game, what about the Registry? Many games like to hide important info and sometimes save files in there. What about the AppData folder? Or some other hidden folder the game uses to store information? There's no guarantee that backing up the game's main installation folder will make the game work on another computer.

That's why Steam is DRM. It's already bad enough it forces the user to use an unnecessary client and that many Steam games have Steamworks. But Steam makes the situation much worse because it specifically denies the user access to the installer binary (thus requiring the client). As a result, the only way to "backup" the game is to manually backup the game's folder and hope for the best.

This is the reason why we need more DRM-free companies like GOG, since they allow the user access to the installation file that they bought. Which allows users to truly backup their games without having to worry about missing files or mandatory internet connections.

Word. I don't even care much for Steam but add me too :D

That article was incredibly dumb.

Good for dude, I suppose, if it works he'd be in a small line of success stories where piracy was significantly curtailed by DRM.

I didn't know there was an ignore list on GOG. How do you activate it? I checked up torrent sites as soon as I saw this article and didn't find Witness at the top in any of them. Probably me and Blow use different set of ones or he is lying to get some promotion/sympathy for his game.

Also just for reference, I could be wrong and could have mistaken you for someone else, but aren't you the guy that supports telemetry in case of Windows 10? Cause if so these are 2 conflicting ideas you seem to be holding at the same time. (Like I said before I could have mistaken you for some other user who did that. no offense)

First of all, I did not say before that I support telemetry. In fact I am only neutral to it, what I don't understand is mainly the hypetrain against it, is all. Correct me if I'm wrong. Secondly, I stated it in my comment based on the general perception of it, and moreso on nightcraw1er's comments, not my own. If it was for my own point, I wouldn't have stated it to begin with, but others might do, especially in obtaining games that are DRM-free.

Not to mention the difference on both scopes. Windows 10 is based on providing online services as well as the offline tasks it manages, and as a result, telemetry can then be expected no problem. However with DRM-free games, you do not even think of telemetry popping up into mind. So I thought I'd mention telemetry, but then again, in either case, I personally am neutral to it. Might edit my post to clarify that.

@IronArcturus, I will get back to you tomorrow, its late at night for me so...

That's...not a good argument.

First, your points: adding registry keys, or even full trees, is really quite easy. If you're worried about duplicating registry keys, then copy them. They're literally text strings. Similarly, if you're worried about AppData or hidden folders, again, just copy them. It's not hard to see what changed on your computer, assuming you have full admin rights to it. I'd assume if you know enough to worry about the registry in the first place, you know enough to copy files and find software to tell you what changed when you installed something.

Second, all access control isn't DRM, though that argument is one I'm not up to having today so when you disagree I'll just let you have your say. GOG makes you log in to download games, even from the browser, and nobody claims that's DRM. (OK, probably someone does. The Internet never ceases to amaze). If you have to authenticate, if you have to demonstrate that you're allowed to have a file, that's not actually DRM. DRM is a reasonably well-defined term that refers to copyright protection, which you could verify by seeing what lawsuits are extant w/r/t DRM. But, again, a lot of people think that anything that they don't understand is DRM, so they don't learn about it, and so they keep making the same claims. Eventually, if not already, there'll probably be a conversational concept of DRM ("I don't like it! If I don't like it, it's DRM!") and a distinct legal one. But as I say when people get mad and accuse me of arguing semantics - semantics is the study of truth. I'll argue truth, because if I don't, how will I ever know what's right?
You'll want to look into the browser addons. AFAIK there's no built-in ignore, still, though there is a block user, which would do in a pinch.

I haven't played it, so I can't really judge its quality and value, but I suspect you may be on to something there...

Don't bother using logic with these guys. They whip themselves into a frenzy everytime they think of Steam. They don't understand or care what DRM really is.