Note: A reader sent us this interesting take on Steam and DRM, but requested to stay anonymous due to the nature of the article. We of course obliged.Up until a few weeks ago, the last PC game I purchased and didn’t pirate was Team Fortress 2 via the digital download service, Steam.
The last PC game I purchased in a retail box was Half Life 2. Yet like many, I’ve still managed to play every PC hit over the last decade. I simply couldn’t justify spending $50 on a game when pirating offers so many real benefits verses owning a legit copy.Part of my motivation was that it’s just so damn easy to pirate a game.
It’s like three clicks of the mouse to download a torrent and even less on Usernet. The files download as fast as my cable modem allows and I have the full game with simple cracking instructions a few minutes later. Why in the world would I want to drive to a store and give them $50 for the same thing?Actually, I can answer that.
Besides the moral issue of stealing, the primary reason people buy games retail is for the multiplayer modes. Most pirated games do not allow for multiplayer as the game often has to connect to an official server where its legitimacy can easily be verified by some sort of authentication service. So while I played through Modern Warfare 2’s single player mode twice, I haven’t seen one minute of the mutliplayer mode.Those of us that download games understand this limitation. But for the most part it’s not a huge deal as great games are coming out at such a rapid pace.
As soon as I finished my first time through MW2, Battlefield Bad Company 2 was released. Perfect timing. Sometimes we get lucky and games like Borderlands and the original Modern Warfare have an online mutliplayer mode that plays nicely with cracked versions, but that’s getting somewhat rare.So in a way the main reason I was pirating games was that I was lazy and there wasn’t a service that catered to me. Either buying a game retail from Amazon required me to wait for it to ship or I had to drive to Best Buy. Once I own the game I can’t ever lose the CD key or it would be worthless. And the worst excuse is that it required me to have a DVD-ROM in all of my computers just to install these games. That’s silly.
What the world needed was a service where I could buy a game once and never have to worry about losing the physical media or my rights to play it ever again.Steam. That is what Steam is all about and I was completely ignoring it for years even though it was on most of my PCs so I could play Team Fortress 2.
Steam is to games as iTunes is to music. Both platforms make a strong case for digital rights management and purchasing media, but I believe Steams’s case is a bit stronger.Valve, the makers of Half-Life, released the digital download service back in 2003. Nearly every major game publisher has distribution via the platform now. Gamers can easily browse, purchase, and enjoy PC games with the service even though DRM is a central part of the ecosystem.Digital Rights Management is a curse word around the Internet.
It’s not that most people want to take money away from the developers and engineers that worked day and night for years. No, but rather most DRM schemes are obtrusive and get in the way of actually enjoying the game — or music, ebooks, or movies.Look at Ubisoft. In order to counter piracy, they require all their games to have a constant internet connection.
This means you’re SOL if your Internet drops or you wanna play a game on an airplane. It’s this sort of scheme that forces people to pirate games.Steam’s system wasn’t always so nice. In fact, its offline mode wasn’t all that great in the early days. Even now sometimes the online service goes offline, stripping all the logging and extra features out of some games.
But it’s the benefits that keeps it relevant and why I started actually started purchasing games through it.I already established I’m lazy. Steam understands that’s the norm for most gamers. That’s why Steam makes it so damn easy to buy games. There are top sellers lists, coming soon lists, demo lists, and best of all, legit sales and free-play weekends. I have spent over $50 during Steam’s summer sale on old random games just because it’s so easy and novel. (Today, July 5th, is the last day, btw) There are so many different ways for me to easily buy a game on Steam that’s detrimental to my checking account. Once I click the purchase button, Steam gives me the option to start the install process right away and I know that I will be able to install this game on any computer in the future thanks to the library mode.
That’s big.Then there’s built-in friends lists, achievements, easy installs on other machines, and so much more features that justifies Steam’s DRM. Simply put, there are more advantages to use Steam than there are DRM disadvantages. That’s the way it should be.The movie industry really should look to Steam for guidance.
The ecosystem could very easily be applied to purchasing movies as well.One redditer made a graphic showing the pains of current movie DRM. It’s crazy the steps required to use one of these legal downloaded movies. Even experienced nerds have trouble with it. How do these companies expect novice computer users to “do the right thing?”DRM schemes hate your freedom. They don’t want you to be able to travel abroad or enjoy your content on any system you want.
