The misconception of pc gaming wiki mistaking pc store as drm.

[silverkeeper 3]

I started checking the actual DRM from my Steam catalogue to contribute here. I'm not proud of my constant rectifications, but now that I've found this thread I can ask: does a external seller (i.e. Humble) technically sell games with Steam DRM if the game itself is DRM-Free on Steam?
I started using the "Keys" column to indicate they sell Steam keys, but realized it's meant for stores that sell DRM-Free versions and give you keys for other stores.

Guess in this case you can put the game sold by Humble as DRM-Free and indicate that it sells you a Steam key in the notes?

[Mastan 17]

Steam icon in the DRM column for non-Steam stores only indicates that that store provides Steam version of the game. It doesn't indicate if the game is DRM-free or not, that's the job of the Steam row itself.

Sometimes stores provide a standalone version and Steam key at the same time. In such case DRM column should indicate the state of standalone version(often DRM-free) and Keys column should have Steam icon. And again Steam icon in the Keys column doesn't indicate DRM level of game but just provision of key.

And the same applies for other stores.

But I'm not sure if this info is mentioned in the guide.

[silverkeeper 3]

That makes sense, thanks for clarifying. I did read the section on Availability, but couldn't get a clear picture on this.

I have also found a weird pattern with Unity games regarding Steam DRM. The Silver Case, The 25th Ward: The Silver Case and Dear Esther: Landmark Edition allegedly don't use Steam Stub or CEG, but the only difference with the GOG releases is different sized "Assembly-CSharp.dll" ("Assembly-CSharp.dll" and "curve_unity_platform_system.dll" in the case of Dear Esther). If you replace those files with the GOG counterparts, the Steam releases launch without the client running. GOG even left the steam_api.dll library in.
I ask because naming the actual Steam DRM being used would be helpful for players, but this thing doesn't seem to have a name.

[jacob2232 1]

1 hour ago, silverkeeper said:

That makes sense, thanks for clarifying. I did read the section on Availability, but couldn't get a clear picture on this.

I have also found a weird pattern with Unity games regarding Steam DRM. The Silver Case, The 25th Ward: The Silver Case and Dear Esther: Landmark Edition allegedly don't use Steam Stub or CEG, but the only difference with the GOG releases is different sized "Assembly-CSharp.dll" ("Assembly-CSharp.dll" and "curve_unity_platform_system.dll" in the case of Dear Esther). If you replace those files with the GOG counterparts, the Steam releases launch without the client running. GOG even left the steam_api.dll library in.
I ask because naming the actual Steam DRM being used would be helpful for players, but this thing doesn't seem to have a name.

That's what I was trying to explain as steam is just basic drm free wrapper ensuring API connected to the game "Steamworks" works before launching the game, and it is not drm as valve has their own first party drm "custom excetuble generation" or CEG in short they created in 2008 but it was very rarely used and largely stopped being in use since 2014. The reason why some games requires steam client even when it has not drm implemented is due to poor steamworks implementation of the said game here is an example of what I mean Ryan C. Gordon on X: "Steamworks is not DRM, and does not require it, but way too many games do: "if !SteamAPI_Init() { exit(1); }"" / X

and a lot of other people are saying the same thing as well e.g



Source: Is steam a form of DRM. :: Help and Tips

Also by own pcgw admission, many people were incorectly tracking steam mistaking the client as drm back in early 2010s  and because of it the big drm free page that is on this website is not that big whereas in reality as 99% of the games are drm free on steam (aside games using 3rd party drm which is the most popular use case whenever drm is implemented) massive libary of games on steam can be run without client which there needs to be a lot of going back to these older pcgw pages and if tracked correctly, that page would be way way bigger.

[Mastan 17]

Assembly-CSharp.dll is basically the main code of games using Unity engine. No wonder the game behavior is different with different files.

11 hours ago, silverkeeper said:

I ask because naming the actual Steam DRM being used would be helpful for players, but this thing doesn't seem to have a name.

It's likely just Steamworks API usage but I'm not sure how such info would be useful for players. They either can run the game without Steam or they don't. If they can it's DRM-free which may sometimes require additional steps like making steam_appid.txt with its appid. But other  than that it's out of scope of a regular user. Replacing game files from another version pretty much equals to removing whichever protection there is and is technically illegal, also can't legally host and provide links to such files.

