PC Gaming - DRMs (Steam, Origin etc..)

i like the concept of steam but i never use it.

all in all, i prefer stand-alone setups and am wary of anything getting too big and monopolistic, as it's usually exploited.
 
It really has gotten to be absurd, especially with more and more games making themselves exclusive to certain platforms. Two great examples are Black Ops 4 being exclusive to B.Net, and the upcoming Fallout 76 being exclusive to Bethesda.Net.

We've got (exclusives in parentheses):
  • Steam (More than I could ever possibly list)
  • Origin (Most of EA's library)
  • UPlay (Most of Ubisoft's library is 'semi-exclusive' since you must install/log into it even when playing via Steam)
  • Battle.Net (Blizzard's entire library and even Black Ops 4)
  • Bethesda.Net (Fallout 76, and surely more to come)
  • Epic Games Launcher (Fortnite, and surely more to come)
  • GOG Galaxy (Gwent, and surely more to come)
I mean for fuck's sake, that's SEVEN separate clients you have to use if you don't want to miss out on anything!

There's also the Windows Store, which has its own plethora of exclusives (Forza, Sea of Thieves, Gears of War, etc.). I didn't include it since it's pre-installed with Windows, but that's yet another client you have to fiddle with.

I, too, miss the days when you'd just buy a game at the store, install it, and launch it from the desktop without ever having to sign into or launch a separate service. You'd just double click the shortcut and be done with it. It was remarkably fast and simple. The downside, of course, was that it meant games weren't automatically kept up-to-date, but we always had sites like FilePlanet and GameSpy to take care of that. Disc swapping could also be a bitch, but if it annoyed you enough you could always fall back on "no CD" cracks to eliminate the need for discs all-together.
Benefit of Galaxy though it's drm free in that most games you can go to Gog.com and download and it's drm free. And if you link your account to steam you get certain games transfered over.
 
And don't even get me started on the cheating, hacking, modding

As someone who has been strictly a PC gamer since 2012 I will say this:

If you just want to be able to play your multiplayer games against other people, don't want to have to deal with hackers, cheaters, modders, equipment advantages due to having triple monitors and thus wider fov than you, maybe its a game like Falout 76 so the physics are tied to fps so those who can run the game at a higher fps gain movement speed and weapon fire rate advantages, maybe its a game like pubg thats now completely overrun by cheaters of various kind etc etc etc

If you have time to deal with all this ^ bullshit then PC gaming is for you

If you just want to play the games as intended against other people using the same hardware as you, and far less likelihood of the game being overrun by hackers and modders than stick to console
 
You don't miss the days of CD keys, serial ports, and patches that took months to be available?

PC: Insert Disc 2 Now
"Fuck..."
*digs through a giant disc container*
"Where the hell...."
*opens up every single CD case*
"God dammit, who put the in Rebel Assault CD the Dark Forces container??"
*inserts disc*
PC: Cannot read disc.
 
If you just want to play the games as intended against other people using the same hardware as you, and far less likelihood of the game being overrun by hackers and modders than stick to console

I used to think that but console players find their own ways to cheap. Using devices that allow you to use mouse and keyboard. Using a 1MS monitor while everyone else is on a TV. There's stuff you can do to the controller as well. Not as bad as PC but not as clean as you would think.
 
When did it start being so complicated to play games on PC?

When Valve made Steam mandatory to play Half-Life 2. Then when people complained, the retards said "It's only one game! You can always play something else!" and our fate was sealed.

Some time later, those same retards would cry out "Nobody is forcing you to buy the horse armor! It's optional!" and now microtransactions are a plague.
 
I wanted to boycott certain games not to have to deal with their DRM but eventually I caved in. I often forget that I even have certain games in Origin and Uplay since I never use them and have no physical copy to actually remind me that I own these games.

tenor.gif

Amen.

Recently I was checking out Forza Horizon. But then realized that's yet another DRM. Damn Microsoft.

I wonder what happens if a DRM goes out of business. You lose hundreds/thousand dollars worth of games? It's like the game don't really belong to you nowadays. We are paying for a licence.


Just cause you were poor and had no computer knowledge doesn't mean playing games back then was more complicated. It's just as easy as it is today if not easier,
When was the last time you needed a boot disk to play a game?
 
I wanted to boycott certain games not to have to deal with their DRM but eventually I caved in. I often forget that I even have certain games in Origin and Uplay since I never use them and have no physical copy to actually remind me that I own these games.

tenor.gif

Amen.

Recently I was checking out Forza Horizon. But then realized that's yet another DRM. Damn Microsoft.

I wonder what happens if a DRM goes out of business. You lose hundreds/thousand dollars worth of games? It's like the game don't really belong to you nowadays. We are paying for a licence.


Just cause you were poor and had no computer knowledge doesn't mean playing games back then was more complicated. It's just as easy as it is today if not easier,

You mean to tell me that in 1991 you NEVER had to flip a dip switch to play a game and they all ran perfectly without you needing to do anything other than plug-n-play on PC?

Oh, and I was in the military then so I may have been poor by Sherdog standards but you sir, sound like an angry idiot.
 
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