duga3 wrote:

Just walk away OP, you can do it! There is plenty of DRM-free games if you look around and you will (probably) get to keep playi […]
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Just walk away OP, you can do it! There is plenty of DRM-free games if you look around and you will (probably) get to keep playing the Steam games you have already purchased.

Requiring Steam account just to run single-player of Half Life 2 in 2004 was a bold move indeed. Nobody really knew what we were getting into back then.. Does that sentence sound familiar?

These days they pump you via "purchases" (which are really just glorified rentals) and after everyone buys everything and has their own massive backlog so there is nothing to sell anymore, then they will transition into a subscription model, ideally with some downsides if you cancel (lost saves, profiles, ...?) so you will be more motivated to pay every month in order to play that one new game you are mildly interested in.

Also remember that you can probably keep playing the games you have purchased, but Steam is technically allowed to transfer everything else like your profiles/achievements/friends/workshop/etc behind a subscription at any time.

By then all better AAA games will be available only exclusively through similar subscriptions from Microsoft and Sony (which you will be able to stream to your PCs and mobile devices too) so Steam becomes a place for the remaining bad/average/non-exclusive games.

In the end, most games will become stream-only which is the perfect DRM because you cannot record an interactive game the same way you would pirate a movie so they have the absolute control over the distribution.

The push is already happening, have you seen this for example? Starts in just 5 days but thankfully looks more like a proof of concept and a nab at Nintendo Switch more than anything.

This push has come to shove in the CAD industry most notably Autocad/Autodesk where all their offerings are SAS (software as a service).

My question is, what if you're like me living in "backwoods" alabama and no "goober" fiber or "5000G"? Slim pickins that's why I don't have a win10 system
and stick to retro stuff & GOG....for now.