Thank you for making LoG2 DRM-free and not requiring Steam

[Zo Kath Ra]

I'm installing Skyrim from the TES Anthology, and it's unblievable how many hoops it's making me jump through.

The LoG2 installation, on the other hand, was quick and easy.
Thank you Almost Human!

edit:
I've decided I will never again buy a game that requires Steam.

[sapientCrow]

I AGREE agree AGREE!!

Actually after buying Skyrim and literally having to find alternative copies to get mods to work properly because of the steam drm force fed to me I was extraordinarily frustrated with bethesda and what to me was one of the most active publishers that gave free access and awesome modding functionality.

I do not like steam at all. I dislike not being able to install where I want it to be. I do not want it on and monitoring activity. I want manual patches and control over how they update and access my game.
All of that and much more has been stripped with these newish online drm police methods.

I am happy there are places like gog.com and devs like AH still create drm free titles..
DRM has never worked and only is working now because it is increasingly becoming a froced method of playing a game. Which lies a whole different problem and that is when Steam literally owns all the pipelines for distribution they also control and direct sales development and many other facets of design/development.

anyhoo
yes thank you very much!! for not making Legend of Grimrock drm free!

[Palandus]

For not making LoG DRM free?

Or do you mean For making LoG DRM free?

[msyblade]

The Irony of DRM being that, of course, every drm game on Steam is cracked a day after release and pirated freely. It's not like the pirates suffer, the consumer suffers. One of the foremost reasons we as a community fully support Almost Human; Because Almost Human supports the community, whole-heartedly. Thanks again guys, you do it right, and we truly do appreciate the efforts and sacrifices you give in order to support our experience.

[badhabit]

I'm installing Skyrim from the TES Anthology, and it's unblievable how many hoops it's making me jump through.

The LoG2 installation, on the other hand, was quick and easy.
Thank you Almost Human!

edit:
I've decided I will never again buy a game that requires Steam.

Fully agree. Thanks AH, for the DRM-free and gog.com version.

[Olson.dev]

Thanks for making a Steam version, for those of us who prefer convenience. Also, @sapientCrow, you can install Steam games wherever you want; it's been that way since at least 2012.

[badhabit]

Thanks for making a Steam version, for those of us who prefer convenience. Also, @sapientCrow, you can install Steam games wherever you want; it's been that way since at least 2012.

Everyone loves convenience, hopefully gog galaxy will bring gog here on par with steam while additionally being customer friendly & respecting e.g. a return policy, no 1€=1$ stupidies, no account lock outs, no upgrade enforcements, no drm

[Jirodyne]

I'm installing Skyrim from the TES Anthology, and it's unblievable how many hoops it's making me jump through.

The LoG2 installation, on the other hand, was quick and easy.
Thank you Almost Human!

edit:
I've decided I will never again buy a game that requires Steam.

Fully agree. Thanks AH, for the DRM-free and gog.com version.

I... Huh... I never understood this. Why do people not like steam? Installing any game you own is as easy as finding the game in the list, and clicking install... And uninstalling is just as easy, and it lists every game you own. Simplier and better than having to go online to Gog.com or each and every game site, logging in, and then downloading and then installing it. What is so bad about having a Library list of every game you own that you can simply install and uninstall from at any point in time without needing to go through the internet to try and remember what games you own, where they are, and how to find, download, and install them.

I own 98+ games under my Steam Account, and would never be able to play 1/10 of them without steam keeping tract that I own them and can install them at anytime to play with a click of a button. Much better than years ago where if you lost the installer, CD-Key, or name of the game, and it wasn't installed on your computer already, you would have a very hard time getting it back.

[badhabit]

I'm installing Skyrim from the TES Anthology, and it's unblievable how many hoops it's making me jump through.

The LoG2 installation, on the other hand, was quick and easy.
Thank you Almost Human!

edit:
I've decided I will never again buy a game that requires Steam.

Fully agree. Thanks AH, for the DRM-free and gog.com version.

I... Huh... I never understood this. Why do people not like steam? Installing any game you own is as easy as finding the game in the list, and clicking install... And uninstalling is just as easy, and it lists every game you own. Simplier and better than having to go online to Gog.com or each and every game site, logging in, and then downloading and then installing it. What is so bad about having a Library list of every game you own that you can simply install and uninstall from at any point in time without needing to go through the internet to try and remember what games you own, where they are, and how to find, download, and install them.

