They could have easily crammed the Steam Deck full of stuff to make it hard to use for piracy - locking down everything, making it usable only to play games you legitimately own, force you to go through who knows what hoops in order to play games on it. That’s what Nintendo or Apple or most other companies do.
But they didn’t, because they realized they didn’t have to. It’s 100% possible to put pirated games on the Steam Deck - in fact, it’s as easy as it could reasonably be. You copy it over, you wire it up to Steam, if it’s a non-Linux game you set it up with Proton or whatever else you want to use to run it, bam. You can now run it in Steam just as easily as a normal Steam game (usually.) If you want something similar to cloud saves you can even set up SyncThing for that.
But all of that is a lot of work, and after all that you still don’t have automatic updates, and some games won’t run this way for one reason or another even though they’ll run if you own them (usually, I assume, because of Steam Deck specific tweaks or install stuff that are only used when you’re running them on the Deck via the normal method.) Some of this you can work around but it’s even more hoops.
Whereas if you own a game it’s just push a button and play. They made legitimately owning a game more convenient than piracy, and they did it without relying on DRM or anything that restricts or annoys legitimate users at all - even if a game has a DRM-free GOG version, owning it on Steam will still make it easier to play on the Steam Deck.
It’s 100% possible to put pirated games on the Switch - in fact, it’s as easy as it could reasonably be.
I wish it was that easy! So far, the only way I know of is a hardmod, which already DQs for any remotely sensible form of DIY, and means a very real possibility of turning the Switch into a fancy paperweight.
There’s definitely a soft mod, but I’m assuming you’re talking about newer switches
I know there’s Pegascape but 1.- it requires a stock V1 Switch, of which there’s extra-limited supply and lower TTL 2.- stuck in low firmware and 3.- it’s a volatile entrypoint anyway. So I never count it.
Yeah I don’t know what that is. I just meant fusee-gelee.
Think op means the steam deck, not switch.
I think OP accidentally wrote Switch instead of Steamdeck
I wouldn’t necessarily say the best proof (that’s probably things like Spotify and Google Music, services which effectively killed any and all MP3 sharing).
But yeah, the Steam Deck is an awesome platform. It’s great to be able to carry games with you that you normally wouldn’t be able to play portable. It’s also an awesomely capable device for playing ROMS though, if you do decide to sail some seas :D
It’s built on Linux. Specifically Arch Linux. So no, there’s nothing they could have done to lock it down to prevent piracy. Not even if they wanted to.
There’s a lot they could have done, locking down Linux isn’t that hard. Just look at Chrome OS, it’s based on Gentoo, yet it’s locked down completely. All they had.to do is lock the BIOS, enable secure boot and disable root access, and then it’s pretty much a locked system.
Android is built on linux yet it is increasingly locked down and many phones are extremely difficult to get root access on.
So Valve could have followed the phone ecosystem path and pushed as much of the feature set as proprietary code as possible (binary blob drivers, proton proprietary instead of bsd), replaced pacman with a valve controlled package manager & repos, setup selinux to give users no power to do anything and made the deck only able to secure boot steamOS signed by Valve. Technical users may be able to jail break such a device but the majority would not be inclined to.
Valve’s wisdom here is in realizing that the majority are going to buy their games anyway but if you don’t lock the device down then most of the technical users will also buy most of their games whereas if you have to go out of your way to jail break a device to install something fun then that device basically becomes a piracy only device from that point on.
They could have not given you root access and forced you to install your own OS for it to manage things that aren’t on Steam. They could have locked the bootloader and refused to install anything they didn’t sign.
Neither would violate the license provided they made the source available.
Sure there is, they could have not built it on Arch Linux
They could have not built it on arch linux. They made decisions that were pro-consumer and thus they did not need to make decisions that were anti piracy
And instead of doubling-down in denial, they embraced the openness.
Tell me you don’t know how to administer Linux without telling me you don’t know how to administer Linux.
I don’t administer Linux, I use Linux. Unless you’re conflating being an end user with being an administrator, in which case I would say that’s a rather pretentious way to put it. Nobody walks around saying they administer Windows because they have a laptop. It sounds stupid.
The point is just using it gives you no experience to talk about how easy it is to lock down an OS, administering one does. EatYouWell is absolutely right in calling out that you don’t administer linux, as you say yourself: you don’t, you use it. And that difference shows in the falsehood of your comment: it is possible to lock down Linux to levels like a PS5 and anyone administering Linux would know that from their knowledge of the underlying components.
Right, so you don’t know what you’re talking about and shouldn’t speak authoritatively on the subject.
I drive a car every day, but that doesn’t mean I can speak authoritatively on how its transmission works.
