this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2026
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Also, Steam being open means you can also use an app like Ludusavi to make your own savegame backups, just in case.
Steam is not open. It is literally DRM that locks down an open platform.
It's very light DRM and it doesn't lock the majority of game files nor the save files. You can freely back up the save files and it's very easy to pirate the games. What stops people from doing that is because it's much more convenient to have Steam manage them. Valve has always been all about convenience not the DRM.
That’s what Valve says, yes, but those are the virtues of PC, an open platform, not Steam - which is just a storefront and license provisioning service. PC games have portable game files by default, Steam implements one way to manage them. It is worth making the distinction, especially in a thread where the discussion is about what owning hardware means in a service-driven world.
I mean, Valve is doing the minimum copy protection for keeping both players and studios happy.
Let's not forget that Valve also has a dedicated device, the Deck, and it uses the same minimal methods as the PC version. It has a standard configuration out of the box because that makes sense for a pre-built device, but they allow you to hack it to your heart's content.
Meanwhile there are companies that feel the need to host their platform on completely locked down devices, like Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo, and invalidate your games on older devices so you'll buy them over and over again, and make you pay for Internet access etc.
There's also companies like Epic whose game store app on PC are very invasive.
So yeah, Steam is not completely open, but it's as good as it gets. There are much worse ways of doing things.