"Valve seems like the biggest proponent for general purpose, open computing these days (open in the sense of being able to do what you want with your computer)."
I would have never seen that coming from a company who's most important product is more or less fancy DRM system..., but I surprise myself by finding myself agreeing with you.
I'm not quite sure what that means. Maybe the DRM is more incidental that I thought, maybe they just have their heart in the right place, or maybe the state of things is just that bad.
It has to do with the way Valve has approached it. From day one it wasn't, "How do we stop people from pirating?" It was, "How do we make a more convenient service than the pirates?" And that's where they won. In the early days, people pushed back. But then the brand of Valve as people won out over the brand of Valve as the makers of Half-Life. If you make a good product that has convenience over the alternative (piracy) and charge a reasonable amount, people will pay when they used to pirate. The DRM is incidental to the experience. Valve realized it first, and now you're seeing it replicated in things like Netflix and Hulu.
1) Pirate a game
+ free
- slow download
- maybe doesn't work, maybe it's a virus
- whatever cracked the DRM might cause bugs
- multiplayer rarely (if ever) works
2) Buy from Steam
- not free
+ but, cheap
+ 2 to 3MB/s download speed
+ automatic updates
+ always works, always seamless
+ "defragment game folder" options, etc, built in
+ fast, free, re-downloads for life (install as many times as desired)
To add to 2), most games also back up your saves via Steam Cloud now. Not necessarily something you'll always use, but after a reformat, I greatly appreciated it.
However, I have noticed that Steam's offline mode is rather fickle. I try use it when I'm at my friend's house (lack of wireless and a lack of an ethernet port. Weird, unusual scenario, I know), and half the time "Play offline" simply doesn't work. It's put me in the weird position of considering downloading cracks for games I legally own so that I can play them.
After I get there. I have a desktop PC, not a laptop. I can't really leave it on and then head over. Unless what you're implying is that I need "activate" offline mode on my computer by using it when I'm online here? If so, I really wish Valve would make that much clearer than the infuriating error that pops up now when I try to use offline mode while offline.
Yes, the prescribed way is putting it into offline mode before you lose the connection. It sometimes lets you go into offline without a connection but I don't understand the method it uses to make that decision.
Yeah, if I'm headed to my cottage or some place without Internet access I make sure whatever games I want to play are updated then I switch to offline mode.
Sometimes I can go straight to offline mode but to be on the safe side, switch before you lose network access.
Steam also succeeds because it is cheap, unless a game is selling well they drop the price by a lot very quickly. I've bought games that are only a year or so old for as little as £7.99 (Saints Row 3, Deus Ex HR etc).
At highstreet stores it was very difficult to get games for less than £15 or so.
Valve wants Steam to be like Kindle. It's heavily DRM'ed, but available on any platform you can imagine, and therefore you are not restricted by the OS, only by Steam.
I would have never seen that coming from a company who's most important product is more or less fancy DRM system..., but I surprise myself by finding myself agreeing with you.
I'm not quite sure what that means. Maybe the DRM is more incidental that I thought, maybe they just have their heart in the right place, or maybe the state of things is just that bad.