Re:Valve funding VR projects, exclusivity-free, with pre-pai...
by optforfon on Saturday June 18, 2016 @03:01AM
(#11927418)
I think I understand the distinction you're making. However I think it's only technically correct. I understand that I can boot up a VM with Steam, download the game, copy it from the VM to my machine that doesn't their software and it'll probably work. But that's in the realm of "technically possible but completely impractical". In practical terms I actuality have to run their software on my machine to have access to the software I buy through them.
Re:Valve funding VR projects, exclusivity-free, with pre-pai...
by wtallis on Saturday June 18, 2016 @06:49PM
(#11930995)
The only difference between Steam and GoG is that your browser is already providing the VM to sandbox (albeit without hardware enforcement) GoG's code running on your machine, while for Steam you have to supply your own VM if you want that degree of isolation. (If you happened to be running Qubes OS then this matter of degrees of convenience would be trivial.) In either case, running some of the store's code on your machine in order to obtain the product is unavoidable. In neither case is it DRM.
The only difference between Steam and GoG is that GoG runs software A on their servers and in your browser, whereas Steam runs software A on your machine in the custom-skinned browser they give you.
Any security or privacy ramifications of the two different approaches are quit irrelevant to a discussion of whether it constitutes DRM in the generally accepted sense of technical measures to prevent you from copying, sharing, etc. digital content that you already have in your possession. It's not DRM to require some authentication before they'll serve up the download to you. DRM is what gets in the way after the download.