An offline-DRM for older retro machines

[Viper1970]

As I have a lot of older games that are much better played on WXP instead of W7-W10 and Steam dropped the support for XP and Vista long ago, there is no more possibility to play those titles on an XP-machine where they run best.

What about an offline client for such older machines (and there are a lot of people out there playing retro games on retro machines), which creates a code out of the hardware of your retro machine and your steam account, which then could be transfered to your modern system which is connected with your normal client to Steam.

Here you can use this code to create another new code out of it which then could be transfered back to the retro machine and let you play your old games offline on this classic PC for about two or three weeks. After this you have to repeat this task again.

I know a lot of real expensive software (especially in the flightsimulation addon and interface genre for homecockpit builders) that is using such a concept to use DRM on offline machines.

This could be a way to make the retro guys happy again so that they could still play their XP-titles from Steam without the trouble to get them running on a modern PC with W7-W10.

It could also be a way for people in the future to still use their W7 machines if Steam will drops the support of W7-W8 and the client will only be able to run with W10-11. I think this will be sooner as most people want it. Any laptop or tablet running W10/11 and an has installed a new Steam client could be used to let you use your old W7 gaming machine a bit longer.

Not all people have the money to buy a new gaming PC which is able to run W10/11 smootly and others like to play there beloved classic games on there extra built retro machines. Not every XP title is very good playable or even runable at all on a modern 64Bit OS.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Viper:

As I have a lot of older games that are much better played on WXP instead of W7-W10 and Steam dropped the support for XP and Vista long ago, there is no more possibility to play those titles on an XP-machine where they run best.

Such a client would be unable to properly interface with the current back end. ANd what games are there that play better on XP than W7?

I've yet to encounter one and I literally specialize in older games.

Not all people have the money to buy a new gaming PC which is able to run W10/11 smootly and others like to play there beloved classic games on there extra built retro machines. Not every XP title is very good playable or even runable at all on a modern 64Bit OS.

NAme one. The 64-bit achitecture encapsulates 32-bit architecture. 32 bit apps simply won't make use of the 64-bit stuff.They'll work within the normall 32-bit limitations.

SO please. CItation Needed

[Viper1970]

Try games like Rollercoaster Tycoon or anything else out of this era on a new 64Bit machine and you know what I mean. If it's running without problems and smooth you are one of the lucky guys, but mostly those older titles make troubles.

Just read the assessments of many older titles which are still being sold by Steam.

And the client which is running on the old machines doesn't have to be connected to Steam directly, so it shouldn't be a problem if it's running 32Bit in case of security. It only must generate a code and be able to interpret a code that let you start your games again.

Today you could not collect games anymore, cause in three years from now they are obsolete. This is very annoying if you have a real huge collection like I have. I don't have a problem to built an older PC to run those titles again, but I have aproblem to throw them in the trash, cause there is no more way to start them again cause of online DRM. And I have paid a lot of money for games the last decades.

If things go further like this I will drop this hobby. I don't wan't to know what happens if Steam decides to drop W7/8 support. The next wave of unplayable titles will come and no one cares for it or the money you put in them.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Viper:

Try games like Rollercoaster Tycoon or anything else out of this era on a new 64Bit machine and you know what I mean. If it's running without problems and smooth you are one of the lucky guys, but mostly those older titles make troubles.

Works okay on WIndows 7 for me. And if you read the forum or the guides you'll find how to get things running proper like.

And the client which is running on the old machines doesn't have to be connected to Steam directly, so it shouldn't be a problem if it's running 32Bit in case of security. It only must generate a code and be able to interpret a code that let you start your games again.

Yeah it kinda does. If nothing else to actually download the game, and to veify your ownership of it. So it would have to interface with the newer back end and middleware.

Valve is not goiung to go backwards on this. That's just not gonna happen.

Today you could not collect games anymore, cause in three years from now they are obsolete.

And yet I have no issue running games from 5, 10, 20 years ago.
Weird. Me thinks you'rfe leaning too hard on the hyperbole m8.

