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I think you misread something. I said Steam DRM would be cracked, as in, nonvoluntarily....

The online requirement has been cracked many times already... what would be needed is Steamworks server emulators, and that's been attempted more than once.

I hardly ever use Steam so my knowledge of the current hacks is limited.

I read that info file yesterday when I saw this story on another site. I thought the same thing, that it was pretty hypocritical of them. However, now I know better. The only reason they hid the crack is because they didn't want anyone to know that all they did was repackage the crack that has been going around for awhile now. http://cs.rin.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=56074&start=45

Certainly, they made some improvement (no longer need to run a server or mess with hosts file) but they want people to think they did it all by themselves, rather than cooperatively with the crack community.

http://cs.rin.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=55769&start=3900

All Skidrow did was re-package the existing community-developed workaround.

The community created a values.db which contains the name/value pairs to defeat Ubi's server checks, and a server emulator, Skidrow's DLL embeds this file and replaces the server-checking with a local access.

Skidrow then takes full credit for the work (in a total douche move) and they also packed their DLL so no-one would detect their deception.

I have a bridge I'd like to sell you....

Emulator for AC2, haven't tried by technically it is supposed to work.

http://www.cs.rin.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=55769

Also putting all your DRM eggs in one convenient basket makes a nice big juicy target for piracy. While this is a continuously moving target, the tools I've seen lately are getting fairly good.

Free isn't good enough anymore.

Not when you can easily pirate Team Fortress 2 with cracked Steam and the latest Team Fortress 2 client content.gcf, anyway, which you can play in Setti's cracked servers.

You know, I don't see why this was modded troll. The guy brings up a pretty good point. It's one of the reasons why other operating systems have problems competing against Windows. People get Windows for "free" (pirate) or are forced to have it included with their computer, since the system is out there on a mass scale, there is mass interest in it and even if you make your software legally free, people aren't interested because they can get Windows for the same price.

Free isn't good enough anymore.

Not when you can easily pirate Team Fortress 2 with cracked Steam and the latest Team Fortress 2 client content.gcf, anyway, which you can play in Setti's cracked servers.

You know, I don't see why this was modded troll. The guy brings up a pretty good point. It's one of the reasons why other operating systems have problems competing against Windows. People get Windows for "free" (pirate) or are forced to have it included with their computer, since the system is out there on a mass scale, there is mass interest in it and even if you make your software legally free, people aren't interested because they can get Windows for the same price.

Free isn't good enough anymore.

Not when you can easily pirate Team Fortress 2 with cracked Steam and the latest Team Fortress 2 client content.gcf, anyway, which you can play in Setti's cracked servers.

Don't blame me, I'm just being Pirate Bay.

Free isn't good enough anymore.

Not when you can easily pirate Team Fortress 2 with cracked Steam and the latest Team Fortress 2 client content.gcf, anyway, which you can play in Setti's cracked servers.

Don't blame me, I'm just being Pirate Bay.

Yes, I usually like buying boxed games. I bought left4dead from a store for example and it is on steam. You really are not forced to buy off of steam - even though I do that for some games too.

  As for not being able to play the games offline, or if the "servers are too busy to handle your request", or if Valve ever went down, you'd still be able to play the games. All you need are the gcfs/ncfs and common folder and use Universal Content Launcher, or one of the many other steamemus.

  I assume I'll be dead before Valve ever goes under, though. Even if/when they do - they'd just probably gimp steam and the only thing we wouldn't have would be the activation servers and VAC2. We could still run. Else, we'd use what I suggested above.

Not advocating piracy here, and this requires registration but here's a link to UCL http://cs.rin.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?t=46295

The dev section on cs.rin.ru is particularly interesting.

But then it's offline and steam is still slow to load.

Steam has serious issues if your connection is slow or flaky (in my case I suspect my ISP was doing some sort of filtering behind the scenes as my connection seemed ok). It used to take ages to load the main interface and then didn't know what games I owned.

I highly recommend UCL (source code available) for playing offline games that you own. I found that loading Lumines was much faster with UCL than Steam in offline mode. Word of warning: I once had to log out and back into steam after launching UCL before it would let me join TF2 servers.

It is really old news. I've played Lost Coast myself last week downloaded with Steam-Down which now seems to be available at http://cs.rin.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17163 I suppose it's even easier for people with legal Steam accounts. I must add, that technology showcase level is a piece of art.

*hack cough*

Easily overcome: What does this even mean? Steam is easy to hack? It's much harder than any previous system (WON, for instance)... I really don't understand what you're trying to say here.

Well, there's steam-down that lets you play any steam game you want whether you pay for it or not. It will even download the games from the steam server and decrypt them for you, just as if it really were steam.

Of course you can't play online, but the fact that you don't have to scavage the web for warez, you just need to download a simple utility, makes it look pretty weak to me. Maybe that's why it's down tonight? Maybe they're updating to foil steam down and the like??

This won't ever stop people from buying the game (or hunting IRC, P2P, etc) and using non steam-down, steam-down's 100% offline cousin, but it'll at least mean kidlins will have to work for their warez or buy the game even if they want to use non steam-down (since they won't just be able to download the games through the Valve GFC servers)

Easily overcome: What does this even mean? Steam is easy to hack? It's much harder than any previous system (WON, for instance)... I really don't understand what you're trying to say here.

Well, there's steam-down that lets you play any steam game you want whether you pay for it or not. It will even download the games from the steam server and decrypt them for you, just as if it really were steam.

Of course you can't play online, but the fact that you don't have to scavage the web for warez, you just need to download a simple utility, makes it look pretty weak to me. Maybe that's why it's down tonight? Maybe they're updating to foil steam down and the like??

This won't ever stop people from buying the game (or hunting IRC, P2P, etc) and using non steam-down, steam-down's 100% offline cousin, but it'll at least mean kidlins will have to work for their warez or buy the game even if they want to use non steam-down (since they won't just be able to download the games through the Valve GFC servers)

Publish the evidence in Science or Nature with your evidence to support your theories