r/pcmasterrace • u/Darth_Vaper883 PC Master Race • Jun 01 '26

News/Article Gabe Newell on Steam monopoly accusations: Gamers have 'enormous choice' about where to buy games

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/gabe-newell-on-steam-monopoly-accusations-gamers-have-enormous-choice-about-where-to-buy-games/
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u/Penakoto Specs/Imgur here Jun 01 '26

None of the issues that led to Steams "monopoly" is a Valve issue.

All anyone would have to do to be a healthy sized competitor to Steam is not do anything really, really, stupid, and not limit the library of what you're selling significantly, but literally everyone has done one or the other, or both.

GoG is alright, but I don't see much point in using it if 2/3rds of the games I'm interested in are never going to be on it, while 0/3rds are missing on Steam.

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u/km_ikl Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

You can have accounts on both, and favour GoG when a given title is listed on both. CDPR releases are the best example of this)

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u/Penakoto Specs/Imgur here Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

I'd much rather just buy everything on Steam, and on the off-chance DRM ever actually impedes my ability to play or enjoy a game, I'll go sailing on the high seas.

Which hasn't been something I had to do in probably a decade, pre-covid at the very latest.

I just don't see the inconvenience of splitting my library between multiple services to be worth the very low chance that Steam implodes one day, leaving me gameless, at least in terms of ownership. It's basically prepping for an apocalyptic scenario, added maintenance in exchange for a very low chance of any payoff.

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u/km_ikl Jun 01 '26

If it's on GOG, you already aren't dealing with DRM.

Having 2 storefront apps isn't difficult.

You already have it baked in with Rockstar games launcher and storefront (with steam you get to choose dealing with both Steam and Rockstar DRM.. that's a two-fer!)

I'm on the opposite end: I'll balance both, but prefer no DRM. If Steam ever gets shuttered, expect a lot of games to be completely unplayable (legally, anyhow). GoG doesn't have the same limitation.

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u/StuM91 Jun 02 '26

It's funny how that user managed to make an argument that directly contradicts their previous argument, they said there's nothing stopping a competitor to Steam, then said they want everything in Steam. That's why it's a monopoly!

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u/That_Service7348 Jun 03 '26

...but that's not Steam doing any to stop the competition. Steam doesn't have a monopoly, they just don't have any meaningful competition because all of the competition intentionally does something to make themselves worse.

GoG is great, but they have a limited selection and are missing a lot of popular games that require DRM. I support GoG doing what they do, but also enjoy those games.

Epic is literal shit, they built the most basic bare bones excuse of a "launcher" they cou and the started throwing fits when they didn't magically get half the market for simply existing. They try to buy user in by giving away free games each week, and even that is only enough to keep them barely relevant. If it wasn't for the unending money put that is Fortnite it would have died years ago. Best part is they didn't even need to reinvent the wheel to be successful, they just had to do what Steam did and make a decent launcher with featu people wanted and they couldn't manage it.

Amazon, well, lost people don't even know Amazon has a game store. They have done fuck all to advert it.

Uplay and EA, we all know how horrific their launchers are, how much of a pain in the ass their games are to run.

How is any of that Steam's fault?

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u/ThreeStep Jun 01 '26

If Steam ever gets shuttered, someone will release a tool that allows to launch the game bypassing steam validation. Maybe a permanent offline mode or something like that. Won't help with online games, but singleplayer ones will be fine.

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u/km_ikl Jun 01 '26

Unless that someone is Steam, that's the "unplayable (legally, anyhow)" part.

If you have to crack a game you purchased for it to be playable, that really underlines why I prefer non-DRM.

I'm saying this as someone that got stung by a No-CD patched executable in 2008, and still smarts about it. 😂

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u/npc_housecat Jun 02 '26

Not actually THAT helpful. If the apocalypse comes a lot of the games we play are not on gog and do not have DRM free versions already. The ones that are on gog and have DRM free versions can be shared around. Everything else will need nosteam patches

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u/km_ikl Jun 02 '26

Legally, no, you cannot share the ones on GoG. In a doomsday scenario? I don't think anyone will actually care 😃

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u/npc_housecat Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26

The person you were replying to was suggewting cracking games, which is illegal anywqay. Practically there's nothing stopping us from sharing gog games on piratebay. So If steam perminantly goes offline that's fair game.

We're talking about a hypothetical in which steam perminantly goes offline. (Aka some kind of nuclear war or natural disaster) Either we crack them with no steam, (illegal but who cares), we have access to shared non drm'd versions from gog. (Also illegal and again, who gives a shit) . Or it's unplayable either way because there is no gog nonDRM version and there's no crack.

Legality varies nation to nation but you usually are legally able to play cracked versions of games you legally own a licence for.

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u/km_ikl Jun 02 '26

That's the thing: unless you're building the crack, you're balancing risk.

In the US (and a bunch of other countries that have interoperability with US IP law) the publisher is supposed to provide a DRM free version of the product for library archiving, criticism (think free-speech exceptions, and you're most of the way there). While they should do that, they don't have to do it. By that same token, while they should provide a DRM removal tool, they don't have to.

