Some of Steam’s oldest user accounts are turning 20-years old this week, and Valve is celebrating the anniversary by handing out special digital badges featuring the original Steam colour scheme to the gaming veterans.
Steam first opened its figurative doors all the way back in September 2003, and has since grown into the largest digital PC gaming storefront in the world, which is actively used by tens of millions of players each day.
“In case anyone’s curious about the odd colours, that’s the colour scheme for the original Steam UI when it first launched,” commented Redditor Penndrachen, referring to the badge’s army green colour scheme, which prompted a mixed reaction from players who remembered the platform’s earliest days. “I joined in the first six months,” lamented Affectionate-Memory4. “I feel ancient rn.”
No, wait, it literally WAS Steam. I mean, it wasn’t just Steam, but those guys were there at ground level. Valve is ultimately an offshoot of Microsoft, it’s not like becoming the main app store on home PCs by introducing structured DRM, sales and download management software wasn’t part of their plan.
So let’s be clear about what we’re talking about here. Denuvo? Yep, that sort of DRM predates Steam. License limits and online activation? That’s contemporary to Steam and it’s the problem Steam is trying to solve. Online app stores built around DRM? Steam is as early on that race as it gets, and it’s absolutely built for that purpose.
I like it as a piece of software, too, it’s well made, but why whitewash it?
Plus, I have to point out that you seem to be arguing two opposite things at once. Is DRM inevitable? Well, since you seem to be correctly arguing that DRM-free alternatives do exist and seem to be financially viable… I’m gonna say no?
My argument is that it was inevitable at the time, and everyone saw it coming. It was going to happen regardless of whether Valve created steam or not.
You literally state this:
I don’t think any of that is true. You can avoid most of the shitty DRM today and the big brother-esque remote DRM. People who adopted it then, didn’t usher this in.
But they did it. They made it work. Somebody else might have, I suppose, but it was literally them. EA was trying hard to push online activations and failing miserably. Download managers paired with DRM were a dime a dozen and were not making a dent. It was Steam.
They took the most anticipated game in the PC landscape and acquired the most played mod, bundled them together with their trojan horse of a DRM-cum-online store and forced the entire PC community to buy into it or be unable to play the big stuff.
That´s what they actually did in the real world. I remember, I was there.
So given that Steam absolutely counts as “shitty DRM” in my book, I’m not sure your representation fits reality. Like I said above, I buy DRM-free games whenever possible and my Steam account is still growing way faster than my GOG account despite prioritizing GOG.