Sure. It's still not DRM, which serves no benefit to the player, unlike network capabilities. The risk of Steam disappearing is lower than the risk of me losing the download code or WoG's download servers disappearing, so Steam is the better bet for me.
You could have all of the advantages and still allow games to start up when Steam isn't running.
I don't know what the Steam api looks like for developers, but--I guess I don't really believe that this is some accidental bug. The default behavior should be that everything sans multiplayer still works without Steam. Obviously this is possible to do--because some games do it--but it's also obviously not the default behavior, because so few games do it. That benefits Valve--how does it benefit players?
As I mentioned, I have already lost the ability to play certain games on legacy operating systems because Steam dropped support, so I don't consider this merely a theoretical concern.
Comments
Sure. It's still not DRM, which serves no benefit to the player, unlike network capabilities. The risk of Steam disappearing is lower than the risk of me losing the download code or WoG's download servers disappearing, so Steam is the better bet for me.
You could have all of the advantages and still allow games to start up when Steam isn't running.
I don't know what the Steam api looks like for developers, but--I guess I don't really believe that this is some accidental bug. The default behavior should be that everything sans multiplayer still works without Steam. Obviously this is possible to do--because some games do it--but it's also obviously not the default behavior, because so few games do it. That benefits Valve--how does it benefit players?
As I mentioned, I have already lost the ability to play certain games on legacy operating systems because Steam dropped support, so I don't consider this merely a theoretical concern.