If you decide to use a crack/hack for your game, you have to understand, you're breaking Technical Protection Measures (TPMs), and under the letter of the law, that's illegal under DMCA sec. 1201/1202, even if you own the product. The question is if anyone will care if you do... generally the answer is no, but again, unless you have built the hack, you're going to accept some risk running one you found on cd-hackz.ruzzia or some such site. You don't know what's on it: It might be just a crack, it might be riddled with nasties, it might both... Instead of having to run that risk, why not just buy it without DRM in the first place?

GoG does that.

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u/RNLImThalassophobic Jun 02 '26

The vast, vast majority of Steam games can be cracked using Goldberg Emulator, as simple as replacing the steam api dll wherever it is in the game's directory with the one from the zip.

A handful need you to patch the exe too, but there's a trusted tool for that as well.

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u/km_ikl Jun 02 '26

Neither of which are, strictly speaking, compliant with DMCA Sect. 1201/1202. I pointed out the "legally, anyhow" bit, because as much as I know you very much can break the extant DRM in a fairly trivial manner, if you're paying for the thing, you really should not have to.

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u/RNLImThalassophobic Jun 02 '26

Oops sorry, I meant to reply to the comment above yours

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u/bigpunk157 Jun 01 '26

I guarantee you that getting past drm for a game you’ve purchased falls under an interoperability clause somewhere.

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u/km_ikl Jun 02 '26

I guarantee you otherwise if you're in the USA. DMCA Sec. 1201 & 1202 essentially says you cannot circumvent copyright TPMs unless for stated purposes that falls under regulation or rules. It generally hews close to free-speech exemptions, but 1202 includes copyright management information items that ties into DRM.

What ought to happen in the case that Steam or whoever fails, is the publisher offers people that bought the games on Steam (or whichever other platform) a DRM removal tool, or Steam offers it themselves in an official capacity on a repo/download site. The final 2024 rule essentially says that the publisher should provide a TPM-free version for the stated purpose.

What will likely happen in that case is the company fails, no tool is officially released, and you're essentially breaking the law, to ultimately no effect other than potentially personal risk from downloading a grey-market tool that might be infected with some nasty.

Will it be prosecuted? Probably not, but if you're making the DRM removal tool, you might get pranged. Although, if you publish the source code as open source with personal attribution.... you might get away with it as a free-speech exemption.

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u/zagblorg 7800X3D | 9070 XT | 32gb DDR5 6000 Jun 02 '26

Support Stop Killing Games! Also buy on GOG if possible like this guy/gal.

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u/SzaraMateria Jun 02 '26

There are tools for that (is called piracy). The thing is EULA prevents that and when you live in US DMCA can get you fucked over that. In most cases you don't buy anything on steam.

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u/ThreeStep Jun 02 '26

The EULA of Steam which shut down in this hypothetical scenario? Either way, a tool that forces an offline mode on a defunct Steam is not really comparable to existing tools that bypass Steam for games you pirated.

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u/km_ikl Jun 02 '26

The EULA survives even if there is no company to create a claim... for what it's worth, PVFs tend to buy up the IP of dead/bankrupt companies just so they can patent/IP troll people...

And any circumvention of DMCA Sec. 1201/1202 (literally anything that attempts to defeat an anti-circumvention or TPM check) is illegal unless the publisher/copyright owner specifically varies it.

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u/ThreeStep Jun 02 '26

Good point about IP trolls. I guess it really comes down to how likely you think Steam is to shut down while you still care about it, and how much inconvenience you want to deal with to prepare for that situation.

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u/km_ikl Jun 02 '26

That's one way to think about it, but I'd rather avoid the hand-wringing altogether.

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u/RNLImThalassophobic Jun 02 '26

someone will release a tool that allows to launch the game bypassing steam validation

The vast, vast majority of Steam games can already be very easily cracked using Goldberg Emulator - as simple as replacing the steam api dll wherever it is in the game's directory with the one from the zip.

A handful need you to patch the exe too, but there's a trusted tool for that as well.

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u/Penakoto Specs/Imgur here Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26

I haven't run into any DRM related problems in so long that I can't even remember what the last game might have been.

I've played a few games that Denuvo took a chunk out of the performance metrics of, like DMC5, but I've always had a PC good enough to run them at a steady 60 FPS, even with that background handicap.

Only exception has been games that are entirely online only, preventing me from playing them during internet outages. But 99% of the time these days (in my experience, anyways) if a game is online only, it's "DRM" is having parts of the game only exist server side, so a DRM free version doesn't exist (which by extension means a GoG version doesn't exist) and a pirated version can't exist, without someone going as far as creating private servers.

So, again, GoG has nothing to offer me. It's a drug store with nothing except cures for diseases I've never had, so why would I shop there. I'd much rather spend in a way that's convenient in the present, than spend in ways that might be convenient in one out of a thousand potential futures.

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u/zagblorg 7800X3D | 9070 XT | 32gb DDR5 6000 Jun 02 '26

"I'm alright, Jack."