I own 98+ games under my Steam Account, and would never be able to play 1/10 of them without steam keeping tract that I own them and can install them at anytime to play with a click of a button. Much better than years ago where if you lost the installer, CD-Key, or name of the game, and it wasn't installed on your computer already, you would have a very hard time getting it back.

No one criticize Steam for the aspects you mentioned (convenience, integration, cloud-storage-backups), technically steam is nice. The problems with steam is coming from their lock-in architecture, ugly licensing, customer politics. E.g. unlike with gog, according to to their EUALAs you license only the game and not buy it. This means your right to use a game might be revoked anytime (which happend several times for several reasons for multiple people/accounts). Also, as you not owe the games, steam can enforce updates, e.g. there was an enforced update which brought ads to a valve game, highly disliked by the community. You can't do what you want with an game, you need the steam client to run and install it, for many games local backups, modding, hex-editing etc is not (or only complicated) possible. Things which were normal for PC games before steam. Also, their loyalities seems to be more geared towards the publishers than the customers, e.g. their active support of DRM and regional censoring schemes. Also, their non-existing refund policy is highly suspicious and brought valve several complaints from customer rights organizations. In general, my vision of future PC gaming is more focussed on the preservance of the quality of an open platform, user self-controled, and not an development to a strictly controled centralized "console model", dominated by a single company. As Valve treats gamers already not respectful it has not my trust at all that they would do such an massive paradigm shift in the PC gaming in a sensible way, therefore I support the DRM free & open-platform PC gaming.

TL,NR: Steam technically nice, political highly debatable

[Phitt]

TL,NR: Steam technically nice, political highly debatable

I used to be a Steam hater, in fact I only started using Steam to get my LoG 1 mod on the Steam Workshop and because I was annoyed that some people could use the beta editor while I couldn't. But now, after two years with Steam I can say that most of the complaints people have about Steam are unfounded. To reply to your specific post:

1. You always buy a license to use a game, that was even the case back in the last millenium when you bought a nice boxed set with a manual, a CD and some other goodies. So Steam didn't change anything in that regard, you never 'buy a game'. Not on GOG and not anywhere else.

2. Games getting revoked for no valid reason is fearmongering. I have never heard of anyone who got a game revoked he legally bought. That just doesn't happen. The worst thing that can happen to you is that they'll lock your account, which means you will still have access to all the games you bought, but you can't add any new games, can't use your inventory or the market anymore. And they'll only lock your account if you do something clearly illegal.

3. Never heard of a game where modding or hex-editing wasn't possible. Why would that be? I mod quite a lot and so far I didn't find any game that was unmoddable on Steam. Only multiplayer games can be problematic since the cheat protection system could give you a VAC ban if you played with a hex edited exe. But come on, not being able to hex edit multiplayer games is hardly a disadvantage I'd say. Not sure what you need local backups for when you can download the game at full speed anytime from anywhere on the world. Local backups are needed if you fear that your CD may get scratches and cease functioning, but thankfully those days are over.

4. It's true that Steam by itself is a kind of DRM, but compared to all the other crap we've seen before it's one of the best DRMs out there. In fact once you have Steam installed you won't even notice there is any DRM. You start the games you want to play and you play them. And that's it, no other hoops to jump through. Compare that to those weird copy protection attempts from the 80s/90s (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_wheel), the shady StarForce DRM, the 'install only 10 times' copy protection from games like Bioshock or the 'always-on' copy protection Ubisoft came up with a while ago. Only no DRM is better, but if you want to make use of the Steam service you naturally can't do that.

5. The refund policy...I currently have 616 games on my Steam account. Do you know how much I paid for those games? I guess around $300 maybe. That's an average of 50 cents per game. Do you really think the extremely low prices on Steam would be possible if people could sell their used games? Certainly not. Whether I buy 'used' copies from random people or whether I pay only a few dollars for my 'own' copy doesn't matter to me.

Overall I have no idea how Valve doesn't treat their customers 'not respectful'. In two years I didn't have a single problem with Steam, I got hundreds of games for what is basically pocket change. And I can download them from anywhere anytime I want with full speed. Updates get automatically added, so I don't have to constantly look for patches to keep my games up to date (which can be very annoying especially for multiplayer games). Yes, a big company from the USA could theoretically remove all my games and laugh in my face afterwards. But a lot of other companies could do even more threatening things. They could cut me off from electricity, they could turn off my phone or the government could even invalidate my passport. But they won't. Because it doesn't make any sense.