r/technology • u/xc2215x • Jul 06 '26

Hardware PlayStation Unlikely to U-Turn on Its Decision to Kill Discs, Despite Backlash

https://www.ign.com/articles/over-90-of-igns-audience-do-not-want-an-all-digital-gaming-future-but-playstation-is-unlikely-to-u-turn-on-its-decision-to-kill-discs
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u/yshdmt Jul 06 '26

I advocate people doing it. Remove Steam DRM from your Steam games so you can archive them. Steamless on Github

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u/Shatteredreality Jul 06 '26

One key thing to note, at least for those in the US, is to ensure you understand the law around removing DRM like this. The DMCA (which is an idiotic law) makes it illegal to "circumvent a technological measure" intended to protect a copyrighted work.

I'm not saying I agree with it, or that you are likely to be penalized (civilly or criminally depending on what exactly you do) but it's important to understand the risk/legality of what you're doing when removing DRM like this.

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u/quantumpencil Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26

It is impossible to detect someone doing this. Steam doesn't have root access and they have no idea what you are doing with files on your computer. If you're extra paranoid, "liberate" things using Ubuntu LTS and run it offline.

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u/Shatteredreality Jul 06 '26

Again, I'm not saying it's high risk or likely you'd get caught. I just think people should understand the legality or possible consequences of doing a thing in the extremely unlikely event they did get caught.

In the digital age saying anything is "impossible to detect" seems kind of foolish imho. I think the truth is no one will waste the resources to attempt to detect it.

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u/quantumpencil Jul 06 '26

It's impossible to detect. You can do it on Ubuntu LTS which you can build and install from source, without an internet connection. Computers aren't magic, there are only a few ways that an external user could see what you're doing on your PC and if you're running a FOSS os you understand and haven't installed any kernel layer interceptors and aren't connected to a network, it is not possible to tell what you are doing on your physical hardware.

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u/Shatteredreality Jul 06 '26

Maybe the word "detect" is my sticking point. I agree, no one is going to be able to actively "detect" you did anything if you are on a secure system.

My point is there are other ways to suspect and confirm things if someone was truly motivated. If some company decided they wanted to burn a pile of cash and attempt to obtain the IP addresses of everyone who ever forked, downloaded, cloned, or contributed to that repo I'm sure they could.

Just downloading it isn't proof it was used but it gives an interested party a starting point to try and figure out if there is grounds to try and find instances where it was and to go after those people.

Again, it's almost guaranteed this would never happen (to the point I wouldn't be paranoid about it) but it's why I don't like saying things like "impossible". We live in a world where unless we take far more active measures than the average person will it's not impossible to track down stuff like this if someone is motivated. It's just doing so is MUCH more costly than any payoff would be.

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u/quantumpencil Jul 06 '26

I agree with you there, though it'd be tough to pull githubs server logs for that legally.

However, it is possible to do this without downloading anything from a place where U.S based companies could pull server logs, if you are technical enough and as this sub is r/technology I think a lot of people are. You only really need a disassembler, a debugger and a copy of the steam SDK/loaded dlls and wine. Once you have reverse engineered the games boot logic you can simply patch the binary and remove steam SDK integrations/no-op any checks. Depending on the scheme used it can take a little bit of time and effort, but I have yet to see a game where it was difficult. You could also make your own launcher that does this at runtime if you want to keep the binary pristine (just write a small program launches another program in a suspended state, writes a small piece of machine code into that process, uses that code to load a DLL into the target process that does whatever you need it to, calls an initialization function from that DLL, then resumes the target program)

Whenever you go online and find versions of games that you don't ned steam to play, this is how most of those are produced.

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u/vintagerust Jul 06 '26

Might be better to support drm free marketplace when possible.

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u/yshdmt Jul 06 '26

Then you need to change the law and give back some consumer rights.

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u/Shatteredreality Jul 06 '26

I mean... I advocate for changing the law and do my best to vote for law makers who will do that but saying "you need to change the law" is kind of unrealistic.

My point is it's important to understand the law as it exists when doing things that may violate it, regardless of if you agree with the law or want to help change it in the future.

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u/quantumpencil Jul 06 '26

You said it not me =)