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

[badhabit]

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.

Where I live (not in the states), I buy and owe my games. Which is great, I don't want Steam to take that away from me.

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.

Many , many examples for dubious or no reasons: Thought: Do We Own Our Steam Games? or Steam proves we don’t own the games we buy, just google for "steam account bans"

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.

update enforcement / hacking prevention /prevention of multiplayer exploits

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.

I agree, Steam DRM feels pretty light compared to the clunky stuff from physical media times... but if your online connection is flaky, it might feels not that light anymore. And on the other hand creating a closed and locked infrastructure might be even a worse side aspect of steam API/DRM schemes.

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.

here you miss the point, it's not about money but respect and reasoanble service. If a customer buys a a full price game but found out the advertisment was wrong and he needs e.g. a game controller he should have the right for getting refund. Steam has no resonable policy, just "no refunds". While gog.com for instance has the reasonable policy "if not downloaded/installed or inside 30 days with technical problems, you can have refund"

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.

You describe the convenience of steam, I fullly agree Steam is convenient...when it works.. and when you don't clash with the newly erected boundaries of the steam ecosystem, which is much smaller than the original PC ecosystem from the past where PC users had full control over their software and systems. And about your relativism argumentation, you describe basically that you trust steam, that arbitrariness or random mistakes will not happen to you personally. Then good luck to you, I hope and vote for a system where this can't happen to me or no one else; where I can do my gaming and computational needs free and and unhindered by a centralistic infrastructure.

[Jirodyne]

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.

Where I live (not in the states), I buy and owe my games. Which is great, I don't want Steam to take that away from me.

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.

Many , many examples for dubious or no reasons: Thought: Do We Own Our Steam Games? or Steam proves we don’t own the games we buy, just google for "steam account bans"

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.

update enforcement / hacking prevention /prevention of multiplayer exploits

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.

here you miss the point, it's not about money but respect and reasoanble service. If a customer buys a a full price game but found out the advertisment was wrong and he needs e.g. a game controller he should have the right for getting refund. Steam has no resonable policy, just "no refunds". While gog.com for instance has the reasonable policy "if not downloaded/installed or inside 30 days with technical problems, you can have refund"

Ok, going to talk both of you about some of this.

1. You don't own the game anymore. Ever. You never did. Because if you owned it, if it was completly 100% yours. You would be able to legally copy/clone it and give it away for free/sell it. Because it is yours, to do with as you want. You can't do that, you don't own ANY game you buy now a days.

2. 'Games getting revoked for no valid reason is fearmongering' This is true. The closest to this resently was when a lot of steam keys, like 3000+ I think, were stolen and sold on a third party site. People bought the keys, but the keys were stolen and so the COMPANY (not Steam, but the game creators) Locked those keys so they couldn't be used. That isn't Steam's fault, not even the company's fault. It's the CUSTOMERS fault for going onto shady, illegal, blackmarket like sites that steals steam keys and sells them. Insted of just... you know, going on Steam and buying the game? Basically, if a game of yours gets locked, It's 99.9% of the time YOUR fault, or the game company's fault, Not Steam.

3. While you can not tell it WHAT to update to, you CAN tell it to NOT update anymore! It is NOT forced! YOU Tell it when to update, to auto update, and can manually tell certain games to NOT update. "hacking prevention /prevention of multiplayer exploits" Umm... Yeah? Are you honestly telling me it's bad that companies don't want you cheating in multiplayer and ruining the experience for everyone? Besides, if you really were hacking/exploited, the pervention wouldn't actually stop you...

5. "The refund policy"..... ....... ....... I didn't know we were playing console. I thought we were talking about PC? You have never, NEVER been able to refund PC games. EVER. Not even physical copies. When you buy the game, it's locked to YOU, and can never be traded away. Because they are locked to a CD-key, Steam Key, Account, or something else like those. And if you DO give the game away, you violate a lot of terms of servuses, and Steam Key, and CD-keys are 1 time use.

If you only own 1 or 2 PC games, or mainly buy from the store physically, then I can understand not using Steam. If you own 10+ games tho, I can not understand just having a system that is so easy to use and next to no issues with buying, and then downloading and installing anytime you want on any number of computers you want, for any reason you want. You don't even need to be online to play them unless the game requires the internet to play.