But, I am a senior SecOps engineer (like a systems engineer but also a cyber security expert) working mostly with Linux, and I can authoritatively say that you’re mistaken about Valve’s ability to block piracy in Linux.
It’s built on Linux.
So what? Orbis (the PlayStation OS) is built on FreeBSD, but there’s still anti piracy on the PS5.
So no, there’s nothing they could have done to lock it down to prevent piracy.
They could have:
- locked the machine to SteamOS only
- allowed only the Steam UI
- encrypted the SSD using a TPM chip to prevent messing with the OS.
- disallow applications that expose the underlying UI
- have an Apple esque signing policy when it comes to system binaries
- not allow custom shortcuts.
- much more
Believe me, if they wanted to try, they could have.
You got me there. Doing stuff like that on other platforms like the Switch totally prevented piracy, so I suppose it’s a good thing they didn’t do it on a system that thousands of devs know down to the kernel without having to reverse engineer.
If you think that the goal of anti piracy measures is to be an impenetrable barrier, you’ve completely misunderstood the assignment.
The idea isn’t to be literally impossible, but to be so hard to do that even the moderate tech heads won’t bother.
The likes of Nintendo don’t care if 12 people are pirating their games, what they want to prevent is situations line the PlayStation Portable, where almost everyone was cracking that fucker wide open and there was a shit ton of piracy.
Nintendo is incompetent.
PS5 and Xbox both control what runs on their systems perfectly fine.
Nintendo was super competent with the Switch, their kernel is actually ridiculously secure. I’m pretty sure if Nvidia hadn’t messed up, we would still be scratching our heads with the Switch.
You said prevent, not eliminate. There’s tens of thousands of ways to prevent piracy. They are not infallible, but they are preventatives.
There is nothing on this earth that will eliminate piracy.
Where would you like to move the goalposts now?
Anytime you’re reduced to arguing semantics, it’s not even an argument worth engaging in. So I’m not going to bother responding further to you.
That’s not moving goalposts, you’re just arguing semantics. People generally think of eliminate when they say prevent in this kind of conversation…
If anything if they went “prevention” and not “eliminate” like in your sense…it would be even dumber because it would just make the steamdeck a more restrictive x86-processor computer compared to the systems people were already comparing it to up until it’s release
Imagine how it would’ve gone down if people were saying “Of course you can do that, it’s a PC” if people responded with “Yeah, except it’s 10x harder to do things you could normally do on PC”. They wanted it to be close to how a PC is, it was part of the advertising campaign.
actually making linux usable with the deck controls was probably more work than locking the users out of the desktop mode even
I buy most of my games on steam simply because it makes running them on Linux so damn easy, and I remember the bad old days when it was hell!
By now Steam’s most loyal userbase is probably the Linux Gaming community because they make it so easy to just play the games, not to mention the QoL improvements they contribute to upstream projects
I think you meant to say “Deck” in the second paragraph.
But yeah I totally vibe with your observation. Something a bit ironic with this situation is that a big part of why other companies simply can’t provide the kind of service Steam does is copyright issues - XBox and Playstation both give out free games, Nintendo has their online service, but no option remotely compares to “make everything available on one app on the most modern device.” Imagine if Nintendo put everything that had ever appeared on the Wii/DS/Wii U/3DS/Switch shops all on one online storefront on the Switch, and let you attach ownership to your account and play everything you owned on the most recent device - then they would have about a quarter of the functionality that Steam has on the Deck, where you have access to every game you’ve bought for PC for as long as Steam has existed (and quite a few things from before that) and the number of things that have lost compatibility is pretty low.
I disagree. You don’t seem to understand piracy at all.
If you’re going to pirate games, you’ll find a way. I have spent hours sometimes figuring out how to do so, and it’s almost part of the fun.
The only reason I’d look at buying a Steam deck in future is to play pirated games. If I absolutely love a game and developer then sure, I’d buy it if I have the cash but otherwise you may as well pirate it.
The only reason I don’t pirate games IS because of locked down hardware like Playstation Etc. Otherwise, I have pretty much never bought a game on PC.
I think steam in general is a proof that its a service issue
Valve is one of those companies that I genuinely believe makes a strong argument for ethical capitalism being possible. Sure, they have some shitty things, but overall they do treat developers and customers reasonably well, they provide hardware and software that is easy to use and non-abusive (not filled with spyware and data harvesters, doesn’t use advertising, is well maintained, etc.). If we could obliterate all of the other major conglomerates and replace them with people/companies that understand that you don’t have to be a massive pile of shit to make money the world would be better off.
Costco has seemingly done it as well.
