Comment by Rohansi
1 day ago
I feel like it is important to point out that Steam does not require games to have any DRM. Not even Steam's DRM. It's entirely up to the game developer and/or publisher. Many games on Steam are already DRM-free where you can just back up the files and play without Steam.
Thank you for pointing that out. I am afraid that AoE is probably not one of them though?
Maybe the old AoE versions will be open-sourced one day, that would be awesome.
Probably also because it's a multiplayer game and you want to try to stop cheaters.
Steam's DRM doesn't do anything to stop cheaters.
Does this apply to AoE? I never played it much in its hey-day but it would be interesting to get into properly. I have no interest in buying an old game with DRM given the obvious potential for maintenance issues though.
I haven't checked AoE myself. If you're concerned about DRM, games using Steam DRM are usually the easiest to crack on your own by just by replacing the Steam DLL that ships with the game with one that emulates its functionality.
You could buy it and then download a cracked one
I basically did that, bought AoE several times, back then on CD and again on Steam. First I used virtual drives with ISO images and later a cracked version.
Today I am only using the Steam version though because I can easily join multiplayer games with friends all over the world. Also, I really like all the additional features in the remakes of AoE that you can get on Steam.