Edit: PS. I forgot I wanted to talk about your "and when you don't clash with the newly erected boundaries of the steam ecosystem, which is much smaller than the original PC ecosystem from the past where PC users had full control over their software and systems." Which is total bullshit. Games before steam, heck for years even after steam was invented, Games required a CD-Key, and if you cheated, changed things around, modded, or anything of the Like, the CD-Key would get banned and you wouldn't be able to play anymore without buying a brand new copy. Games now a days are more mod friendly, but not games back 10+ years ago. Games way back before the 2000 bearly have any kinda mods at all. Heck I think Half-life is one of the oldest games to have many mods made for it, a few of them becoming their own games, like CS, The Ship, and such, and that was one of, if not THE, first games onto Steam.

[Phitt]

[...]

1. Uhm, nope, certainly not. If you really 'owned' your games you would have bought their copyright, and I doubt you did that. Unless you are Bill Gates and really buy the copyright of all the games you play - it is a possibility after all.

2. Sure, and those examples are for some strange reason only from poor Russian kids no one knows personally. Fearmongering, and that's all. Steam doesn't even ban accounts anymore, they only lock them as I described above. Especially Russians are affected by account locking btw since they circumvent region locks and do heavy, commercial trading with games from Russia (which are much cheaper compared to ROW games, but aren't meant to be traded for commercial purposes). Which is against Steam's TOS, and they do know that when they do what they do. So nope, a legit user who buys games for his own use from legal sites (Steam store or any other legit site that sells Steam games) will never get an account lock.

3. I'm not sure what you mean? Hacking prevention in multiplayer games is a bad thing? In that case we have to agree to disagree. In single player games at least it is no problem to hex edit them or mod them, I did both of it with a lot of different games already. And of course you can still use regular mods in multiplayer games as well.

4. You only need an Internet connection to download the game, you need that on GoG or any other digital distribution platform as well. You don't need an Internet connection to play your games, there is even an offline mode in case you don't want to be online for whatever reason.

5. This isn't true either, you can get refunds from Steam. I agree that GoG's refund policy is better and far easier to use, but seriously, how often does it happen that games have false advertisment and you had no way of finding out? So far I didn't have a single game that I wanted a refund for because it had false advertisment. Yes, I don't like some games I've bought, but you can hardly ask for a refund if that is the case.

Steam simply doesn't revoke games or lock accounts for no reason. Many things on Steam may be automated, but those things are not. If a game gets removed from your library it is because it was bought with a stolen credit card or because the payment was revoked. If you get an account lock you did something illegal or at least something that very clearly is against Steam's ToS (and no, you can't do that by accident). Everything else is fearmongering. GoG can also delete your account btw, but for some reason you trust the nice, little independent company more than the big, evil company from the US. I can't blame you for that, but it's just a subjective point of view and not founded on arguments.

EDIT: That said I have to say that I do like GoG. They have a great service and I like their approach. A bit of competition is certainly a good thing, Steam users will benefit from a strong GoG as well.

[badhabit]

[...]

1. Uhm, nope, certainly not. If you really 'owned' your games you would have bought their copyright, and I doubt you did that. Unless you are Bill Gates and really buy the copyright of all the games you play - it is a possibility after all.

Certainly, yes. As I said I don't live under the anglosaxian law tradition but the continental european where I indeed own it.
I own software exactly the way I own a physical book, I can resell it and can do whatever what I want with it... but without having the right of making copies from it.

2. Sure, and those examples are for some strange reason only from poor Russian kids no one knows personally. Fearmongering, and that's all. Steam doesn't even ban accounts anymore, they only lock them as I described above. Especially Russians are affected by account locking btw since they circumvent region locks and do heavy, commercial trading with games from Russia (which are much cheaper compared to ROW games, but aren't meant to be traded for commercial purposes). Which is against Steam's TOS, and they do know that when they do what they do. So nope, a legit user who buys games for his own use from legal sites (Steam store or any other legit site that sells Steam games) will never get an account lock.

Also, this is not about real cases but about power and politics. because of some feeling (I guess without reason or garantuee) you trust in steam/valve, that they never will misuse their power. I don't do. Power corruptes, better not giving to much power in one hand, if not required. Here it is not required at all.

3. I'm not sure what you mean? Hacking prevention in multiplayer games is a bad thing? In that case we have to agree to disagree. In single player games at least it is no problem to hex edit them or mod them, I did both of it with a lot of different games already. And of course you can still use regular mods in multiplayer games as well.

This things are not separateable. I don't want to be stripped form my right to do waht the f___ I want with my software, for the hypothetical protection of multiplayer gaming. No, to big hammer, to small benefit.

4. You only need an Internet connection to download the game, you need that on GoG or any other digital distribution platform as well. You don't need an Internet connection to play your games, there is even an offline mode in case you don't want to be online for whatever reason.

I know thaht there is a offline mode, whcih might or might not work (needs random reactivation). Which helps you not at all if you have not activated it proactive and your connection just goes down. You are cut off your software.