That doesn’t really describe Steam, though, so at least one company is showing the whole industry how it should be done. I know it has converted this former pirate into a honest-to-goodness purchaser of digital goods.Have something to contribute to our online audience? Maybe a counter to this article or something totally different and random? Contact us at [email protected].
Since the Groove Music app is where you'll be playing all your hot tunes the chances are that you're going to use it the most to find things to stream. There are two main ways you can find new music in the app.
The first is the search box and the second is the Explore tab. Both of which are highlighted in the image above.Search is as broad as you'd want it to be in a music app. Type in an artist, album or song and if it's in the database you'll get results.Explore is designed to help you discover new music. Top songs, albums, artists and new releases are offered up to help you see what's hot this week.With artists you can choose to start a radio station based on them or pin them to your Start Menu, while albums and songs you can add to your collection.
Streaming is great but it doesn't work on a plane, or any other place you don't have access to a data connection. Even though you're paying for a streaming service you can still take the music offline. Open up the album you want to take offline. Click on the 'More' option towards the top.
Steam Is Playing Music
In the resulting menu, click 'Download.' The album will now be downloaded to your PC or tablet and you can take it anywhere you go.
You're only allowed to do this on five devices at once, so be sure to keep an eye on that. To check how many you're using go into 'Settings' then click on 'Manage my devices.' Stream albums in Groove from the Windows 10 Store. Groove may be Microsoft's streaming service but it also sells albums and individual songs through the Windows 10 Store. You'll find it all under the Music tab at the top and you can browse and then preview tracks right here in the Store.If you find something you like, hit the 'Play' button highlighted in the image above to be taken into the Groove app to carry on listening. If you want to add it to your collection and/or playlists, follow the steps listed in point two. Stream your own music using Groove.
How To Make Smoke
Groove Music and OneDrive can be best pals and the latter will let you stream your own music from the cloud using the former. It's really easy to do, all you need is enough OneDrive storage to hold your personal collection. Importantly you don't need a Groove Music Pass to do this. After all, it's your own music. But once it's in OneDrive you can stream it using the Windows 10 app (as well as other apps on other platforms.)For everything you need to know check out the link below.That's about all there is to it.
If you want to know more about the Groove Music app for Windows 10, check out our guide at the link below.For more Windows 10 tips be sure to drop by our dedicated page.
Steam is an online based software distribution platform that delivers video games to its subscribers. It caters different genre of games like RPG, Simulation, Sports, etc. Recording game on Steam is important when it’s needed to record a new trick or a game achievement. Some may want to record game so that they can share it with their friends online. There are different ways on how to record Steam games. To understand it clearly, some of the best methods are shown as this post goes on. Top Ways to Capture Steam Games 1.
How To Change Music In Steam Games
Utilize ApowerRECIn recording Steam games, one of the best tools that you can use is ApowerREC. This feature-packed application is designed to help users record their desktop activities, with various recording modes to choose from that includes game mode. This tool also supports different audio input source, such as system sound, microphone or both. Thus, you can make use of it to record the background music of steam games and add your narration into the video. While you can add annotation like arrows, lines, texts, and shapes as you record games.
As auto manufacturers and Apple have progressed forward in their relationship to make your car as smart as possible, occasionally not-smart things happen. Like your vehicle blasting music (or the latest audiobook chapter) into your ears when you first get in the car.While the original impulse may have been a helpful one on the part of the manufacturers — surely, users want to hear their music first thing — it's often ended up a nuisance. Spoiler: If you're listening to a steamy romance book on your AirPods, you don't want that chapter to blast in the car when driving your mother to the mall.Unfortunately, Apple's provided no easy 'Turn off auto-playing music over Bluetooth' switch directly on your iPhone or iPad.
But you can still solve this somewhat irksome issue with a couple of other fixes.Option 1: Check your car to see if there are any auto-play settings you can disableDepending on your car's make and model, it may offer its own auto-playing Bluetooth settings, separate from your iPhone (or any other smartphone. Before you go diving to shut off your iPhone, check there.
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