Comment by hombre_fatal
7 years ago
Works pretty well for Steam. I bet most people here don't even know that they can't play their Steam games if they don't connect it to the internet every 30(?) days. Yet people boast about their massive Steam libraries. :)
Because Steam is DRM done right (in terms of ease of use). With Steam, you just press a button, and the game is yours to play. Zero friction.
99% of the time DRM is used, it makes the product less convenient to use by people who bought it legally, as opposed to those who pirated it. An example that comes to mind, all those blu-rays with bajillion of warnings and ads before the movie starts vs. just watching the movie right off the bat without any ads or wasted time if pirated. Don't even get me started on Denuvo or any other video-game DRMs, those are creatures straight out of UX nightmares.
Steam gets around by having an amazing UX. Press button get game. It's easier than pirating, while most other drm solutions are generally more difficult than pirating.
Steam doesn't even have particularly good drm. The media isn't encrypted, only the executables, so you can generally just get a nocd crack and overwrite the encrypted binary in the install folder.
Note that some Steam games are DRM-free and do not require Steam for anything beyond first download. Sadly this isn't mentioned anywhere in the game page so unless you already know about if a game uses Steam's DRM or not, it is a gamble.