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The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

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DRM considered harmful | 189 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
DRM considered harmful
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 30 2012 @ 12:20 PM EDT
Steam is two seperate things:

A Shop.

A DRM System.


The shop is why it's gotten lots of users.

The DRM system is why it got lots of games on it (It could probably ditch the
DRM now and be fine, in all honesty, it's popular enough now). However
illogical that is, publishers like DRM. (I don't, it's one of those logical
impossibilities that ends up with you fighting your own customers, but they
haven't realised this yet)

Also, they've got the DRM in an "if I can't confirm, then allow" mode,
at least for the most part (lack of internet access after a Steam update has
been applied, before it's run is the only case I know of where it locks when it
fails to phone in). And it also doesn't mess with your computer: It phones in
to their database.

All in all, it's one of the least evil (and least stupid) DRM systems I've seen.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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