That and a ton of their "online only" games are cross-platform so it's easy to weed out the bad ones. Hell, last summer we had a neighborhood-wide power outage for almost a day (believe it or not it had to do with how much rain was pouring down and not one of those "grid" things). Thanks to two 10kW gennies I was able to play and beat RE4 while the rest of the area was on candle-light.
...yeah? that's how software works. You can't use something unless its installed. (EDIT: You literally need the game files on your pc for the game to exist on your computer and run. What kind of brainlet thinks the mere act of downloading and installing a game is some form of drm?) I've yet to find a game that I can't launch without an internet connection to steam. Always online drm is also a per-game thing, not steam-wide.
If steam were down for over a month I guess there'd be problems, but that's not happening any time soon. EDIT: at the time of writing, I thought steam phoned home periodically. Apparently it doesn't. If steam gets nuked, the games you downloaded still work fine so long as they aren't written to depend on steam infrastructure.
No, software doesn't have to phone home and verify to work. That's entirely due to DRM. If you think DRM is an integral part of software, I've got a bridge to sell you. I also see that long-term thinking and consequence reflection is lacking. I'm sure steam will never fail, it will never change CEO or board members, it will never suffer outages. I'm sure. Consume product and move on and downwards.
Steam doesn't gate your library behind an online checkin though. The only thing you are missing when steam is down is the ability to download games and use the store and social features.
TBF, I can still play all my games when steam is down. The library and launcher are local.
That and a ton of their "online only" games are cross-platform so it's easy to weed out the bad ones. Hell, last summer we had a neighborhood-wide power outage for almost a day (believe it or not it had to do with how much rain was pouring down and not one of those "grid" things). Thanks to two 10kW gennies I was able to play and beat RE4 while the rest of the area was on candle-light.
Only the game you're currently playing, or have downloaded, installed, and played before (https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Store:Steam#Offline_Mode). Also, that it doesn't use the more severe version of the different steamDRM's (https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/User:Cyanic/Steam_DRM) or any of the 3rd party, non-steam, DRM (https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_third-party_DRM_on_Steam), and of course the Always Online DRM which they may or may not have told you about.
...yeah? that's how software works. You can't use something unless its installed. (EDIT: You literally need the game files on your pc for the game to exist on your computer and run. What kind of brainlet thinks the mere act of downloading and installing a game is some form of drm?) I've yet to find a game that I can't launch without an internet connection to steam. Always online drm is also a per-game thing, not steam-wide.
If steam were down for over a month I guess there'd be problems, but that's not happening any time soon. EDIT: at the time of writing, I thought steam phoned home periodically. Apparently it doesn't. If steam gets nuked, the games you downloaded still work fine so long as they aren't written to depend on steam infrastructure.
No, software doesn't have to phone home and verify to work. That's entirely due to DRM. If you think DRM is an integral part of software, I've got a bridge to sell you. I also see that long-term thinking and consequence reflection is lacking. I'm sure steam will never fail, it will never change CEO or board members, it will never suffer outages. I'm sure. Consume product and move on and downwards.
Steam doesn't gate your library behind an online checkin though. The only thing you are missing when steam is down is the ability to download games and use the store and social features.