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[AzyWng]

Steam DRM may break shit. Wildstar and "Just Survive" are scheduled for execution. Fallout 76 is promised to be around forever, but Bethesda's Bethesda, which means Bethesda's at risk of being Bethesda. Big game development companies and publishers are interested in streaming services for games.

The real kicker is that Ross notes that Just Survive didn't even make it out of early access before the developers announced they were ending the game.

So. How soon should I start screaming?

[Lord Shonus]

What exactly does "Steam DRM" have to do with "These online-only games are shutting down their servers"?

[Frumple]

Your question made me curious enough to click the link to see if it had an answer, sho.

That there was an 18 minute youtube video of some rando jabbering about... something... on the other side of it stopped that curiosity dead in its tracks. May be kinda' peeved with steam fucking folks still stuck on vista, but not enough to subject myself to that

[George_Chickens]

There's another Ross video explaining exactly what AzyWng is talking about in a much more succinct manner. I am on a datacap so I can't go looking for it, but basically:

Many games have Steam's DRM in them and will not run without Steam being open. Likewise, many retro games refuse to run outside of a specific version of Windows, particularly XP, due to certain dependencies and the way they are designed.  This isn't usually a problem as they have cracks galore and physical copies, so you can just crack them and run them in a virtual machine.

There are games nowadays that will only run on properly a certain version of Windows for the same reason (Vista or 7) and do not have non-Steam releases, nor are popular enough to attract the cracking scene to break Steam's DRM and allow it to run without Steam. Effectively, due to Steam's DRM and lack of physical releases, thousands of games will become unplayable when they drop Windows 7 support. And assuming Microsoft's "Windows 10 only forever" plans don't work, this will only get worse with time.

And considering "games as a service" and the concept of game streaming instead of game ownership being discussed, this is just the tip of the iceberg in dangerous scenarios for game preservation. It's also the one that is guaranteed to happen.

[Descan]

That's the same guy who did Freeman's Mind, my dude. :v Not really 'some rando.'

[Frumple]

I have zero idea what freeman's mind is :V

E: google tells me it's some kind of video LP of one half-life or another, quickly explaining why I couldn't tell it from a hole in the ground, heh

[ChairmanPoo]

Worth noting that Steam doesnt always equal DRM. There are a number of drm free games on steam http://steam.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games

Pd: despite Paradox controversies over *DLC, they take a hard line on making everything DRM free

* I say controversial because on one hand it does result in penny squeezing... on the other it does result in heavy long term support for their games.... so take it as you might. I used to hate it but TBH if you look at other big publishers they tend to rerelease games with just cosmetic improvements and charge full price, so in that regard Paradox major DLCs are both cheaper than rebuying the same game over and over and signify better support. Smaller DLCs are another matter but they are not quite as essential.  (Cosmetic packs are probably overpriced, though the major ones arent quite that expensive. The Songs of X dlcs.. srsly, I'd rather throw in my own music for the most part. The ruler designer, save importer, and face editor shouldnt be dlc at all.  I dont even understand the point of the RD givrn you can largely do the same things with console commands)

[scriver]

I can't console command in hard mode

[ChairmanPoo]

Meh, I dont care all that much about achievements. I play with lots of mods anyway so  achievements are disabled. And I'd rather be able to play the immortal grandmaster of the hashashin against the vampire khagan of the Bozok horde than get steam achievements :p

Edit: I'm enjoying a lot this playthrough as the vampire lord of Helgoland. I'm playing him as a staunch odinist who burns christians and doesnt afraid of anything.
My main issue is that ever since I moved on from keeping exactly one heir to having a couple of spares, they have tended to kill each other. My ghoul vassals are also surprisingly murderous towards vampire heirs for some reason... and I have way too many vassals to be able to control them effectively.

I should really move the king away from the battle lines too... except my expansionist policies in no small meadure have relied in his godlike warfare skills making up for lower numbers and technology. I'm afraid he'll roll snake eyes in a duel and he'll trigger a vampire civil war.
I'm trying slowly to spend the prestige he gets from blots and raiding on tribal war infrastructure.  Long term plan is to get another holy site (from the swedes) and try to push the moral authority of odinism so that I can reform

Btw: playing vampires like this makes it  very keystone... your formidable character makes  him very good at his speciality (and as a commander he will be particularily godlike), but if somehow you get killed, unless you set up a really tight succession to an equally formidable character, things can collapse really fast.

I'm kind of regretting not having focused him on stewardship and used a  vampire heir as commander tbh

[CABL]

Guys, please take your CK2 shenanigans to an appropriate thread.

My WTF: Someone called my phone number, and the number of the caller wasn't displayed. Instead of numbers, it displayed "Привет" (Russian for "Hello", pronounced "Pree-vet").

[George_Chickens]

I don't buy Paradox's excuse for shoddy DLC practices. If it were just benevolent attempts to keep the game going, so many suspicious things would not have happened. Take Common Sense: the update was specifically engineered to force people to buy the DLC as the AI could use all the features without it but the player could not. I am certain this is not the only case of it, too.

Additionally, even the big DLCs aren't particularly game changing, they seem to be first and foremost designed just to squeeze out the most money. Just compare it to the expansion packs of old, like Civ 4's expansions, EU3's expansions and even the hotly debated expansions for Hearts of Iron 3 and Victoria 2 (which were accused of the same practices but get away with it on the virtue of having 4 or 5 DLCs with many features instead of literal hundreds with 3 or more) and see how far things have fallen.

Up to a point, however, EU4's DLC practices were probably better than any prior Paradox game.

[scourge728]

Hey guys, Sims doc, discuss

[Tack]

Also on the “Rar predatory DLC practices bad” bandwagon, and might actually put my first hour into CK which might be a bad idea but who knows.

Hey guys, Sims doc, discuss

Uh

Doc is a cat that resides in Brindleton Bay, the town shipped with The Sims 4: Cats & Dogs

Cool

[scriver]

Also on the “Rar predatory DLC practices bad” bandwagon, and might actually put my first hour into CK which might be a bad idea but who knows.

I did that once

Now I have put over 1000 hours there

[AzyWng]

I have zero idea what freeman's mind is :V

E: google tells me it's some kind of video LP of one half-life or another, quickly explaining why I couldn't tell it from a hole in the ground, heh

I’ve lost all respect for you.