This is very annoying if you have a real huge collection like I have. I don't have a problem to built an older PC to run those titles again, but I have aproblem to throw them in the trash, cause there is no more way to start them again cause of online DRM. And I have paid a lot of money for games the last decades.

Exceopt that the software you need to run them won't run on older PCs.

If things go further like this I will drop this hobby. I don't wan't to know what happens if Steam decides to drop W7/8 support. The next wave of unplayable titles will come and no one cares for it or the money you put in them.

Probably the same tthing that happened when they dropped 98, 2000, and XP support.

I've had no problem playing games released in the DOs era, the windows 95 era, the windows 98 era, and the wiondows 2k era. At worst. a little tweaking is required and the instructions for such are readily available in the gaming community. Also the differences between windows 7, 10, 11 aren't as severe.

Actually looking through the recent reviews, I'm not seeing much mentions with difficulty running..for PCs Hearing some mac issues though

[Viper1970]

How would you like to play a game you couldn't even start anymore? It's not the game, it's the DRM. If Valve doesn't want to maintain older OS, ok. But then they shouldn't still sell titles that aren't running on modern systems or if they do, they do it very bad.

And believe me I know a lot of computer and older software. I'm building homecockpits for flightsimulation since many years, repairing old computer components and doing this since the early 80's.

I collect all kind of simulations since the DOS era and have nearly every title. For sure you can get old games still running, but not on modern 64Bit machines and surely not anymore at all on the next generation that will come.

And I have tried a many software tricks but the era from 1995 to the last XP titles is mostly only playable on the right hardware. All those emulations and other tools do their job for a few titles but the majority isn't running anymore.

As said it's also no problem to run the games on classic hardware again but you couldn't run the DRM anymore (and a PC running XP is a classic now - not only DOS or W9X machines - and it's alot easier to get DOS titles running with emulators like DOSBox as for older XP titles where no emulation exists). As long as the Steam client was running on a 32Bit XP there wasn't any trouble to get older titles running, but now you even couldn't start them again.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Viper:

How would you like to play a game you couldn't even start anymore?

Have yet to encounter such a game.

It's not the game, it's the DRM. If Valve doesn't want to maintain older OS, ok. But then they shouldn't still sell titles that aren't running on modern systems or if they do, they do it very bad.

Except those games work finde on modern PC's.
Even the example you gave works on Windows 10 according to the forums and reviews.

Weird that.

And believe me I know a lot of computer and older software. I'm building homecockpits for flightsimulation since many years, repairing old computer components and doing this since the early 80's.

Yeah yeah so haviong to tweak an ini file to run a game should be no problem for you.
The worst game I've seen in this regard is Deadlock and thats basically because the devs botched the cd emulation. And even that is fixable.

I collect all kind of simulations since the DOS era and have nearly every title. For sure you can get old games still running, but not on modern 64Bit machines and surely not anymore at all on the next generation that will come.

And when you can name one that will not run on a 64-bit windows do feel free to cite it because I have yet to encounter such a game. And I've played the Might and Magic collection, as welll as the Ultimaa Collection. Hell. Even the krondor collection.

And I have tried a many software tricks but the era from 1995 to the last XP titles is mostly only playable on the right hardware. All those emulations and other tools do their job for a few titles but the majority isn't running anymore.

1995. Bruh I thought you were talking about old games. And again You will have to name a couple because so far you are just making empty assertions

[Viper1970]

On many XP titles you get random crashes you wont have if you are running them on an old PC with XP. A lot of trouble comes with the graphic drivers. For sure you can go back a bit, depending on the graphics hardware you use. But if you run an RTX card for example there isn't a big step you can do backwards.

And do you really want to change your graphic cards drivers everytime you switch between a classic or a new title? You can do a dual boot, but that is also only possible as far back as you are able to get older chipset and graphic drivers for your hardware. And if the Steam client isn't running anymore on XP how should you start a title from the XP era you bought on Steam and has DRM?

