The Steam Deck is software-freedom friendly

Does that mean it can run Steam games offline and DRM-free?

You can run steam games offline on a regular PC.

But I think you're trying to make a point about Steam DRM.

Someone once said; there are two DRMs that everyone loves, Apple and Steam.

And I have to say it's true. I am normally not a proponent of DRM, I've been pirating since TURBO 250 tapes on c64, but I do love Steam. I love it for what Gabe has done for us gamers on Linux.

In my opinion he deserves 30%.

The Steam Deck does a good job of running games offline. The mix bag will be the online style cash grabs from Ubisoft and EA but most work too.

DRM is a thing we have to live with but valve does a decent job of making it invisible when it's theirs. The ones that suck the most are the aforementioned studios which roll their own on top.

You can run your GOG library on Steam Deck even without having to change the OS

You can run games offline and DRM free.

Neither of those DRMs have ever prevented me, the owner, from using my content. Ubisoft once locked me out of some Star Wars game while I was trying to install it because it kept crashing during the install and consumed all of the "licenses". I returned the game.

It does mean that you can install games any way you want, and even do things like emulate Switch games.

It's not about the 30%, it's about giving you the ball for $3.30 then taking the ball away sometime later saying you can no longer play with it and no, there won't be any refunds.

Playing devil's advocate here but I've had a Steam account for well over 15 years now and my library of games has only grown.

I am sure there are stories and certain situations where people have lost access to games, but I think they're fringe cases.

I still don't love it. DRM is DRM and I've watched enough heroes fall from grace to know it's onto a matter of when they yank your chain, not if. I will avoid to the best of my ability any attempts to retract back products I purchased myself.

That's why I wanted to stick to consoles and a physical medium. But even those have devolved into what's basically a digital download, now with the disk (or cartridge now, with Switch 2) being the DRM. The Onion couldn't write a more ironic headline.

Now I'm wondering if all that "virtual sharing" stuff for switch 2 cartridges means difficulties with the used market.

>In my opinion he deserves 30%.

Even Gabe doesn't agree, given the cut he gives to AAA publishers. I'm not exactly onboard with the idea that the richest people get the best tax breaks, even in video game world.

A progressive platform cut would be much friendlier to smaller devs and put the biggest burdens on the ones likely using the most amount of bandwidth. That's how the game engines have started to leverage their tooling. And they put a lot more work in than a hosting platform

And they are fringe cases with most DRM, since most of any of my libraries still exist if I check it.

But people seem so Gung ho about DRM being bad. except for Steam.

It's perfectly fine to love Apple and Steam. They are both great companies and offer great products. The issue I have is in trying to extrapolate that love into labeling them pro-"software freedom", which is idiotic. Both these companies ship opaque binaries of their storefront and products. Their apps/games have restrictive DRM. You cannot install/register games without an account and internet access. They artifically limit resale/sharing/lending of digital goods. They are actively user hostile (such as not offering refunds until forced to by courts). Even the Steam Deck is full of proprietary blobs which would be illegal to revese engineer and reshare. Nothing about the experience is FOSS.

Again none of this is inherently bad if your argument is "I like the convenience and don't care about the restrictions". But don't delude yourself into thinking this is "freedom".

And subscription service free is high on my wishlist, too.

I could perhaps live with subscription terms that are still variable amount / mount (currently 0) as servers do cost money. Even if their quasi-monopoly would allow them to extort us. But what needs to be more reliable, is that the ToS I applied to when I bought the game should not change afterwards in a one-sided proposal to keep access to my game licenses. Which is not allowed in our jurisdiction at least, so steam was found non-compliant in the EU.

(Back in 2021) https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/it/ip_21_...

Name literally a single computer that does not ship with proprietary blobs while supporting DXVK. Bonus points if you can find a wireless networking chipset that isn't from 2011 to go along with it.

Your entire comment is splitting some pretty fine hairs, but I just don't know how anyone can play the "muh firmware" card in 2025. I don't actually know a single Linux user or even hardware retailer that ships blobless hardware, if that means they aren't pro "software freedom" then I guess nobody is. But I think we can define "pro" to mean something other than "hardline absolutist" in this instance.

I have an account as old as yours, and the games I have lost access to have been pulled by the publisher, never by Valve. We’re talking about one or two games in a 500+ library, and I don’t even remember which.

Yeah, it’s not a very big concern of mine either.

500 is a lot of games. I think mine is around 100-150. Just to get a sense of scale, maybe the reason why I never saw anything get pulled. In fact the opposite, I have received free games over the years.

Yes.