Quoting: Quote from Shmerl

Quoting: Quote from KristianThere are two faulty premises underlying this post:

1) For a game to be DRM free the software you use to download it has to be open source .

No, that wasn't the point. For the game to be DRM free it needs to be installable DRM free. So, once you download it, you should have a package / archive which you should be able to install independently. Let's see how it works with Steam if you compare it to the browser.

1. You buy a game and make a backup (offical Steam one).
2. Steam service closes down.
3. You lose access to the service, and let's say to the client as well, for example you have a new system).
4. You try installing your backed-up game and... It requires a client you have no way to get. Not only that, even if you get it, to restore the game it needs to connect to a service which doesn't exist anymore. That's it - no restore.

The rest of your post wasn't to the point of what I was saying.

Shmerl that is simply NOT how it works for those games on Steam that are DRM free. You are attacking a strawman, try addressing what I said about Half-Life 2 for examlel. You can easily download games with DRM using a browser if they are uploaded that way or download a DRM free game using a digital download client if they are uploaded that way.  How games are distributed(and the pros and cons of various ways of doing so) and whether a game is DRM free or not are two totally different unrelated questions. If you as developer wanted to you could distribute a DRM free game by printing out its source code and having people scan it in and compile it.

"For the game to be DRM free it needs to be installable DRM free. So, once you download it, you should have a package / archive which you should be able to install independently."

For a game to be DRM free its code must not contain any DRM, that is any technical measures preventing copying or requiring any kind of authentication or validation for use. That is it. A logical consequence of this is that you can always create any installers, packages or backups of your game if you want to once you have downloaded it. There are no technical limitations on how many such backups/copies you can create or how many instances of the game you can run on how many machines(Simultaneously or nor, offline or online). This is exactly the situation with Half-Life 2, it only being available for (official, legal) download from Steam does NOT change that. 

Your contention that is impossible to distribute DRM free games on Steam has been thoroughly refuted. 

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Quoting: Quote from ShmerlFor those who compared Steam client with browsers - you are wrong. Is Steam client open source? Even if it doesn't need to connect to the server to reinstall a backup (which I doubt, it most probably does need to connect to the server), where can you get that client if Steam goes bust? It's closed and proprietary. So if Steam closes down you lose the service and the client. So comparison with the browser goes out of the window.

There are two faulty premises underlying this post:

1) For a game to be DRM free the software you use to download it has to be open source .

This is just an arbitrary rule you have invented without any real reasoning behind it. This has the absurd consequence that if a DRM free game available on say both GOG and Steam is bit for bit identical on both services(Like say I tested with Shadow Warrior on GOG vs Shadow Warrior Classic on Steam) then it suddenly becomes DRMed if you happen to download it with Steam. Even though every single bit in every single file is 100% identical. This is obviously absurd.

2) Browers are open source.

This is not true as a general rule. Some are. Some aren't. Internet Explorer isn't. Safari isn't. Opera isn't. Can a game downloaded by Chrome be DRM free yet be DRMed if the exact same game is downloaded using for example Internet Explorer? What if you downloaded a game the day before the first open source browser was released would that then be DRMed on that day but the 100% identical copy you downloaded with that open source browser the very next day be DRM free?

"So if Steam closes down you lose the service and the client. So comparison with the browser goes out of the window."

The same happens if GOG shuts down its service and pulls the plug on its servers or if a game is only a available via a .torrent file from the publisher and/or developer and it is no longer being seeded or if my country decides to ban all torrents even if the distribution is authorized by the copyright holders. Browsers and DD clients aren't the only ways to distribute games digitally they are only perhaps the most common. But there are also at least FTP clients and torrent clients. What DRM free gaming enables is that even if nobody can buy new/additional copies of a game, those have already bought and downloaded a game can keep on using it forever.  

The availability of future downloads is independent of the DRM status of the game being downloaded. A DRM free game may no longer be available for download for various reasons. For example if a publishers only releases DRM free games as a matter of principle but they are only available to download using standard browsers(and download managers) from its website then those games will become unavailable if that websites gets taken of the net due to the publisher going bankrupt. This won't make the games any less DRM free.

"Even if it doesn't need to connect to the server to reinstall a backup (which I doubt, it most probably does need to connect to the server)"

With the DRM free games on Steam you can take a backup without needing the Steam client at all. I literally copy pasted my copy of HL2 from my desktop onto to blank DVD, put that DVD in my primary laptop, copied its contents onto the laptop and ran the game on both computers simultaneously. This worked fine, without even the smallest hitch.

What I want to know from you is how can a game that doesn't have a single line of code implementing any kind of DRM feature either directly or indirectly(by calling libraries or executing external code) ever be considered a DRMed game? 

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Quoting: Quote from ShmerlI wasn't talking about Steamworks lock-in, which developers can avoid if they wish. It's bad of course. I was talking about requiring to run the client and connecting to the service to install the game. It's step 1 DRM, and no, Steam offers no packages outside the service. Sometimes you can manually copy stuff and reuse, but that's not an official support when the service provides a package (like HB and GOG do). Therefore I consider Steam to be always DRMed.

To clarify, it's not about a burden of logging in anywhere. It's about an ability to install (from a backup for example) and run the game without the service.

Using certain software to manage downloads and installation !=DRM. Using Steam to download a game doesn't mean it is DRMed even if it can only be downloaded that way. If a developer decided to only upload their DRM free game as a torrent you would HAVE to use a torrent client to download a game, that wouldn't make the game any less DRM free. In the case of DRM free games on Steam, Steam is simply a download manager. A game is DRM free independent of its delivery method. A developer could decide to sell usernames and passwords to a FTP server as its only delivery method and it would still be DRM free. With the games that are DRM free on Steam you can take the files Steam provides you and back them up and/or create installers and/or packages from those files that you could then proceed to install on any computer you want to. You could do this with any DRM free game on Steam including for example HL2(Yes it is DRM free I checked my self). 

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Adolson how did you get a hold of Godot binaries?

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That is a rather good number of Linux related talks :)

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So they went to the trouble of creating their own engine for Natural Selection 2 only to use Unity in their next game? Perhaps it just wasn't a good fit for this game.

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Stuff like this should lead to a huge shitstorm.

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"There is [this long bug report](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/2286) on Valve's github where a fair few users are stating they have never even seen the survey under Linux."

How is not being part of a randomly selected sample a bug? If the survey under-represents Linux for some reason THAT would be an issue. But a particular person not getting the survey?

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Quoting: Quote from liamdaweI know all about that, but like you said it doesn't apply any more and hasn't for a long long time.

Either way it is a too broad term really to used for marketing platform support. If developers start using PC to mean Windows, Mac OSX and Linux then the BSD folks may start complaining about that since those OSes support X86 as well. No reasons really not to be more specific, if you support Windows, Xbox 360 and PS3 then say that. If you support Windows, Mac OSX and Linux then say that.

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Wikipedia isn't always the best source there is a historical reason for the Mac/PC distinction that doesn't apply any more. Originally PC referred quite literally to the IBM PC*. Then you got PC clones compatible with the IBM one. Eventually PC came to mean the IBM PC + compatible machines from competitors(and later successors by IBM as well), in that light the Macs of the day most assuredly were not PCs since they didn't use the X86 architecture and therefore couldn't run PC code natively. However using this definition both Linux and the Mac OSX of today are PC operating systems.

*

Spoiler, click me

I have no idea if the broader, more literal definition may have been in use prior to the IBM PC, but that usage is way to broad too be taken seriously when talking about platform support

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