this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2025
475 points (88.4% liked)
PC Gaming
12673 readers
590 users here now
For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki
Rules:
- Be Respectful.
- No Spam or Porn.
- No Advertising.
- No Memes.
- No Tech Support.
- No questions about buying/building computers.
- No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
- No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
- No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
- Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Well, steam isn't just a marketplace. A marketplace would be just a place to buy keys, or similar. Steam is an ecosystem, with a market, and a launcher, and a community hub, and a modding platform. The multiplayer integration that many games rely on for matchmaking/lobbies. ~~And every game on steam uses at least steam's DRM, where you are required to connect to the Internet every now and then to verify ownership of your library~~.
They have been the only platform to really try to support Linux though, and have made huge strides in the last few years. Steam is a big enough influence on the games economy that some of their choices become industry standards. And the 30% cut is the price devs pay to get into their system.
Like 95% of steam games are drm free... The only reason steam has to be running is cause games are bundled with a dll that enables the overlay, cloud sync etc. it's just removable and your games don't rely on steam at all.
No check in, no drm, no nothing.
It's basically only the biggest triple A games that use steamDRM.
Not every game on steam uses its DRM, I have steam games that are outright DRM free
Like the previous poster, I'm not defending steam. No good billionaires, fight for the proletariat, down with the elite, etc
Not all steam games use steam DRM. It's opt in by the developer. Lots of steam games you can literally just copy out of steam onto a USB key and run it. No DRM at all.
Don't get me wrong they are skeezy in other ways (charging I indie deva 30% and big publishers less) but if you're going to criticize them, then at least criticize them for something real.
Huh, I didn't realize the DRM was optional, that's good at least. Thanks for the update.