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Patrick

Portal is free until May 24

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Mike.Reiner said:

StarForce, well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starforce
Read it up for yourself.

Yay more unsubstantiated claims of hardware degradation and other assorted nonsense.

As expected, the wiki page gives me no reason to consider StarForce to be more objectionable than Steam.

Cite specific sources instead of throwing links around telling people to read them.

Mr. T said:

Hi, Steam stores everything on your hard drive.

Hard drives die. Bye.

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Hard drives can be copied. They aren't "copy-protected" contrarily to DVDs.

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You can just download or get one your friends to burn the cache files to a disc for you (or do it yourself using Steam's BACKUP function) and get playing again. F*ck you are so 20th century.

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Steam has a tool to back up your games. Even if the Steam servers went permanently offline and your hard drive died, you could still play your Steam games if you were smart enough to back them up.

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Belial said:

Hard drives die. Bye.


Bye? That's it? Hard drives die, thus your argument is invalid? because I'm either A. Too lazy to use the simple back up options or B. aghast at the idea of letting it re-download my games?
Sorry, sounds like a personal problem.

Belial said:

Yay more unsubstantiated claims of hardware degradation and other assorted nonsense.


I lost three DVD drives, I'm good, thanks.

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Mike is right. Anyone who is disagreeing with him doesn't know what the hell they're talking about.

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CDs and DVDs die too. Bye...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD

According to the Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA), "manufacturers claim life spans ranging from 30 to 100 years for DVD, DVD-R and DVD+R discs and up to 30 years for DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM".

Those statistics do not take into account discs becoming unreadable because of scratches, which are actually hard to avoid unless the disc remains always in its jacket and within a mylar bag, safe and sound. If, say, you've got a DRM system that requires a DVD check, this cannot happen.

It's kinda obvious that the only durable and reliable way to save your games and other software for arbitrary amounts of time is to back them up regularly. This is very easy to do with Steam; it's just like copying any other folder. This is harder with SecuROM or Starforce...

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Gez said:

you've got a DRM system that requires a DVD check, this cannot happen.

I dislike DVD checks that go out of their way to make sure it's the original media, especially because not all DVD drives support it.. granted those are pretty few, but still. Huy's laptop drive didn't support the DRM Gears of War uses, if I recall he had to find a crack just to play a game he bought.

Soon, once Blu Ray matures more, I'm moving my data over to that.

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A CD/DVD check is a copy protection, Steam is a DRM system. Even in his worst form like Starforce, it is NOT a DRM system.

But still, you don't get it. You CANNOT buy games via Steam. Again, read the Steam EULA.

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cybdmn said:

A CD/DVD check is a copy protection, Steam is a DRM system. Even in his worst form like Starforce, it is NOT a DRM system.

But still, you don't get it. You CANNOT buy games via Steam. Again, read the Steam EULA.


I can't find a shred of relevance to anything you just said.
Do you honestly think if you go to a store and 'buy' a game from there, that you really own it?

You own a 'license' to use that software, you don't own jack shit.

The difference with DRM is that if you violate the license they can pull the rug out from underneath you, unlike a physical copy where they would have to actually take it away from you, which I suspect is why everybody is so adamant against Steam here.

Also, Copy protection, DRM, whatever dude, I really couldn't care less if they aren't technically the same thing.

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They aren't legally enforceable because that guy writes some crap? LOL Check with some courts. They get enforced all the time. Never mind that the only ethical license is a distribution license like the GPL; EULAs are most unfortunately very enforceable in most places, at least in situations where the violation can be caught and tracked.

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Mike.Reiner said:

I can't find a shred of relevance to anything you just said.


The people here are mixing DRM and copy protection, so it is relevant.

Mike.Reiner said:Do you honestly think if you go to a store and 'buy' a game from there, that you really own it?

You own a 'license' to use that software, you don't own jack shit.[/B]


Maybe this is right for you, it depends from where you living.
In germany i BUY my software, proven by the supreme court in germany.

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Yay I have Portal now. I'm surprised how well it runs on this ThinkPad.

ArmouredBlood said:

Well, one's been elimintated, where're the other two?

I'm here.

Also, I don't know if anyone else has said this (haven't read through the thread yet) but you don't have to download the game to claim it. You just have to activate it your Steam account before the 24th. You can download it whenever you have the time, or when you finally upgrade from dialup 10 years down the road.

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Running Portal turns my screen sideways then goes completely black before it finishes loading. I've tried changing resolution - is there an easy fix?

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Try running it with -novid as a parameter (right click the game in Steam, properties, change launch parameters there). If that doesn't work, then I suggest posting to the Steam forums about it.

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