5. This isn't true either, you can get refunds from Steam. I agree that GoG's refund policy is better and far easier to use, but seriously, how often does it happen that games have false advertisment and you had no way of finding out? So far I didn't have a single game that I wanted a refund for because it had false advertisment. Yes, I don't like some games I've bought, but you can hardly ask for a refund if that is the case.

No you can't: http://www.vg247.com/2014/08/29/steam-r ... ed-at-law/. You have no right for refund at all as customers. Only if the stars are right aligned the support might show mercy... but this is just "mercy" not your right as customer of a broken product.

Steam simply doesn't revoke games or lock accounts for no reason. Many things on Steam may be automated, but those things are not. If a game gets removed from your library it is because it was bought with a stolen credit card or because the payment was revoked. If you get an account lock you did something illegal or at least something that very clearly is against Steam's ToS (and no, you can't do that by accident). Everything else is fearmongering. GoG can also delete your account btw, but for some reason you trust the nice, little independent company more than the big, evil company from the US. I can't blame you for that, but it's just a subjective point of view and not founded on arguments.

They take their right for arbitrariness... some could say it is despotims. I don't need such an archaic system as I like to live in a civilized democratic society with legal certainty about my purchases.

EDIT: That said I have to say that I do like GoG. They have a great service and I like their approach. A bit of competition is certainly a good thing, Steam users will benefit from a strong GoG as well.

Indeed & amen, fully agree.

[Jirodyne]

...

Everything you just said to him? None of it except the one about no Refund has to do with STEAM. You just mentioned things controlled by the law, or by the game company, but other than the refund which again I point out no PC game has ever been aloud to be refunded ever you have not said anything about STEAM.

[badhabit]

Ok, going to talk both of you about some of this.

1. You don't own the game anymore. Ever. You never did. Because if you owned it, if it was completly 100% yours. You would be able to legally copy/clone it and give it away for free/sell it. Because it is yours, to do with as you want. You can't do that, you don't own ANY game you buy now a days.

Don't mix up copyright with ownership of a copy. While I'm not allowed to copy it, I fully own my copy.

2. 'Games getting revoked for no valid reason is fearmongering' This is true. The closest to this resently was when a lot of steam keys, like 3000+ I think, were stolen and sold on a third party site. People bought the keys, but the keys were stolen and so the COMPANY (not Steam, but the game creators) Locked those keys so they couldn't be used. That isn't Steam's fault, not even the company's fault. It's the CUSTOMERS fault for going onto shady, illegal, blackmarket like sites that steals steam keys and sells them. Insted of just... you know, going on Steam and buying the game? Basically, if a game of yours gets locked, It's 99.9% of the time YOUR fault, or the game company's fault, Not Steam.

Trust ... good that that you believe in the mercy of GabeN. I don't, why should I?

3. While you can not tell it WHAT to update to, you CAN tell it to NOT update anymore! It is NOT forced! YOU Tell it when to update, to auto update, and can manually tell certain games to NOT update. "hacking prevention /prevention of multiplayer exploits" Umm... Yeah? Are you honestly telling me it's bad that companies don't want you cheating in multiplayer and ruining the experience for everyone? Besides, if you really were hacking/exploited, the pervention wouldn't actually stop you...

Steam can ignore this flag and did this before.

5. "The refund policy"..... ....... ....... I didn't know we were playing console. I thought we were talking about PC? You have never, NEVER been able to refund PC games. EVER. Not even physical copies. When you buy the game, it's locked to YOU, and can never be traded away. Because they are locked to a CD-key, Steam Key, Account, or something else like those. And if you DO give the game away, you violate a lot of terms of servuses, and Steam Key, and CD-keys are 1 time use.

I'm not sure why people drinking this cool aid voluntary... sure, companies are heavily interested in locking purchase to a indivuum and killing resales...but there is nothign natural/or legitime about it...

If you only own 1 or 2 PC games, or mainly buy from the store physically, then I can understand not using Steam. If you own 10+ games tho, I can not understand just having a system that is so easy to use and next to no issues with buying, and then downloading and installing anytime you want on any number of computers you want, for any reason you want. You don't even need to be online to play them unless the game requires the internet to play.