[silverkeeper 3]

21 hours ago, jacob2232 said:

That's what I was trying to explain as steam is just basic drm free wrapper ensuring API connected to the game "Steamworks" works before launching the game, and it is not drm as valve has their own first party drm "custom excetuble generation" or CEG in short they created in 2008 but it was very rarely used and largely stopped being in use since 2014. The reason why some games requires steam client even when it has not drm implemented is due to poor steamworks implementation of the said game here is an example of what I mean Ryan C. Gordon on X: "Steamworks is not DRM, and does not require it, but way too many games do: "if !SteamAPI_Init() { exit(1); }"" / X

Yeah, now I understand that the "most effective" form of Steam DRM is this bad Steamworks implementation you see everywhere, aka Steamworks API hard requirement.

11 hours ago, Mastan said:

It's likely just Steamworks API usage but I'm not sure how such info would be useful for players. They either can run the game without Steam or they don't. If they can it's DRM-free which may sometimes require additional steps like making steam_appid.txt with its appid. But other  than that it's out of scope of a regular user. Replacing game files from another version pretty much equals to removing whichever protection there is and is technically illegal, also can't legally host and provide links to such files.

Of course, I didn't intend to suggest such solutions in the wiki, specially for Steamworks. But since retail rows go into detail on which kind of disc DRM they use and Steam Stub and CEG have tools in the open for legit customers (Steamless, which even Cyanic's page mentions, and NoCEG), I thought it would be fair to mention why a game doesn't start without Steam.
In all cases it would boil down to mentioning Steamworks, Steam Stub or CEG in the Notes field (or an annotation below the table? I've seen both examples)

[jacob2232 1]

25 minutes ago, silverkeeper said:

Yeah, now I understand that the "most effective" form of Steam DRM is this bad Steamworks implementation you see everywhere, aka Steamworks API hard requirement.

Of course, I didn't intend to suggest such solutions in the wiki, specially for Steamworks. But since retail rows go into detail on which kind of disc DRM they use and Steam Stub and CEG have tools in the open for legit customers (Steamless, which even Cyanic's page mentions, and NoCEG), I thought it would be fair to mention why a game doesn't start without Steam.
In all cases it would boil down to mentioning Steamworks, Steam Stub or CEG in the Notes field (or an annotation below the table? I've seen both examples)

and once again, even when it poorly implemented in some games does not mean it is drm nor never meant to be, valve has their own first party drm they created in 2008 CEG which was very rarely used and largely stopped being in use since 2014, and if the games on pcgw were tracked correctly in early 2010s and not mistaking pc store as drm then the drm free steam page would be 10x way bigger in comparison to how it was, and that's why my proposition was to make a seperate colum "Steamworks" or "launcher" column if due to poorly implemented api (so to prevent the confusion any further as some online spaces seriously thinks pc stores/clients are drm themselves), the game cannot run without steam would be showing launcher "required" while "drm" column would be drm free whenever a game has no 3rd party drm which is the most popular use case when drm is implemented.

[silverkeeper 3]

35 minutes ago, jacob2232 said:

and once again, even when it poorly implemented in some games does not mean it is drm nor never meant to be, valve has their own first party drm they created in 2008 CEG which was very rarely used and largely stopped being in use since 2014, and if the games on pcgw were tracked correctly in early 2010s and not mistaking pc store as drm then the drm free steam page would be 10x way bigger in comparison to how it was, and that's why my proposition was to make a seperate colum "Steamworks" or "launcher" column if due to poorly implemented api (so to prevent the confusion any further as some online spaces seriously thinks pc stores/clients are drm themselves), the game cannot run without steam would be showing launcher "required" while "drm" column would be drm free whenever a game has no 3rd party drm which is the most popular use case when drm is implemented.

I get where you're coming from, although adding another column would make filling in the blanks more complicated than it should be, in my opinion.
Here's three different examples edited by me. Hopefully they read neutral enough:
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Silver_Case
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Deponia:_The_Complete_Journey
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Heavy_Dreams

[jacob2232 1]

1 hour ago, silverkeeper said:

I get where you're coming from, although adding another column would make filling in the blanks more complicated than it should be, in my opinion.
Here's three different examples edited by me. Hopefully they read neutral enough:
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Silver_Case
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Deponia:_The_Complete_Journey
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Heavy_Dreams

That's nice and I like it, making it more easier for people why a game cannot be run without steam client and my proposition is so to be more informative for example to make "Due to poor Steamworks API integration makes the game not able to run without steam client running in the background" and I think this will be even more intuitive as to why said game cannot run without steam.