Steam itself IS DRM. And then there are the other, harsher DRM schemes that are also on some of the games in addition to Steam. Be sure to check for additional DRM on a game's Steam store page.

Gamers might wish to check the The Big List of 3rd Party DRM on Steam to insure there isn't an unwanted DRM added when that new game is installed.
[Edit: The above list in not up-to-date. For one thing, it does not include Denuvo DRM on the Ubisoft titles. There may be other omissions that I am not aware of.]

As a gamer who has experienced firsthand what StarForce could do to a computer, I can heartily vow that DRM measures can be a nightmare.

Over on one of the other threads last October when he was in full Steam-salesman thread-crapping mode, claiming that GOG's "secret" update of the EULA at the time (which was hardly any secret) meant Section 17.2 of the EULA (that deals with GOG cancelling your account for serious breaches like hurling death threats at GOG staff) = them retroactively deleting your games (retroactive in that conversation meaning "everything you already have downloaded" as offline installers) and somehow trying to equate GOG banning someone for death threats with Steam 'subscribers' being left unable to play most games on Steam if they ever disagree with any future changes in the Steam client's EULA to the point they click "decline" and it doesn't install (then they couldn't even download 'DRM-Free' stuff via the client)...

As you can see also from that thread (such as the contents from post #57 which you'll recognise multiple times in this thread) everything else gets literally cut and pasted word for word 1,000x over in post after post, thread after thread, week after week, month after month, exact wording the same with zero variation, almost like a spam-bot being run from Valve-central...

It's almost as though the Steam moderator earlier was trolling GOG and GOG users. I wonder what kind of DRM do they put on the spam-bots at Valve? Is it one of the more advanced layers, or are spambots considered truly DRM-free after you download the mandatory client, update your spambot through the mandatory client, install your spambot through the mandatory client, and move your spambot to a different folder from the mandatory client? Keep in mind if you do this method you cannot safely update your spambot without risk of it being DRMed. :)

This thread is literally confusing me. I re-read one of my earlier posts and...I quoted you, and told you to hold your tongue for five minutes? I'm not even sure why would I say that to you of all people, but apparently that's what I saw. I'm honestly not sure what's going on.

Just wanted to say I'm sorry about that, and said quote wasn't meant for you.

That said, I of course agree with the Larian example being a weakness in their argument. Who in their right mind would deal with Larian's patches several times and keep testing them to ensure the games are DRM-free? I know that this is Larian, and Larian are saints compared to the rest of the industry, but it's never a bad idea to have a small doze of skepticism and caution here and there.

Then again, their arguments quite literally rely on looking at a community-made list. They don't care if Valve itself doesn't help in any way, shape or form. They ignore that Valve only list third party DRM but not whether it requires Steam or not, they ignore that the shouts and cries of DRM-freeness on Steam won't be reflected on the store page, they care nothing about that. Why they continue to twist words is beyond me.

I saw that and thought it was maybe a misquote. No worries. :-)

A lot of excuses here are down to the difference between ideology and pragmatism. "In theory" some people may have personal thresholds where they will call installing a client, downloading, updating, zipping up, then uninstalling the client 28x in a row over 3 years for just one game "DRM Free". In practise, it turns out none of them advocating this actually do that themselves, that the people they're trying to describe who are willing to do that are either always someone else or don't exist at all, and that most normal people who want a DRM-Free copy that's actually advertised as such will buy the GOG version because it turns out that "DRM-Free" in actual practise to most people means a copy that's less hassle installing not more than the DRM it's being freed from... ;-)

I think some of us just don't factor 'convenience' into the definition of DRM-Free. One may be easier than the other but that doesn't mean the end result for both isn't a DRM-Free game.

Even you yourself explained only a few responses back you considered 'DRM-Free' games on Steam that had no updates left are pretty much DRM-Free. That's *every* game over time.

I'll easily agree it's not desirable from a DRM-Free standpoint to have to use a client to download the game/nor updates, but having to do so is an argument about convenience, not an argument against DRM-Free, because once downloaded it's still just that.

I meant that as in "they can be made to be DRM-Free" (by zipping them up and hoping that nothing needs patching in future) and obviously that's limited to the 6% subset of games on the "Steam games that don't need a client to run" list. "Every game over time" where 94% still have DRM in them obviously aren't DRM-Free. And none are *sold* or advertised as such though (which means no guarantee DRM won't be added in as a patch which has happened to multiple games that have been removed from that list).

So for most people who aren't A. The tiny percentage of geeks who both read that incomplete community list (filled with lots of unknown ?) and B. Limit themselves to the 5-6% of Steam games that have no Steam / 3rd party DRM in them, and C. Are willing to put in the effort of making their own installers, messing about testing each game on multiple systems, renaming the client, etc, the number of people who do that as a percentage of the whole is so incredibly tiny it is as I said, little more than a theoretical thought experiment where "those people who could do that" always turn out to never be the same people promoting it than any real description of the DRM-Free market. In fact I can't ever recall people talking about it on Steam forums (not least of which threads often get locked for discussing running Steam games outside the client due to it being against Steam's Subscriber Agreement, which itself demonstrates how DRM-Free unfriendly the store as a whole is where the only way of getting Steam's 'DRM-Free' games to run like that is to break the store's T&C in stark contrast to every real DRM-Store which openly permits / encourages it). The only people promoting it are ironically here on GOG who buy the GOG versions where possible anyway...

Good lord. I'm sorry for not prefacing it in every single post in this discussion but I'm pretty sure you're aware enough that I'm only talking about the games considered 'DRM-Free' on Steam for this particular discussion. Not every game on Steam. Yeah, the people who care about DRM-Free are the ones who seek it out and they do tend to be here and not on Steam. That's why you also had the threads explaining how to extract a DRM-Free copy of the game out of Gamersgate installers for instance (back when Gamersgate mattered and DRM-Free games were scarce). It may not have been GOG non-Galaxy installer convenient DRM-Free but it was enough for people to both make a legitimate purchase and yet still end up with their DRM-Free game.

i dnt get why people defend steam on GOG when there the enemy of gamers

enemy of gamers?

Stop talking garbage....

oncurrent Steam Users: 11,619,520 Peak 15,138,782
https://store.steampowered.com/stats

Doesn't matter what you think, but those figures dwarf any gaming platform in the world.

i want out XD

And...? Look, I get it that moobot is quite annoying and has all the rhetoric skill of a moose with a severe head injury, but your reply is basically like trying to prove that smoking is healthy because a lot of people do it.

If anything, the only thing this exchange proves is that this thread has ran its course and should be left in peace to be necroed in a couple of years by a spammer.

The thing that annoys me is when a poster just comes out with rubbish off the top of their head, with zero thought behind it. Back it with facts and figures. Where else can you buy and own games of a physical DVD/CD and run them? They don't exist today due to piracy. Every disc sold runs steam, origin, ubi etc and downloads the main game. You can't just come out with utter rubbish and say that 'steam is the enemy of gamers'.. You may as well just BIN gaming then!!..i can't believe you come out with such a statement about smoking...that's just pure silly... If this was 20years back, yes! you would have a moot point. But it's not and DRM is everywhere. Bearing in mind i've bought and owned everything from Painshop Pro when it was a dsic and not a license to buy monthly/yearly.

If that's how you both feel, it's time to bin gaming.. seriously. Consoles, everything is a digital DRM license.

EDIT: On second thought, it's not worth it.