Edit: PS. I forgot I wanted to talk about your "and when you don't clash with the newly erected boundaries of the steam ecosystem, which is much smaller than the original PC ecosystem from the past where PC users had full control over their software and systems." Which is total bullshit. Games before steam, heck for years even after steam was invented, Games required a CD-Key, and if you cheated, changed things around, modded, or anything of the Like, the CD-Key would get banned and you wouldn't be able to play anymore without buying a brand new copy. Games now a days are more mod friendly, but not games back 10+ years ago. Games way back before the 2000 bearly have any kinda mods at all. Heck I think Half-life is one of the oldest games to have many mods made for it, a few of them becoming their own games, like CS, The Ship, and such, and that was one of, if not THE, first games onto Steam.

Before the digital distribution, I had full control over games I bought, even when they were DRM infested. I can understand companies interested and trying to strip the customers of more freedoms & rights... but why we should accept that?

[Phitt]

Certainly, yes.

1. Again - no, you don't own your games. You bought a license, you always bought a license to use the software. The question is whether you want to resell that license. And while the European law allows you to do that it also allows distributors of software to actively prevent you from reselling it. For example by product activation via key code (once activated the game can't be sold anymore). This is perfectly legal, even in Europe. Oh, and try to sell your used GoG games then. It's a European company after all.

2. Do you have an Amazon account? Oh no, they may use your credit card information and take all your money. Or maybe your bank will set your bank account to zero. Just because they can. This is not a matter of trust, what you describe is a matter of being completely paranoid or not. There is absolutely no reason to believe that Valve will ever prevent you from playing the games you bought. Apart from an Internet myth about a nameless Russian kid who of course never did anything wrong you will never find anything about that really happening. And that even though Steam has more than 75 million (!) users. If you look hard enough you'll probably find someone who claims that Google sold his soul to an Alien race from Andromeda.

3. You have the possibility to do anything you want with your software, even with multiplayer games. But they can give you a VAC ban for cheating. Just like Punkbuster or any other anti cheat program would ban you. Apparently you don't like anti cheat programs for some strange reason, so this is not even about Steam. No offense, but the only reason why someone would not like a (working) anti cheat program in a multiplayer game is that he is a cheater himself...

4. It's digital distribution, you know. You can't play a digitally distributed game without Internet connection, no matter where you bought it. Even if it's freeware you have to download it prior to playing it. And that's all Steam's DRM is. You have to download your games through the Steam client, which is fast, worked flawlessly for me for two years now and always gives me the maximum download speed possible with my connection. Plus you can stop downloads at any time and start them again later without losing any progress, which can be quite useful for very large games and/or people with slow Internet connections.

5. In reality they do give refunds though, this is just a legal thing to ensure that people don't want refunds constantly. If you'll look at the Steam forums you'll know why, there are tons of people who say 'This game sux, I want a refund!' or 'I didn't know my C64 couldn't run this game, I want a refund!1!!'. And only a very weird person would constantly buy the 'wrong' games and then ask for a refund. So it's a hypothetical thing anyway. I agree that the way GoG handles it is more customer friendly, but for me it's enough to watch videos or read reviews about games before I buy them so I simply don't have any problems later on.

[badhabit]

1. Again - no, you don't own your games. You bought a license, you always bought a license to use the software. The question is whether you want to resell that license. And while the European law allows you to do that it also allows distributors of software to actively prevent you from reselling it. For example by product activation via key code (once activated the game can't be sold anymore). This is perfectly legal, even in Europe. Oh, and try to sell your used GoG games then. It's a European company after all.

According to my law system, most EULA's clauses are invalid (and not "licenses") as typical software usage activities (running, hex-editing, modding, backup) don't need allowance via a license from the IP holder. Licenses are needed if I would start to duplicate software. The resale of used and purely digital software is currently a heavily debated field in my law system.

2. Do you have an Amazon account? Oh no, they may use your credit card information and take all your money. Or maybe your bank will set your bank account to zero. Just because they can. This is not a matter of trust, what you describe is a matter of being completely paranoid or not. There is absolutely no reason to believe that Valve will ever prevent you from playing the games you bought. Apart from an Internet myth about a nameless Russian kid who of course never did anything wrong you will never find anything about that really happening. And that even though Steam has more than 75 million (!) users. If you look hard enough you'll probably find someone who claims that Google sold his soul to an Alien race from Andromeda.

They are not allowed to do such things. While Steam is allowed to do many things, where people just hope that Valve will act reasonable... which is naive.

3. You have the possibility to do anything you want with your software, even with multiplayer games. But they can give you a VAC ban for cheating. Just like Punkbuster or any other anti cheat program would ban you. Apparently you don't like anti cheat programs for some strange reason, so this is not even about Steam. No offense, but the only reason why someone would not like a (working) anti cheat program in a multiplayer game is that he is a cheater himself...

