marty_u

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Stardock who run the digital distribution service Impulse estimates on Steams dominance of the market.

EcPercy

Maybe someone can educate me on steamworks. I fail to understand Stardock when they say. " Once a game requires Steamworks, it is effectively cut off from us, which limits our content. "

What does Stardock have to do with the content of any game other than their own?I don't understand how any DRM would effectively stop the game creator from adding content to their own titles.

BlueMak

Have you ever used Steam?
It requires to have a full application running at all times you want to play a game, although you can minimize it. What the other companies are their own ways to do DRM, so if one publisher goes with Steam, it would be silly to have another DRM on it, from a competitor too (since they also sell games).
Basically if they went ahead and said OK, then they would be bringing a Trojan Horse inside their walls, to lose customers in the long run.
On top of that, no users that would HAVE to have Steam installed would see any point in getting it from another DRM, eh I mean Store, just to have Steam running.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

EcPercy

Yes, I have used steam. I have several games that I have bought through steam. I prefer steam to buying a physical copy since I can use steam on multiple computers and always have my games available.

So you are saying that if a game is released on steam and the company wants to also release the game through say direct2drive or a similar service that the company would not be able to use the steamworks DRM? Or is the issue here that when you publish a game on steam you are going to be forced to use the steamworks DRM and this would not be cost effective in the long run if the company wanted to release the game on a different digital distribution platform because at this point they would need to use multiple versions of DRM?

Maybe there is a business opportunity here to make a unified DRM for digital distribution platforms this way you can publish on multiple platforms with a single form of DRM.

BlueMak

No, the problem is when a publisher wants to use Steam and anything else, but refuses to have Steam removed from the game when sold through other stores.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.