Dozzle sounds awesome, definitely adding it to my stack

I haven’t heard anyone else mention it, Vultr is a good one as well.

Switching the emphasis on one word can completely change the meaning of a phrase, there’s one example I love: “I never said she stole his money”

• I never said she stole his money (someone else did)
• I never said she stole his money (absolutely not true)
• I never said she stole his money (I wrote it down)
• I never said she stole his money (it was someone else)
• I never said she stole his money (she might have just borrowed it)
• I never said she stole his money (it was someone else’s)
• I never said she stole his money (she stole something else)

Even considering your edits, it’s still a stupid argument. By that same logic nothing should be preserved. Watching LotR now is not the same as watching it when it first came out, which should have never been made according to you because by that time the book should have already been destroyed since you wouldn’t want to preserve it for 50 years, but Tolkien shouldn’t have even written it, since they were based on ideas and drafts he did during the first world war exploring how war changes men and power corrupts, which obviously is only valid in that context and nowhere else so it should be destroyed since preserving it would be invasive and destructive, no?.

Preserving something can never be destructive, it’s the opposite of it. If the Mona Lisa was destroyed you wouldn’t even know it existed, so how can having preserved it be destructive when the alternative is oblivion?

And I agree that the Mona Lisa is no big deal, you know who else agrees? People from that time. It’s widely known that the Mona Lisa was one of Da Vinci’s less famous works, and until Napoleon made a big deal out of it it was just a random painting in a random museum. So I get part of your point, that people who make a big deal out of the Mona Lisa are only there to see the famous painting, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no reason to preserve it, or that there are no people who go there to see the actual Mona Lisa.

One thing I find very interesting about how brains process reality is that there’s a disease that makes your eyes have blind spots. However people with that disease don’t see those blind spots because the brain fills the gaps with the information it knows to be there. So you could see a door closed just as it was when you last looked at it directly, but in the meantime someone opened the door and you’re still seeing the door closed until you look at it directly.

I don’t think there’s a way of checking how many games are like this, but I find that the majority of games I’ve tried doing that just work, and the ones that don’t are mostly bad programming (e.g. crashes trying to load the steam library).

That’s GOG’s whole schtick, none of the games they sell have DRM when purchased from their store. You can always copy the installer to another computer and run it.

That’s not entirely true, as a general rule I think GoG has a lot less DRM-ed games, but it’s not 100% DRM free like they sometimes claim https://www.gog.com/forum/general/drm_on_gog_list_of_singleplayer_games_with_drm/page1

To be fair GoG selling point is that it doesn’t use any external software, it tries to emulate the old disk feel.

Personally I identify much more closely with GoG philosophy, i.e. mostly no DRM, manage the games on my own, etc. However I use Linux, and Steam has been investing into it so I’ll keep giving them my money (the input management is indeed great, but not enough on its own for me).

How is backing up an installer from GoG different in any way to backup a game folder in Steam?

Both can be copied to a different computer and used to run the game offline forever (unless of course the game has DRM, in which case both suffer from the same problem).

Technically that also applies to Steam, since you get a digital good available at the moment of purchase for permanent offline download to an external storage, just copy the game folder and you’re done. It would be the equivalent of a music store place downloading mp3s (and the equivalent to GoG would be selling an .iso to the music CD you can burn whenever you want or an installer that extracts the mp3 to a folder).

If the game itself has DRM then that would also apply to GoG (yes, there are games with DRM on GoG, there’s just proportionally less of them).

Acknowledging DRM free games on steam is absolute proof that steam is not DRM, you cannot hold both views at the same time, they’re contradictory. Either all games on steam have DRM or steam is not DRM. Again, replace steam with an actual DRM software like Denuevo and you’ll see why.

“Any” has those two meanings, the fact that you chose an ambiguous phrasing is your fault, and the fact you haven’t apologized while making clear what you meant, but in fact doubled down in the aggressive tone tells a lot about you.

