What is DRM?

[Roran]

What is it and why is it bad?

[MonoAlice]

DRM isn’t bad, it’s good to protect your creations.

[Kargor]

It's not necessarily bad.

"DRM", as a general mechanic, tries to separate the checks whether you actually own a piece of software from the physical medium.

Whether this is "good" or "bad" depends on the details. Such checks can be very restrictive -- like 1 installation only and no way to revoke that on one end, vs. any number of installations.

Steam generally leans towards the user-friendly side for its DRM mechanics -- there's basically no restrictions, and for the time being, Steam hasn't randomly turned off games, and has shown no intention to shut down the service.

Currently I can only name a few bad points about Steam -- like giving preference to their own games leading to absolutely unacceptable situations like bans on their games destroying the entire account. They are also waaay too open to censorship which just didn't happen with CD-based distribution. And while they understand, at some level, that we used to have families where you could put the CD for a game into anyones box, they resort to blatant misdirection with stuff like "family sharing".

However, compared to more aggressive DRM that we've seen in earlier years, this isn't all that bad.

[Levi]

Roran ⋘DANK SOULS⋙ の投稿を引用：

What is it and why is it bad?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management

[Crystal Sharrd]

DRM is short for Digital Rights Management, and is used to stop pirates from stealing games, movies, etc. Some are good (such as Steamworks), and some are bad (such as SecuROM or Sonic Gather Battle). DRM was created in response to digital piracy, basically the Internet version of walking out of a store with a shopping cart full of stuff you didn't pay for or robbing a bank.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

DRM = Digital Rights Management = mechanisms for preventing people who "aren't supposed" to be able to use a certain piece of computer data, from using it.

Generally, the intent of this is to try to prevent people from pirating media (e.g. movies, music) and software (e.g. games, utilities).

However, you can't just ask people whether they're pirates or legit users. (Pirates would of course answer that they're legit users.) So if you're designing DRM, you need some independent way of verifying whether they're legit.

This can come in the form of stuff like tying a specific version of the program to the authorized user's computer, and maybe forcing that program to "check in" with a server whenever it's started, for example.

The problem with DRM is that this may inconvenience actual legit users, compared to DRM-free versions. For example, someone might have trouble if they just backed up the program and moved it to another computer when their first one crashed.

Different DRM designs place different methods of "burdens of proof" on legit users to demonstrate that they're real authorized users, basically.

Some places (e.g. GOG) sell products DRM-free, basically offering consumers an olive branch by presuming "good behavior" (i.e. not distributing it to people who aren't supposed to be able to play it) on the part of consumers, while offering products without any DRM. Such a product does risk being simply copied infinitely and given to everyone (even though that would of course be illegal), but it'd also allow the most freedom for legit consumers who've bought and paid for the product to be able to use it however they see fit.

[Mikasa Ackerman]

DRM is basically a software that makes sure you own the game you play , it can be bad like denuvo which often is forced onto games that already are on steam ( steam is a DRM as well , so why have two drms ( or if a uplay game had denuvo , it would have 3 , steam , uplay and denuvo

[Sexy Piglet]

Hello. I am a stupid blonde and can't understand why do we need Denuvo on Steam, if the Steam, as far as i know, is DRM itself?

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Sexy Piglet の投稿を引用：

Hello. I am a stupid blonde and can't understand why do we need Denuvo on Steam, if the Steam, as far as i know, is DRM itself?

Ask the game devs that add it to their games. Valve has no control over that.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Sexy Piglet の投稿を引用：

Hello. I am a stupid blonde and can't understand why do we need Denuvo on Steam, if the Steam, as far as i know, is DRM itself?

By my understanding, Denuvo is an anti-tamper thing, which basically means it makes it harder to circumvent Steam DRM, which I've sometimes heard is relatively easy to circumvent by itself.

It does require some occasional online "checking in" with a server, though, and does have stuff like multiple authentication limits within a day or something.

(There are also rumors that it may affect the performance of solid-state drives but these seem to be more in dispute and may have less probability of being true than the other points I mentioned above.)

[Cassidy]

Anti-piracy system...

If it’s not disruptive and annoying, I tolerate it. But if it’s gonna be always-online bullcrap, I ain’t playing that.

[Winged One]

Quint the Crazy Dog Lady の投稿を引用：

Sexy Piglet の投稿を引用：

Hello. I am a stupid blonde and can't understand why do we need Denuvo on Steam, if the Steam, as far as i know, is DRM itself?

By my understanding, Denuvo is an anti-tamper thing, which basically means it makes it harder to circumvent Steam DRM, which I've sometimes heard is relatively easy to circumvent by itself.

It does require some occasional online "checking in" with a server, though, and does have stuff like multiple authentication limits within a day or something.

(There are also rumors that it may affect the performance of solid-state drives but these seem to be more in dispute and may have less probability of being true than the other points I mentioned above.)

too add to this

It also can issue an additional check in if you do a major hardware change, can sometimes have issues if you want to run the game from a VM or Linux PC, and does require the activation servers to be online for that check in to check properly..


There are alot of potential issues with Denuvo, but be careful when reading people talk about it.. people on both sides of the issue seem to spread alot of misinformation about it (usually the anti Denuvo side does it more, but both sides are guilty of it) so be careful what you believe people say about it

Keep in mind I'm not talking about Quint there, what he said is pretty spot on

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

theseraph1 の投稿を引用：

Keep in mind I'm not talking about Quint there, what he said is pretty spot on

Oh, it is? I was just summarizing what seemed like the most reasonable/common info I've heard.