Works fine for me - maybe some companies use DRM to do evil but I have never once - in all the years I've been using it - noticed any problems whatsoever with Steam or the dozens and dozens of games that I've bought through it.

What are these DRM issues exactly? 

for me, it's extremely annoying to have to turn on the steam client just to load up a game. i find myself sometimes passing on stuff because i know i'll need to work through the steam client.
of course, i'm not really much of a gamer anymore, so that's usually enough to turn me off a game entirely. 

Spirit

Keep waiting for that day. It'll come, I'm sure. 

Phoronix is 100% accurate about all things of course :) 

It can be annoying when the Servers go down, but what's the alternative?

Migration of save games, cheap deals all the time and community support.

Granted Linux is a different culture, but 'All DRM is evil' is pretty short-sighted. 

it's the way things are going,so..

just so long as they let people KEEP their games when they suddenly implode one day in a puff of bankruptcy smoke! 

Taken from wikipedia:

...Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve, said in a post on the Steam User Forums that "Unless there was some situation I don't understand, we would presumably disable authentication before any event that would preclude the authentication servers from being available." He added, "We've tested disabling authentication, and it works."

Link to the archived post used as source for the info: http://web.archive.org/web/20100605062932/http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10642189&postcount=28

And there's always risk of losing things you physically own (theft, fire, negligence), this is really no different, only that it would affect millions of people simultaneously. 

Well, just as a random example that happened to me recently. I loaded steam and it told me that I had to re-authenticate the machine before I could log in. I had to wait a day for the mail with the code. So that piece of shit locked me out of my games for a day for "security".

Offline mode is a joke. Please give it a try, shut down your PC, disable your net, boot and try to use it.

You are forced to follow updates.

Can you re-sell games?

It is a golden cage. It mostly works and is mostly unobstrusive for most people. The DRM is not needed for all the things you are happy about. It is restricting you in your freedom to do what you want, when you want and where you want with stuff you paid for.

I fully understand that Steam is easy to use, easy to buy cheap games, some general features are nice but is it really worth giving up your freedom for? 

I fully understand that Steam is easy to use, easy to buy cheap games, some general features are nice but is it really worth giving up your freedom for?

this is the only part about steam that bugs me. because of how easy it is to use, i guess people don't really think much about what it means for them to accept it.
just part of the human condition i guess. 

It's a bunch of games I paid $5 for. I could seriously not give less of a fuck. :) 

Offline mode is a joke. Please give it a try, shut down your PC, disable your net, boot and try to use it.

Actually I usually play on my laptop so I do that a fair bit. Sounds like it just doesn't like your PC or something.

Can you re-sell games?

Would have bugged me years ago but I have no new games I've bought I'd want to sell, and the rest were bought for a few quid at a time so hardly the amount I'd care about trying to re-sell them. Also games like Metro 2033, GRID or Civ 5 I would likely have not bothered getting without the massively reduced price, and I ended up them quite a lot. 

*enjoying them quite a lot, *giggles*

I'm certainly not 'up' Metro 2033 :/ 

interesting, civ5 is one of the few games in the last few years i've bought at full price. i knew i'd get hours and hours out of it. :) 

Oh, and I can't remember the last time I sold a game. I mean, I get your general concerns Spirit but they are of zero relevance to 99.9% of the gaming population. They just don't matter. 

Duh, I know that. But do you really think it is a good thing that we move to games where even the singleplayer runs online (Diablo 3), where you have to ask for permission to run it each time you want to play etc? 

Diablo 3 is a special case because being online only is a barrier against all the hackery that was rampant in D2.

(Or so I've been tricked to believe!) 

Spirit

Don't know. I'm personally OK with it as I like the benefits that Steam provides - namely, not having to keep physical CDs around anymore or worry about losing CD Keys. My game library is always available and I can uninstall/reinstall at will (as bandwidth speeds allow).

The new trend with always having to be online can be annoying for some people but I'm always online anyway so, personally, I'm ambivalent. We stream all of our TV entertainment, most of our music, and with Steam - our games.

I found having to put the CD in the drive to play far more inconveniencing than having to be online has ever been so ... I might be the wrong guy to ask about this. 

As much as I'd like to flame Spirit for being a dick just for the sake of it and linux ideology-fuelled misanthropy as so often, I can't deny he has a point. As convenient as Steam is (despite the pricing and regional availability controversies), taking away a layer of dependence, at the same time it adds another one which, in the end, may have a greater impact than the loss of a cd. We are indeed licensing games more than actually buying them there (though one could probably argue that the TOS of many physical games - you know, the text before the installer that you never read - may have some equally questionable implications.

Now, the Steam Guard system (account security) works well - the mails always arrive immediately for me - and it can be deactivated if desired. Offline mode works, too, although (and that's hell of an irony) it requires at least one online login so the account data/password is saved on the computer.

However, a couple of days something happened that should make us think. Due to a server configuation problem German users were unable to use Steam. They couldn't log in and, here's the thing, couldn't use the offline mode, either. The fact that such a thing is possible is really fucked up and plays directly into Spirit's argument. Technical problems can occur all the time, and so far Steam has always worked fine, but if an external issue can lock out people like this, it's quite outrageous. 

I found having to put the CD in the drive to play far more inconveniencing than having to be online has ever been so
Hmm - yes.

Anyway, i'm still not sure about how well this thing will work. Linux is a tough OS to write proprietry code for.

Or if and when it'll ever get done ? I suppose there must be some truth in this comment (from Phauronix's discussion page)

If they get bored or feel it is not right, they stop doing it, and Gabe just does not care. He does not control his employees for what they are working on. Projects can be stalled for years if no one interests in working on, while others are being done very fast if a lot of people work on; there are no plans nor guides. 

right, that's more what i was getting at. just because the system offers great stuff, that doesn't somehow nullify or cancel out the fact that it is taking control away from you.
the fact that it is easy and cheap is what makes it worse: you go ahead and use it and it's great and you barely notice the inconvenience. you only realize how much it actually sucks when something like the above happens. 

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/steamd-penguins/

(and can we not talk about DRM this time?) 

I am a bit scared about (probably successful) platforms for easy commercial distribution on Linux. It could mean that developers would move away from free to paid just to try to make a measly 100 bucks. I like Linux as it is. I do not really _need_ some software/game store since the free stuff works well enough and is entertaining though. I most certainly would not want one with profiles, DRM and "proprietarity".

Probably contradicting myself here.

Could someone gift me Quake? 

abused :-S
Think of Android, or Chrome OS or whatever.

Or watch this http://youtu.be/yVpbFMhOAwE
Since when does Linux need commercials? 

Why Ubuntu? There are a couple of reasons for that. First, we�re just starting development and working with a single distribution is critical when you are experimenting, as we are. It reduces the variability of the testing space and makes early iteration easier and faster. Secondly, Ubuntu is a popular distribution and has recognition with the general gaming and developer communities. This doesn�t mean that Ubuntu will be the only distribution we support. Based on the success of our efforts around Ubuntu, we will look at supporting other distributions in the future.
cough 

Seems LordHavoc, Rick Johnson (Raven) and Sam Lantinga (SDL) are working for Valve now.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=valve_linux_sdl&num=1