And for older other titles you mentioned and want two have examples, ok here is a good one. Try to get Jane's Longbow Anthology or IAF or F-15 or Novalogic Comanche Gold running on a modern 64Bit OS with modern hardware, without any graphical glitches and CTD. Those aren't effected by the Steam client but you want to have examples for titles that never able to run on a modern machine. And there are even more and even newer once.

Some of them will maybe start but they want run stable and without glitches. And many XP titles even on CD or DVD aren't able to run on W10 cause of the securom or savedisk copy protection, Microsoft suddenly decided to declare as a security problem, even they used it for their own games. This is also the case for W7/8 but here you can omit the nice "security-updates" that makes it impossible to run those games again.

I bought some of the old titles back those days on Steam again to be able to run them without a CD or DVD cause if you collect those titles you want have the original media always in the drive. Many of those titles in my collection are hard to get once again as a boxed version or it is even impossible.

I have lost some old CD cause of those ridiculous RPM some drives reach, which ended with the old CD exploding in the drive. Here the Steam version was a good alternative as long as you were able to use the client in XP. Now I have to go back to those old CD and the Steam versions remain unused in my library because I can't use Steam titles on XP anymore.

[Viper1970]

And I can run things like the old Janes series without any glitches, CTD's buttersmooth and with 1600x1200 resolution on my retro machine, which is an Athlon II 260 3.2GHZ with a Geforce 5950 Ultra and two Voodoo II in SLI running with in dual boot with XP and W9X.

I use nGlide for all the titles which are able to run with it to have higher res as you ever had back those days (and yes nGlide runs even in W9X, also it isn't mentioned). For all the other 3DFX titles I use the Voodoo SLI and in XP I use the 5950 Ultra.

So I have a clue of retro gaming and I do this since many years now. You can use all those tricks and tipps and emulations to get old titles running on newer OS, but it never will be the same as on the right OS with a compatible hardware. And the hardware I use is one of the fastest you can use with those old OS. And I had to tweak a lot of driver files and chipset inf to get it running, so I think I know what I'm doing.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Viper:

On many XP titles you get random crashes you wont have if you are running them on an old PC with XP. A lot of trouble comes with the graphic drivers. For sure you can go back a bit, depending on the graphics hardware you use. But if you run an RTX card for example there isn't a big step you can do backwards.

Again Give some names m8. You're just making blind assertions.

And do you really want to change your graphic cards drivers everytime you switch between a classic or a new title?

Considering you haven't been able to name such a title I'm going to count that as a hypothetical what if. question.

Secondly I haven't ever heard of RTX giving troubles with older games since Nvidia driovers don't really do much with older driver functionalities. And even if so wrappers and launchers exist.

And for older other titles you mentioned and want two have examples, ok here is a good one. Try to get Jane's Longbow Anthology or IAF or F-15 or Novalogic Comanche Gold running on a modern 64Bit OS with modern hardware, without any graphical glitches and CTD. Those aren't effected by the Steam client but you want to have examples for titles that never able to run on a modern machine. And there are even more and even newer once.

Strange that the games you mention aren't sold on STeam and apparently not on GoG either....

So...this isn't a steam problem, its a wherever you bought those games from problem.
It has nothing to do with the steam client. and I'm quite sure even those game will wrrun with the right tweaks.

Some of them will maybe start but they want run stable and without glitches. And many XP titles even on CD or DVD aren't able to run on W10

Qhich are not Steam titles... also you can tdo a 1:1 image dump of the disc in most cases to get those to run. But again. Not steam games. Not a steam client problem.

Most devs make a point of cutting out or short circuiting the securom before putting it up on modern stores.


ALl the one's youve indicated giving you problems are not STeam games... so yeah when you can name even one steam game with this issue we can continue.

Here the Steam version was a good alternative as long as you were able to use the client in XP. Now I have to go back to those old CD and the Steam versions remain unused in my library because I can't use Steam titles on XP anymore.

And you have yet to name one Steam Game that has this problem you speak of.