As I said, Steam can technical prevent this and overwrite everything. I don't like cheaters, but I hate the restriction of my software freedom even more, therefore I tolerate cheating. It is the same argumentation with giving up privacy. No, a abstract threat is not reason enough for giving up my right for privacy. The same here with my software soveranity, the abstract threat of cheaters is for me not reason enough to hand over the control over my software to a "trustworthy" centralized organization. No, thanks.

4. It's digital distribution, you know. You can't play a digitally distributed game without Internet connection, no matter where you bought it. Even if it's freeware you have to download it prior to playing it. And that's all Steam's DRM is. You have to download your games through the Steam client, which is fast, worked flawlessly for me for two years now and always gives me the maximum download speed possible with my connection. Plus you can stop downloads at any time and start them again later without losing any progress, which can be quite useful for very large games and/or people with slow Internet connections.

No one denies the usefulness of cloud backups.

5. In reality they do give refunds though, this is just a legal thing to ensure that people don't want refunds constantly. If you'll look at the Steam forums you'll know why, there are tons of people who say 'This game sux, I want a refund!' or 'I didn't know my C64 couldn't run this game, I want a refund!1!!'. And only a very weird person would constantly buy the 'wrong' games and then ask for a refund. So it's a hypothetical thing anyway. I agree that the way GoG handles it is more customer friendly, but for me it's enough to watch videos or read reviews about games before I buy them so I simply don't have any problems later on.

There is a saying: "If you treat people as idiots they will behave like idiots." If you expect your customers to be unreasonable cadgers, they will feel treated as cadgers and more likely will behave like cadgers. I prefere to be treated as reasonable customer who complaints only when it is required. Respect, please, for both sides.

[Phitt]

As I said, Steam can technical prevent this and overwrite everything. I don't like cheaters, but I hate the restriction of my software freedom even more, therefore I tolerate cheating. It is the same argumentation with giving up privacy. No, a abstract threat is not reason enough for giving up my right for privacy. The same here with my software soveranity, the abstract threat of cheaters is for me not reason enough to hand over the control over my software to a "trustworthy" centralized organization. No, thanks.

It's really hard to argue with someone who thinks like that. Cheaters in multiplayer games are an 'abstract threat?'. And your 'freedom' to hex edit software (for whatever reason) is more important than enjoying a game that is free of cheaters (mind you, not only for you, but for everyone else as well)? Must be a nightmare for you to play a game like Grimrock. Unless you have access to the source code you don't have full control over the software after all.

Seriously, this is quite fanatical from my point of view. I thought I could give you some food for thought why many of the same flawed arguments I used myself until two years ago simply aren't true. But apparently you are determined to hate Steam just for being a commercial digital distribution platform and not a non-profit open source project. But that's ok of course, to each his own after all. Sadly I don't own Steam, so whether someone uses it or not doesn't matter to me. I'll leave it at that now.

[badhabit]

As I said, Steam can technical prevent this and overwrite everything. I don't like cheaters, but I hate the restriction of my software freedom even more, therefore I tolerate cheating. It is the same argumentation with giving up privacy. No, a abstract threat is not reason enough for giving up my right for privacy. The same here with my software soveranity, the abstract threat of cheaters is for me not reason enough to hand over the control over my software to a "trustworthy" centralized organization. No, thanks.

It's really hard to argue with someone who thinks like that. Cheaters in multiplayer games are an 'abstract threat?'. And your 'freedom' to hex edit software (for whatever reason) is more important than enjoying a game that is free of cheaters (mind you, not only for you, but for everyone else as well)? Must be a nightmare for you to play a game like Grimrock. Unless you have access to the source code you don't have full control over the software after all.

Seriously, this is quite fanatical from my point of view. I thought I could give you some food for thought why many of the same flawed arguments I used myself until two years ago simply aren't true. But apparently you are determined to hate Steam just for being a commercial digital distribution platform and not a non-profit open source project. But that's ok of course, to each his own after all. Sadly I don't own Steam, so whether someone uses it or not doesn't matter to me. I'll leave it at that now.

He, slow down.
I'm appreciate your input, no question. Also, I don't hate Valve or Steam (it could be worse), I just think I could be also significantly better.
And, currently we have gog.com as counter balance, which is very good. As long as we have no monopoly, things are ok ...if steam becomes a monopoly (or starts to to fight more aggressive for dominance), I will be REALLY concerned... currently, the PC gaming situation is OK.

(PS: indeed, source code open for games would be a good thing. Think on all this old game classics, which can't be updated for modern resolutions, wide screen, Windows 8 or linux support... what a shame! Releasing games as open source also not stop companies in selling them, see for instance: Arx Fatalis, Jagged Alliance 2 or another one of these games)