Also the phrase doesn’t mean what you think it does, you should have said"you can play all games on steam without steam", which would be correct, not all games can be played without seam, but some can, you yourself recognize this when you say that the odds are against me when picking a random game, therefore there is a chance. And this is the thing that seems hard to comprehend to everyone who claims steam is DRM, they that same phrasing with Denuevo or other actual DRM things and you’ll see why it’s bullshit.

In other words, a software is DRM if and only if every game that contains it is DRM protected. Let’s go back to logic school: if A then B is negated as A and not B, for example"If a dog then an animal" is true, so the negation would be false: “dog and not an animal” is in fact a contradiction. Or on the other side “if animal then dog” is false, so the negation animal and not a dog" must be possible, and indeed it is.

In this case what you’re stating is that steam is DRM which means “if it’s on steam then it’s DRM protected”, that statement is false because the negation"game on steam and no DRM" is possible. On the other hand “if it has Denuevo is DRM protected is true” and the negation “has Denuevo and is no DRM” is an impossibility.

Yes, in the sense that every store online is a digital right management, but people wouldn’t consider itch or GoG DRMs, and if you go to this level of what DRM is it becomes impossible to sell software, because the mere fact of having someplace that allows some people access to something and others not it’s a form of DRM.

Writing is hard, huh? According to the dictionary Any means “some, or even the smallest amount or number of”, therefore “you can play any steam game without steam” means “you can play even the smallest amount or number of steam games on steam”, or in other words “you can play one steam game without steam”. And like I said you can in fact play more than one steam games without steam, therefore you’re wrong.

claiming […] you can play any steam game without Steam is flat out wrong.

You should go inform yourself, many games on steam can be played without steam. I’ve even shared my copy of a game with a bunch of friends and we all played together in LAN, with a single copy of a Steam game, and only I had steam installed since this was at work.

Steam does not enforce games to require steam, it is not a requirement, it’s available for those who want to use it.

It’s probably fine, but you can accidentally short it when moving it around by touching it or resting it up on something conductive, even if you’re careful dust might short it as well, but this is much rarer.

As a general rule I would try to avoid it, but would not be my first concern.

Not necessarily your fault, some games make the steam library a hard requirement by not implementing safe guards against it not being present. Others use some of the API there to ensure the game is owned and steam is logged in, but that’s not enforced by steam, so if a game doesn’t work without steam it’s by design of the game devs.

You must sign into steam the same way you must sign in to GoG, i.e. to download the game the first time. After that you can just run the binary. In fact you can copy that binary to another computer without steam to play there. However Steam is not against DRM, therefore some games there do have DRM and need either steam or in this case PSN to run.

That’s an important thing, games CAN use steam as DRM, but they’re not forced to, so there are games in Steam without DRM, therefore Steam is not a DRM by definition.

If for every 41 games that had Denuevo one didn’t had DRM Denuevo wouldn’t be a DRM software. However Denuevo is a DRM software, a game cannot both have Denuevo and not have DRM, however a game can be on Steam and not have DRM, therefore Steam is not DRM.

Btw, I think the ratio is way off, the vast majority of games on steam are Indy which don’t usually integrate with DRM.

Did you actually tried to launch the game? What error did you get? What game was it?

Steam launcher is not needed unless the game is programmed to fail if it doesn’t detect steam, not all games do, it’s usually a sign of a badly programmed game. Also the game might have had other DRMs.

But for example grab Crusader Kings or Stellatirs which tries to use the steam API bit if it fails it just keeps going without, and you can copy it to another computer and play without steam installed.

There’s a HUGE difference between a platform having optional DRM and a platform being DRM. Also it’s not opt-out, it’s opt-in, so by default games don’t have it, if they do it’s because someone on the game studio decided to add it, Valve does not force it or even encourage it, they just have it available.

It’s very unfair to say “Steam is DRM”, and a more accurate description is what I used “Steam has optional DRM”.