ORIGINAL: Blond_Knight
Sorry, I was trying to answer RealchuckB's question about why some people don't like Steam.
I would like to point out that while you can locally backup your games from Steam as you stated, Youre not going to be running those games outside Steam. My point is if Steam is hit by a bus or Steam decides you don't have a license anymore for a game your not playing it, files or not.
You don't have to have an internet connection to run Steam. So if your power goes out because of errant buses you can still run Steam. You need Steam to run in the background because of the mostly DRM titles. Also, while you seem to think Steam decides whether or not a game is DRM, they don't. That is entirely up to the publisher/developer. It is not a Steam decision. Steam does have DRM free games. Some with caveats decided on by the publisher/developer.
https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games
Steam cannot and would not 'revoke' a license. That is a publisher/developer decision. Steam is simply a middleman. Steam insures that games cannot be pirated. A good example is GOG. They had (maybe still do) a policy where you could 'return' a digital download if you didn't like a game. Same as Steam. But because the game was DRM free many people would say they were 'returning' the game when in fact they still had it. Some even bragged about it. So the publisher/developer was without the income and yet people still had the game. Humanity at it's finest.
Some don't like the fee Steam charges developers or publishers. In some cases it can go as high as 30%. It does prevent piracy and ensures publishers/developers their income. It also gives people a piracy free platform to get into the industry. That's why you see so much 'garbage' as some put it. Developers who have not had the fortune to get into a big house can start on their own. You have to start someplace. Also publishers are to blame for some of the 'garbage'. They throw out game development packages like they were illicit drugs making it easy to make a, I say this in the loosest sense, game. BTW, some smaller and independent developers are talking about unionizing so they have some clout in bargaining for their 'garbage'.
So, a new developer can go to Steam and try to sell their game. Without Steam exposure they might sell 100 copies at $10. With Steam they might sell 700 copies at $7. Which is better?
BTW, latest year I've seen, $74 billion estimated lost to piracy in 2014. That is a lot of money. Now if you can come up with a way to prevent piracy, expose noob devs to a large public audience and pay your bills without taking any money from the devs I'm sure you will be very popular.
So if you don't like Steam or the many other platforms like them and think they should all go away then fine, your call. But if you think Steam and all the other platforms like them are evil you are wrong. They do have a place in this software piracy world.
"The popular gaming news outlet PC Gamer conducted a survey last year in which they received 50,742 answers from players all over the world. The question at hand? Whether or not they had ever pirated a video game. Turns out, 90% of PC gamers have pirated a game, and 25% have pirated more than 50.
Turns out there is far more data on this. For instance, younger players between the ages of 10 and 25 were the most likely to pirate, “. . . with that likelihood decreasing about 5% per age group between 16-20 and 51-60.” Also, those earning less than $10,000 annually pirate the most, at 50%, while those making $10,001 – $25,000 fall at about 32.5%.The U.S. alone pirates more games than the U.K. and Canada combined.
When asked if they think it’s wrong, 34.8% of the respondents answered yes but that it didn’t stop them. This is further explained, however: most players use piracy to demo a video game. Others simply can’t afford them.
Most surprisingly, DRM is listed as the second to last reason for piracy. Although complaints about DRM or specific publishers are common, they weren’t cited as reasons to pirate. In fact, “Those reasons never rose above 20 percent.”
