this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
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Its pretty much up to the developer. You can have no DRM and not even require steam to be open, or you can make your game unplayable.
Afaik, Steam only sells licences.
Steam sells DRM-free games too, you can download them and then uninstall Steam and they will work. In this case though, on top of purchasing the game, you are buying a license to download updates for it through Steam. It's a developer decision.
DRM is orthagonal to ownership
I do not disagree?
You still aren't "purchasing" it.
For example, you don't have right of resale the same way you would with physical goods. You're buying a license to the game for personal use, regardless, you just don't have DRM limiting your access.
Well that's just digital goods, not Steam specifically.
You do get all the files for the game, that will work for as long as the OS will run them, with or without Steam (this is as close as you can come to ownership for software). Rather than a license to use them files, which become useless if you don't run the game through Steam.