[Mad Scientist]

You'd be more likely to have issues with newer GPUs and an older game than an older game not run properly through Steam.

Games usually don't have "random crashes" for not running on XP. That sounds more like system instability (bad OC/unclean power/bad settings) or settings issues than an issue running it via Steam.

Older games usually have well known specific issues overall, especially if you're trying to use mods with them.

Give some specific game names.

[Viper1970]

To name only a few of my collection here which have troubles. And it's not perfect if a game just starts, it has to run wthout CTD's and glitches which isn't possible with 64Bit OS and such older titles.

B-17 Mighty Eight, Blitzkrieg series, Codename Panzers, Company Of Heroes, Novalogic F-22/F-16, Fairstrike, Falcon 4.0 (without BMS), Fleet Command, Flying Tigers, Panzer Elite, PT Boats, and ...

I don't have the delight to go through my hole collection now, there are many more which still can be bought and there are no fixes or something else made that this titles can run without any trouble on e.g. W10 not to mention W11.

People must look on their own to get them running on modern OS or ask the community for help. Many of those titles were able to run on XP but do not run bug free on W7, W8; W10.

And the support for W7 and W8 of the Steam client will also not remain very long, I guess. You can get some things unning with W7, but in W10 or 11 it's the end of those games.

And I have a lot of OS running here in parallel from MSDOS 6.22 over W98SE and WME up to Vista, W7 and W10 to compare them.

In my sim room there are 6 PC's. Two a retro rigs, one AMD K6 400, Geforce 256DDR, Voodoo I running MSDOS6.22 and W98SE unofficial SP3.1e and one Athlon II 260, Geforce 5950 Ultra and a VoodooII SLI, 2GB Ram running WinME and WXP in dual boot.

Two are Phenom II systems (Phenom II 965, GTX660, 16GB Ram / Phenom II 1100T, 2x GTX660 SLI 16GB Ram) running Vista SP2 and W7 SP1.

My homepit DCS rig is an Ryzen 9 3900XT , RTX 3090 and 64GB Ram and a HP Reverb G2. The tank and naval rig in my "command unit" is Ryzen 2700X with a RTX 2060 and 32GB Ram. Those are running W10.

And the HTPC in the living room is a Ryzen 5 2600X 16GB Ram with a GTX1650 Super running W7SP1.

So I think I have enough sytems to compare what is running on which system and how. As I said this is my hobby snce many, many years. I'm a simulation and computer enthusiast since the early DOS days.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Viper:

To name only a few of my collection here which have troubles. And it's not perfect if a game just starts, it has to run wthout CTD's and glitches which isn't possible with 64Bit OS and such older titles.

B-17 Mighty Eight, Blitzkrieg series, Codename Panzers, Company Of Heroes, Novalogic F-22/F-16, Fairstrike, Falcon 4.0 (without BMS), Fleet Command, Flying Tigers, Panzer Elite, PT Boats, and ...

Yeah I checked all of those. VBery little mention of difficulties running in the recent reviews. Most of which are positive for all the games you mentioned. Seems other peopel are having no trouble.

I don't have the delight to go through my hole collection now, there are many more which still can be bought and there are no fixes or something else made that this titles can run without any trouble on e.g. W10 not to mention W11.

Nice shift of the goall post. We've gone from they don't run, to they don't run without trouble.
Which is funny since most of those gave as many, if not more problems on XP and 98.

People must look on their own to get them running on modern OS or ask the community for help. Many of those titles were able to run on XP but do not run bug free on W7, W8; W10.

ANd they are able to run on W7+ you just have to tweak it a little. Welcome to PC gaming m8.

And no. Valve will not be releasing a legacy client for offline play. The fact you also want specifically offline play makes me rather sus to begin with.

[Yzal]

Why would a business go out of their way to support obsolete hardware and operating systems? If you can't run an older game on a modern PC then you're not trying hard enough, is it that hard to check Pcgamingwiki?

