Steamworks Makes DRM Obsolete

[Suicide]

Steamworks Makes DRM Obsolete

Suite of Services Expands With Customer Executable Generation (CEG), Support for DLC, Matchmaking, and More

March 24, 2009 - Valve today announced a new set of advanced features delivered in Steamworks, a complete suite of publishing and development tools that are available free of charge to developers and publishers worldwide.

Headlining the new feature set is the Custom Executable Generation (CEG) technology that compliments the already existing anti-piracy solution offered in Steamworks. A customer friendly approach to anti-piracy, CEG makes unique copies of games for each user allowing them to access the application on multiple machines without install limits and without having to install root kits on their PC.

The new features also include support for in-game downloadable content (DLC) and matchmaking. The in-game DLC support allows developers to deliver new content as they choose (paid or free) from inside the game itself, allowing users to make immediate purchases and experience the new content in the same game session. The Steamworks matchmaking now includes the robust lobby system shipped and tested in Left 4 Dead.

"Delivering this extension of services on Steamworks first anniversary, demonstrates our commitment to continually develop the platform to better serve the community working with these tools," said Gabe Newell, president and co-founder of Valve. "As we roll out these features, we continue to look for new ways make PC games easier to create and better for customers to experience."

Steamworks was launched in early 2008 and has already shipped in products distributed at retail and electronically with major PC releases such as Empire: Total War, Dawn of War II, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, and Football Manager 2009.

The Steamworks services are offered free of charge to developers and publishers around the world. In addition to the services added in this spring's extension, Steamworks offers support for Steam Achievements, Steam Community, Auto Updating, Statistics, Steam Cloud and more.

Steamworks is fully integrated with the Steam, a leading platform for the delivery and management of PC games that has grown to reach 20 million accounts throughout the world, up from 15 million accounts just one year ago. Steam now offers over 500 applications to gamers in every country of the world.

For more information, please visit www.steamgames.com

This is awesome news! I understand the reasons behind DRM but as a user the downsides of DRM are freaking huge when compared to the upsides. Hell, the upsides are only for the developer/publisher anyway so what did we get out of the deal except for DRM that crashes your system?

I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out. I also want to get my hands on a Steamworks license at some point.

[Malachoz]

So, as I understand it, I can install...for instance...DoW II on 2-3 machines and they all be playable version with each other?

[Suicide]

Yes you can but you will require your Steam account to play the game on that PC meaning that you can only play one copy at a time.

[shadowmazer]

You might be able to Lan it, but you can't play multiple copies online (Same as needing a CD-Key).

[Suicide]

It's basically that the regular DRM that's shipped with games will not be included. They run as a root-kit on your system and cause major system instability and now limit the ammount of times you are allowed to even install the game. I have a game in my collection at the moment that stops windows from booting up normally until it's updated because it installs an unsigned driver onto my pc.

That's another thing they used to do. They used to install onto your PC before you even agreed to the license which is an illegal act in itself. It installed without informing the user that it was doing so and when the system had stability issues nobody knew what to do.

I really don't like DRM and will stay away from it when releasing games of my own. If I used anything close then it would probably be the Steamworks stuff as that lot is awesome for both the customer and the developer.