If geeks love it, we’re on it

Valve’s Steamworks to make DRM obsolete?

Valve’s Steamworks to make DRM obsolete?

steamworks_logoUpdates announced Tuesday for Valve’s Steamworks platform bring a new, more approachable method to anti-piracy.  This new solution will, according to Valve, eliminate all DRM.  The digital distribution pioneers may be on to a new non-intrusive method which will allow legitimate buyers to rest easy with their purchase.

Steamworks is Valve’s suite of services and tools offered to developers and publishers for free.  It allows developers to integrate the steam distribution method for their releases.  The goal is to streamline development to what most would agree as a very reliable method of digital distribution for games.  Available for a year now, some games have already shipped with Steamworks implementation.  F.E.A.R. 2 and Empire: Total War are two such examples.

The new solution, dubbed Custom Executable Generation (CEG), offers non-intrusive piracy protection by  creating a unique game for each purchased copy which would be tied into the user’s Steam account.  From the press release:

A customer friendly approach to anti-piracy, CEG makes unique copies of games for each user allowing them to access the application on multiple machines without install limits and without having to install root kits on their PC.

The user would be able to do whatever they want with their game once purchased.  No paranoia over installation limits, no struggles with keeping track of many different CD keys, and best of all, no additional ‘piracy monitoring’ software to install alongside the game.  No matter where you are, if you have Steam, you can log in and play.

This won’t prevent piracy altogether, and it is hardly perfect.  Users will still be able to pirate their own copies of games.  Despite that ability, CEG will give Valve a very simple method to track ownership back to the original pirate and ban their account.

There will also still have the problem of multiple users in the same house.  If you purchase Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead, only one person will be able to play any of the games at one given time.  Another family member or friend will not be able to play Left 4 Dead while you play Team Fortress 2 on another computer as both games are under the same Steam account.  A slight limitation when many would suggest others should be able to play different games simultaneously.

Though CEG is not the ‘perfect freedom’ that we want with our purchased media, it’s definitely a step in the right direction.  Gabe Newell is a large proponent of DRM-free gaming, and on top of the greatly successful distribution platform he’s developed, he’s pushing the market towards a proper approach to piracy prevention.

Comments

  1. UPSLynx
    UPSLynx
    Gabe Newell is a large proponent of DRM-free gaming,

    See what I did there?
  2. Thrax
    Thrax CEG scares me. Content that phones home with my personal identification? Do not want.
  3. shwaip
    shwaip Isn't this a form of DRM?
  4. mondi
    mondi ^ That's what I get for not hitting reply before making a tasty tasty snack.

    So CEG is a Digital method, to enforce Rights Management, but it isn't DRM?
  5. shwaip
    shwaip well the edit distance from CEG to DRM is the maximum for a three-letter-acronym, so they're as different as can be!
  6. Cliff_Forster
    Cliff_Forster I have mixed feelings about digital distribution. I have purchased a few on Steam, and its a good service, but there is still something to be said for going into your local game shop, talking with the locals a bit.

    In Glen Burnie MD we have a little shop called Power Gamer, the guys in there love talking games, and the shop has some realy nice displays to check out, so its not hard for me to justify the trip there, and a copy of the physcial disk to support those guys.
  7. _k
    _k The other thing is the keys are tied to that account what happens when you forget the account information, fail to be able to recover credentials through normal channels, or nefarious circumstances compromise the account....what then HUH WHAT THEN!?
  8. Thrax
    Thrax
    _k_ wrote:
    The other thing is the keys are tied to that account what happens when you forget the account information, fail to be able to recover credentials through normal channels, or nefarious circumstances compromise the account....what then HUH WHAT THEN!?

    Don't be a bad.
  9. _k
    _k I only say some of it because I have all of the original Half-Life games that are on another account that I can't figure out the pass and I have spent weeks trying to figure it out before and I know people who have had their accounts hacked and it took them the better part of a week to get everything reset and new logins.
  10. Mochan
    Mochan funny that, Steamworks *is* DRM.
  11. shwaip
    shwaip
    _k_ wrote:
    I only say some of it because I have all of the original Half-Life games that are on another account that I can't figure out the pass and I have spent weeks trying to figure it out before and I know people who have had their accounts hacked and it took them the better part of a week to get everything reset and new logins.

    1) Strong password. K.is.4n.1d10t!, for example. also easily remembered.
    2) they'll email your password to you if you forget it.
  12. _k
    _k but only if you can figure out the answer for your safety question
  13. shwaip
    shwaip Right. So you should probably pick a safety question you know the answer to. If you can't do that, how have you survived this long on the internet?
  14. UPSLynx
    UPSLynx Oh, make no mistakes, CEG is a form of DRM. But the important part is that it's completely non-intrusive.

    Think of it this way. It's being offered to developers who want to use the steam platform for distribution. This will - hopefully - get those developers to stop using their own draconian methods and embrace something that most gamers can tolerate.

    Currently, if you buy a non-Valve game that uses Steam (not bought THROUGH Steam, but upon install is integrated with Steam like FEAR2), they can still have their own ridiculous methods of DRM i.e. SecuROM. If the dev is using Steamworks and uses CEG, and this becomes a regular practice, then hopefully we can see the end of rootkits and the like for DRM coverage. I think we can all agree that CEG is a better solution than any rootkit or installation limit based solutions.

    We can also all agree that something NEEDS to be done about piracy. I don't care how many people give you statistics, piracy is hurting the industry. Is DRM the solution? Absolutely not. Is CEG the solution? probably not. But at least we're making non-intrusive steps towards the correct solution.

    I hate DRM. Absolutely detest it. As it exists today, all it manages to do effectively is hurt the legitimate consumers. Am I 'excited' about CEG's implementation? No, not at all. But I do know that Valve doesn't screw things like this up. With someone like Gabe Newell on our side, just relax, this will turn out OK, and maybe even good.

    Besides, most of us once called Steam an asinine idea.
  15. UPSLynx
  16. bothered
    bothered I waited for FEAR 2 to be released rather than download it off Steam, then it installed through Steam! If I didn't already have Steam it would have forced me to have it! Naughty!
  17. Nate_LapT What I have seen with game centers is they will create a new login per game. This will work if you plan to be sharing your games. Doesn't make it idea if you want all your games within one login though.

Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!