At the very least they are night and day compared to the vast majority of scummy employers out there.
I always find it fascinating that almost all their profit is simply membership fees.
since the alternative is being kicked out at 18 without anywhere to go or money.
More like socialism. Valve is privately owmed company that is run like half-company half-coop.
This.
Their strength comes from having zero management and all projects are born and lead by the devs themselves. As close to communism as you could get in a capitalistic world. It does come with some problems but they’re totally manageable - like having a strictly homogeneous workforce (which, one could argue, isn’t a bad thing)
Its really just because Gabe is the dude.
It would devolve of he died.
I’m not convinced that Valve will go down the tubes when Gabe shuffles off this moral coil (praise gaben may he live a thousand years). It would require a strong company culture that believes as he does that piracy is a service issue and is thus willing to adhere to his vision in his absence, but that can happen in a privately held company if there’s a strong succession plan in place.
Now, if Gabe dies and Valve goes public, then it’s pretty much over. Platform monetization, proft-taking and short-term thinking would enshittify Steam in short order.
Damn I hope they become a worker collective.
“We just care about providing for our employees, keeping the servers running, and stashing away a percentage in a rainy day fund”. Employees having debate on whether to hire a translator or build a breastfeeding room this year. Some saying why not both?
Came looking for this.
Get rid of Gabe and put in the Unity board, and we’ll be paying extra for every Mb we download…
Oh boy. Dont give them ideas.
trust me, the people who work at valve right now know better than to make those stupid ass decisions
Some game developer - oh, our shitty update process requires the whole game to be downloaded again and not just the patch? Too bad so sad!
Valve is not publicly owned, I don’t think you can equate commerce to Capitalism.
Commerce conducted in a capitalist economy is inherently capitalist. Being publicly traded is not strictly required, though it might be the most common form of corporate structure under capitalism. Individuals, partnerships, privately-held and publicly-traded companies can all own capital. Valve’s assets are not owned by a government, its business decisions are made privately and it operates in a free market. Those three factors are pretty much the definition of capitalism.
Exactly. Free Market ≠ Capitalism
https://doctorow.medium.com/capitalists-hate-capitalism-6406089e2118
Valve argued in court that you do not own any title in your library and that they are a subscription based service. That’s not very ethical.
sure they have done some shitty things
Here’s to throwing the baby out with the bathwater I guess
I can agree that Valve has done some good things, such as making digital distribution go big, making indie games viable, and doing a lot to advance gaming on Linux.
But I’d also argue that that doesn’t obligate me to spend money to patronize them, particularly when I can get a better (by virtue of being DRM-free) product elsewhere.
They also forced developers to never price lower on any other platform than steam as a condition fire selling on steam. Which is not only unethical, it’s illegal. Also the secret hardware changes to steam deck which people usually try to justify, but was shady no matter what.
That’s not entirely true. Valve forces devs to not sell Steam keys lower on other sites without also going on sale on Steam in a reasonable close amount of time.
I know it sounds the same at first, but it’s a drastic difference. You can generate as many Steam keys as you like and sell then on other sites, Valve won’t see a single cent from these sales. They however still provide their online services and servers for free for all those keys sold on other sites. It is quite reasonable that they force you to match prices since they literally are losing money (albeit not much) if you sell on other platforms. And I don’t mean lost sales, but infrastructure cost.
And additionally is this rule pretty much never enforced. AAA studios have special deals and indi devs aren’t worth the hassle.
I can’t speak to whether or not that is true, because it’s not necessarily exclusive. Both can be correct. It’s not what’s in the antitrust lawsuit. it’s not what I’m talking about either. The issue outlined in the antitrust suit is: *“Valve has for years maintained its dominance and thwarted effective competition by engaging in various anticompetitive acts. For example, Valve forces game publishers to agree to a Platform Most-Favored-Nations Clause (the “Valve PMFN”) as a requirement to access Steam. Valve explicitly requires that publishers agree that games sold elsewhere must be sold “in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam” and publishers cannot “give Steam customers a worse deal” for games sold elsewhere,2 i.e., Valve prohibits publishers from giving consumers a better deal on other stores that compete with Steam. Valve interprets and enforces this language to encompass price parity, forcing game publishers to charge the inflated Steam Store price across the marketplace, on all game sales, even sales of games that are not enabled for Steam. Valve thus uses its PMFN to control the prices of games sold in the Steam Store and in other stores. Rather than lowering prices to Steam customers, Valve’s PMFN has the effect of reducing price competition and raising game prices.” That’s one of several complaints against Valve." * I’m really surprised so many people here of all places believe any corporation gives a shit about anything but their money. Corporations are never your friend. If they helped make piracy necessary it wasn’t done for our benefit, it was done because it is profitable for them. Here’s the complaint in case No. 2:21-cv-00563-JCC in it’s entirety: https://www.steamclaims.com/_files/ugd/5210fb_80b19705e27549158fea02a16055b0e4.pdf
I’m really surprised so many people here of all places believe any corporation gives a shit about anything but their money. Corporations are never your friend.
