Valve make DRM obsolete?

[elDiablo]

News from the front line. So, on top of the whole "You can only be signed in at one place at a time", Valve have added Customer Executable Generation (CEG) support to steamworks. That is to say, that an executable for the game is generated per machine that you install it to. So you can't just copy and distribute the file. Which means DRM is now redundant. Which is nice.

I'm all for it, as it is seamless to the end user (rather than Starforce and other easily removed DRM "solutions") and still lets me use my games how I want. Which is nice. I bet it won't be taken up by a lot of big companies though.

 

[BiG D]

Explain to me how this isn't DRM?

 

[elDiablo]

Ok, so "obsolete" is a bit (or totally) misleading. Would "Valve make DRM work how it should" be better?

 

[thatbloke]

so how is this meant to work.........

When you download the game, Steam will create an executable that will work on that computer only?

But you can still download it and install it onto multiple systems?

 

[elDiablo]

Yes, it's a different executable per download you do. This means that if you take the exe, and give it to someone else, it won't work. The only way to do it would be to give them your steam login info, so they can download it themselves. But then you can only be logged into Steam on one computer at a time, and if they notice your account has lots of IPs logging into it, they would assume you have been compromised. Or so I would assume. It negates the need for other DRM solutions that detect for no-CD cracks, and stuff.

 

[BiG D]

What does it do that steam doesn't already do?

 

[PsiSoldier]

Does this mean you can no longer back up your steam folder to portable drives so you don't have to redownload everything when you reformat?

 

[elDiablo]

Exactly!

Hadn't thought about that. But I'm guessing as it's only the exe that changes (which is usually only a few megs at most), you'd be able to just delete that, and then check the integrity of the files in order to download a new exe.

 

[thatbloke]

I would expect that their backup system would have been modified to account for this system, tbh...

as elD says, it probably means downloading a new exe file for it or steam modifying the existing one so it will work, but that will only be a few MBs, as opposed to the massive amount of gigabytes it could be to re-download the whole game again

 

[PsiSoldier]

I don't mean the backing up tool, I mean copying the WHOLE Steam folder over so you keep any mods, settings, non-standardly installed stuff, and just reinstall Steam over itself when you copy it over (So that it puts the reg entries and stuff in place.)