[Viper1970]

They do not stable run even with tweaking. And if I sell a product it's not the problem of the costumer to get it running. And what should this last phrase "sus" mean?

I never said that all games should be able to run offline, it would be enough for the real old titles that were made during the 9X/XP days. And I also said this offline function should be bound to a DRM which must be renewed every two or three weeks and is also bound to the system it runs on. Such things are possible as we both know.

A kind of DRM used by many other companies to run software on a machines that do not have a internet connection. But I have the assumption that Valve isn't interested in their costumers, cause they know there aren't much alternatives out there anymore. It's a kind of exclusive right now.

And I'm tired of discussing, cause there is no interest in costumers here, especially if they are a very small group. I will involve this in my future purchases at Steam.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Yeah, Steam requiring beefier computers than what a game on one's Steam account requires is a silly irony of having a DRM client.

Perhaps it'd be useful to check whether the game in question actually needs Steam to run. If not, copying the game files over to the WinXP machine might work. Though, this is not guaranteed to work, obviously.

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Originally posted by Viper:

As I have a lot of older games that are much better played on WXP instead of W7-W10 and Steam dropped the support for XP and Vista long ago, there is no more possibility to play those titles on an XP-machine where they run best.

Such a client would be unable to properly interface with the current back end. ANd what games are there that play better on XP than W7?

I've yet to encounter one and I literally specialize in older games.

If you "specialize in older games", you should know that there are machines on which WinXP is a more suitable OS than Win7. So anything that could run on both OSes would run better on WinXP than Win7 on those machines.

(Furthermore, there are some games that are specific to WinXP.)

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Not all people have the money to buy a new gaming PC which is able to run W10/11 smootly and others like to play there beloved classic games on there extra built retro machines. Not every XP title is very good playable or even runable at all on a modern 64Bit OS.

NAme one. The 64-bit achitecture encapsulates 32-bit architecture. 32 bit apps simply won't make use of the 64-bit stuff.They'll work within the normall 32-bit limitations.

SO please. CItation Needed

It seems like you don't know older games very well, or you'd have run into Windows games like the first eXceed game that run properly on WinXP but have trouble at least starting with Win7.

Just as a reminder, Win7 is not simply a direct upgrade to WinXP that can do all the same things the same or better. There are actual differences.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Nice shift of the goall post. We've gone from they don't run, to they don't run without trouble.
Which is funny since most of those gave as many, if not more problems on XP and 98.

No,you're shifting the goalpost.

Not all games will act wrong in the same way. Just because a game can run does not mean it runs well enough to be reasonably playable and enjoyable. Occasional crashes (requiring workarounds at best) are a thing. So is unexpected slowdown on newer machines. And sometimes there are color glitches and resolution glitches (e.g. being unable to do widescreen). One can get sometimes-hilarious color glitching results when trying to run a version of Age of Empires II on a Win7 machine that is known to work properly on a WinXP machine.

You clearly don't specialize in old games.

Originally posted by Start_Running:

And no. Valve will not be releasing a legacy client for offline play. The fact you also want specifically offline play makes me rather sus to begin with.

Oh wow, now you're even going for the entirely gratuitous and unwarranted ad hominem.

Originally posted by Viper:

They do not stable run even with tweaking. And if I sell a product it's not the problem of the costumer to get it running. And what should this last phrase "sus" mean?

I'm gonna guess that he thinks you're trying to pirate something. Which is particularly inappropriate on his part since some of these older games might already be DRM-free on Steam anyway.

Originally posted by Viper:

And I'm tired of discussing, cause there is no interest in costumers here, especially if they are a very small group. I will involve this in my future purchases at Steam.

Don't worry; you're not alone.

And your idea is excellent.

Heck, I've suggested outright that Steam ought to have a fully command-line edition that just does its DRM-authentication features and nothing else. It would be the ultimate slim version of Steam, it would run on almost any hardware, and it would be infinitely customizable by anyone to make their own UI (rather than being stuck with the substandard official UI that Valve has designed).