I never said valve is a friend, they simply are the more trustworthy party in this lawsuit. Two things about this:
-
I’ve never seen any proof of this MFN clause. I’ve read the Steamworks distribution agreement (which is hidden behind an NDA), I’ve read the steam TOS, I’ve looked through the steamworks documentation that is declared as legally binding in the contract, I’ve looked for screenshots or citations. There is nothing that would even suggest they are interfering with non-steamkey prices apart from what Wolfire games tells the court. (Who are, of course, coincidentally using the same Lawfirm as epic does, which makes this whole thing even more suspicious.)
-
This is the second time this lawsuit is brought up and there are pretty much no complaints from other devs, not even anonymous. Usually when lawsuits like this happen a bandwagon full of people come out to complain, twitter descends into a shitstorm and reddit digs out their aluminium foil hats. But there is absolutely nothing at the moment.
You are free to post any links with proof you have. Maybe the lawsuit will dig up something in Valve’s basement. But as of now, everything we’ve seen is just one big accusation from Wolfire games.
You did not that’s correct, that was meant more towards all of the people in the thread in general worshiping steam as a corporate savior. That was poor writing on my part. The things you mentioned are almost word for word the conjecture you find on Reddit and has not proof itself. I would love to see a copy of the MFN myself. Valve definitely admits they ask developers to offer similar prices according to their responses to other users, but won’t deny it or produce a copy themselves of any MFN. All I’m saying is they’re in a well deserved anti-trust suit that covers several topics beyond the MFN as detailed in the links I did provide. Their motions to dismissed have been slapped down because the judges feels there’s enough evidence to proceed on at least some of the claims. I guess we’ll see whether the case can prove itself or not and neither of us will really know until all of the evidence is presented. I’m not blindly believing they must be guilty, but it’s hard to say Steam isn’t a monopoly. There are plenty of other reasons to dislike Steam, but arguing that with the other people here is a bit like arguing with gun owners. People are willing to dismiss their principles about things that affect the macrocosm quickly when it could deprive them of something they personally enjoy.
-
Is that not true though? As much as we hate it, until you get given some transferrable proof of ownership of the game (like an NFT) and ability to play without being tied to one service, it’s the unfortunate reality of online game services.
It’s easy to go buy a physical game but when it’s online, you don’t own anything - yet
Fundamentally I don’t really know how it’d be viable to truly “own” a specific copy of something, when it’s always possible to make infinitely many copies of it. Any such “ownership” is at best essentially just conceptual, aside from perhaps the legal right to annoy other people about the copies they are in possession of.
So instead my personal take is that I’d rather everything just be offered DRM-free. I don’t necessarily need transferable ownership as much as I just need proper and guaranteed access under my own control after I purchase the product.
NFTs cannot have copies made (apart from by the publisher) and are ideally suited to this problem
But anything that exists as digital data can be copied. The same applies to NFTs. Make an NFT image or game or whatever, and it can be copied by whoever has access to it. The only way to prevent such copying is to not release it at all.
The only stipulation is that copies made without authorization of whoever holds the rights to it would not be “official” instances of the thing, and there are potential copyright restrictions on the use of such copies…but that’s using NFTs to justify copyright law, and aside from “lol copyright”, legal of ownership of an NFT is even more of a mess than traditional legal ownership of an IP.
You’re talking about media linked to by existing NFTs. You can’t copy an NFT and use it, you don’t have the cryptographic keys to mint more. There is a finite number.
It’s true. Pragmatically speaking if you don’t have access to the server software you can’t play it if the servers go down, and besides reverse engineering or the goodwill of the developers I’m not aware of any games with online components that continue to be playable after their servers are taken down.
Well then allow me to name a few:
-
Battlefront 2 (the original), still active when the servers have been down for years
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Titanfall 2. Official servers aren’t technically down, but pretty much unusable and NorthStar is the alternative
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Counter strike 1.6 is pretty much just community-run servers, same with day of defeat: source. I don’t know if they are tied with valve that if valve shut them down, they wouldn’t be searchable.
