DRM is up to publishers, not Steam. Valve doesn’t enforce or require it, and it’s unlikely publishers would lift DRM from their games because Valve asked.
And you can get a crack for most DRM out there (nowadays, even Denuvo).
Being weak and possible to work around for those with sufficient technical skill doesn’t make it any less a DRM.
Steam’s DRM is clearly only trying to stop the people with average and below technical skills from installing and running the games outside steam, not trying to stop the people with higher technical expertise from going around it (and in fact if you use something like the Goldberg Emulator there are even more games which can be made to run outside Steam than just the “many” you talk about).
By comparison the no-DRM posture you see in with GOG is not only “here are the offline installers to download” directly from the page for the game in your library but even “CONTRACTUALLY game publishers cannot sell games here with ANY DRM”.
“The rules are there but we don’t enforce them” is a very different posture from “we make sure there are no such rules”.
No, cracking the game vs just copying the downloaded file is not equivalent. How did you not see that? With copying the file it means the original file is already DRM free and does not require steam. So steam is just a glorified downloader and launcher in that sense
DRM is up to publishers, not Steam. Valve doesn’t enforce or require it, and it’s unlikely publishers would lift DRM from their games because Valve asked.
Steam does have a DRM mechanism - it’s optional and easy to circumvent, but it’s there
Yes, and Steam doesn’t force it on a publisher. They can opt out.
Steam itself is DRM
Not by my definition. Not in the same way as denuvo or dvd movie drm is.
It is in the sense that you can’t play the games without it.
You can. Many of steam games you can just archive or copy over somewhere else and they’ll still work just fine.
And you can get a crack for most DRM out there (nowadays, even Denuvo).
Being weak and possible to work around for those with sufficient technical skill doesn’t make it any less a DRM.
Steam’s DRM is clearly only trying to stop the people with average and below technical skills from installing and running the games outside steam, not trying to stop the people with higher technical expertise from going around it (and in fact if you use something like the Goldberg Emulator there are even more games which can be made to run outside Steam than just the “many” you talk about).
By comparison the no-DRM posture you see in with GOG is not only “here are the offline installers to download” directly from the page for the game in your library but even “CONTRACTUALLY game publishers cannot sell games here with ANY DRM”.
“The rules are there but we don’t enforce them” is a very different posture from “we make sure there are no such rules”.
No, cracking the game vs just copying the downloaded file is not equivalent. How did you not see that? With copying the file it means the original file is already DRM free and does not require steam. So steam is just a glorified downloader and launcher in that sense