There’s few games that work like that. Mant use the steam basic drm, making the game not launching if a valid steam session is nor running.
That’s why I have the generic steam crack. Inncase they pull the plug some day.
Comment on Do you actually own anything digital?
cynar@lemmy.world 9 months agoFyi, steam doesn’t add additional DRM to games. So long as the maker hasn’t added anything significant, you can often just copy the game folder out, and run it independently. There’s nothing (in theory) to stop you backing it up yourself.
daniskarma@lemmy.world 9 months ago
MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Steam itself is drm though. If you have a pc that can’t connect to the internet or is no longer compatible with steam (like an XP pc for example), even if you have the game files, you can’t play then without first installing and updating steam.
I have an XP pc for period-era gaming and I can’t touch anything steam related for it so instead I have to either look for them on the internet archive or hope there is still a torrent for such an old game. Or failing both, actually find a physical copy. This still means I can’t really play Valve’s XP games though because of their requirement of Steam no matter how you bought the game.
my_hat_stinks@programming.dev 9 months ago
Sort of, but only if you’re launching through Steam. You can launch DRM-free Steam games through the executable file without launching Steam if you already have the files downloaded.
Games on Steam don’t require Steamworks or any other DRM, if your game won’t launch without Steam running that’s a choice by the game developer and not a restriction imposed for Steam.