-
Supreme commander: Forged Alliance
Hell, Battle for Middle Earth II still has a small community
-
Valheim has never had official servers. I run my own via docker on debian
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Unreal Tournament 1999
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Minecraft (official servers aren’t down, but if they shutdown there would still be 2000 servers)
-
Back in 2000-2012, a good lot of mainly singleplayer games had optional multiplayer modes. Think Halo, Starcraft, TRON, Titanfall, etc. Even DOOM 2016 had it. These games function with the servers down.
Something I haven’t thought about in a while: In the early 2000s games where you made a direct connection to the other player without an intervening, third-party server were still a thing. You still see it in things like netplay functionality in emulators.
Is this still a thing at all in 2023? Imagine it would be very niche, but this comment made me curious.
It’s still in Team Fortress 2 and Factorio
You never owned any software, even before valve. All you ever purchased was a license key that could be revoked at any time.
That isn’t a problem made by valve, it existed far before the whole company was even founded. The underlying issue is the way digital mediums are licensed and the corresponding copyright laws.
That’s not really true. I still have physical media that I’ve purchased as a teenager. That’s not a license key that I own that’s physical media. It was independent of any licensing servers or anything like that. Digital media licensing didn’t really start taking effect until about 2010ish en masse. Prior to that most streaming services like Netflix weren’t really streaming services as internet infrastructure didn’t quite exist to that degree yet.
They would probably have issues with publishers if you actually owned the titles.
It’d probably make them very heavily liable if for some reason Steam shut down, they had to make something unavailable for some reason, whatever.
This is exactly what happened actually in one of Valve’s court cases. It wasn’t that Steam went down, but rather the user was permabanned. When that ban happened he lost access to his game library. However, he had purchased those games so he argued successfully that he had a right to download what he purchased. Valve attempted to argue that they were a subscription service so that they would not have to provide anything to him. In the end since he won the case, he was allowed to download what he purchased. I’m sure that created a weird situation for those publishers and I’m not sure whether or not Steam had to remove the Steam DRM prior to allowing him to download.
It’s funny. I’m dirt poor and I really want to play The Last of Us again. I could easily download it and get it going through piracy. Heck, it’s crossed my mind a time or two.
But you know what I’m doing? I’m waiting for it to go on sale and I’ll grab it then if the time is right. If not I’ll wait until it is.
I have plenty to do until then.
It’s definitely a service issue. I haven’t pirated a single game on Steam Deck.
dude just pirate the game and pay when it is on sale. gabe will aprove because he hasn’t fixed the “i have no money” issue.
have no money" issue.
Whos working in that by the way?
It’s not immoral to prioritize feeding and clothing yourself, send it.
Your argument that the Steam deck is emblematic of Gabe’s statement of piracy being a service issue, is somehow reinforced by telling us all of the artificial hoops you have to jump through to pirate on the Steam Deck? That’s just DRM with extra steps.
No.
DRM is an artificial obstacle put in place to get in the way of something entirely technologically possible.
The elements discussed here are just the natural steps to perform an action outside of the standard workflow, and are actually of reasonable difficulty. Saying “you are free to do it, but I’m not going to help you” is the exact opposite of DRM.
That’s not what DRM is and pirating has always involved extra steps.
I didn’t get the impression that those hoops were artificial. They aren’t providing support for it, but that’s different from actively obstructing people.
Steam dick
What a useful comment
Steam dick
Huh?
Steam dick
Say no more fam
Yeah, precisely because piracy is a service issue, Turkey and Argentina are going to turn to piracy again, after Valve fucked them over.
I love my Steam Deck. The fact that Valve made it so easy to upgrade, mod, repair, and running a full Linux distro so I can install anything on it is just awesome.
I’ve convinced 2 friends so far to buy one, so Valve is getting hella value from me on that front lol.
It’s so nice that it just works with any controllers, any hardware, can be fully customized internally and externally.
I use it to watch TV and movies, stream my Jellyfin music, couch co-op, play my emulated GBA games, play FOSS games like Battle for Wesnoth and Super Tux Kart, and of course a bunch of my Steam games.
The new oled is so good. Its a night and day difference in sdr and hdr. Worth it.
I only run legit games on my handheld Linux computer. You’re right, a user like me could most certainly install games some other way but there’s no point putting in all this effort since I can just joink it from my years old steam account and be very happy in the process.
Yeah, valve is pretty much one of the least companies, that let you own your games, not rent for a couple of years for $100
They still put drm in the games sold on their store though.
Yeah no for sure, but you can still download those games, which were removed after you purchased them, and play.
GOG is still the W, yet they never really compete, considering the amount of games available
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From context I get the impression that was a mistake and OP wrote Switch when they meant Deck. The rest of the paragraph seems to have pretty deck specific information.
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