TL;DR stores do not equal drm, delisting does not equal revoking access and drm is aplicable per dev
Long version;
I have noticed in the community some people are worrying about game ownership especially when a game may be delisted thus them will be revoked access to their games, which is completely further from the truth and I am here to clear some misconception.
Let's start with non transafareable license and what it is by translating said legal language to casual everyday language, it just means the game is tied to your own account and you can't resell it to someone else or for example in a used market, however that does not mean a store can take it away. You can think of it as all of the flexibilities which comes from transafareable license but the only thing you cannot do is resell the game.
Also subscription in more casual language is an account owner of the game they purchased from the store.
it will be only delisted from the store that's it, you have full game ownership of what you buy on whatever store, also steam nor any other storefront arent drm but just normal chromium broswer wrappers (store + community) e.g steam with remote installer aka steam pipe and once game has been delivered to user local disc they can do whatever they want, and dependning on store api integration many games can be run without store running in the background, even valve says that games shall never search for steam and be dependant on steam
"Callbacks
Callbacks are one of the most important aspect of Steamworks, they allow you to retrieve data asynchronously from Steam without locking up your game. The goal of the callbacks are to provide a simple, light-weight, type-safe, thread-safe method of raising asynchronous events to any object registered as a listener.
Callbacks are usually triggered via an event that happens from Steam such as when ever a friend logs on or off, or the asynchronous result of some API functions. Each callback consists of a struct containing a unique identifier and a small set of data. The callbacks are declared in the ISteam*.h header files, grouped with the interface that it most closely belongs to."
Also yes valve had their own drm CEG they created in 2009 but quickly became obsolete since 2014 as it was rarely used by devs and it is not even documented on steamworks docs, so now the only drm implemented is only via 3rd party drm which valve already tracks it through "Included 3rd party drm: " which is in very few games only 171 out of 100k games which usually is removed as well
"Denuvo Anti-Tamper is the current de-facto standard for securing DRM schemes on modern titles. Since its original release back in 2014, it has been used to strengthen the DRM of over 150 titles"
Also pcgw do not consider store api dependency as drm and now showcase store api dependency (store icon) and drm (red icon), which is what they explained when I asked directly why the listing situation on their website is the way it is
""
So to summarize:
Steam client == the digital distribution client used to download and install games. This client alone is not regarded as DRM from the perspective of PCGW nor have been since around 2017-2019. This corresponds to the Source column of PCGW's availability table.
Steam DRM == the actual DRM component provided by Valve to game developers, and which are embedded as part of the game executable and applies various forms of piracy and tamper protection to the executable. This is tracked as "Steam" within the DRM column of PCGW's availability table.
Steamworks API == the "Steam API" used by games to communicate/interface with the Steam client to unlock achievements and such. This is technically not DRM per se (it doesn't inherently have a dependency on the Steam client) but common misuse of it by game developers can result in it acting as DRM (not allowing the game to be launched without the Steam client running). This is tracked as "Steam" within the DRM column of PCGW's availability table when it acts as such despite using a steam_appid.txt file to provide it with the App ID of the game.
DRM-free == A Steam game is DRM-free if it fulfills both of these requirements:
the game does not have the Steam DRM wrapper embedded in the game executable and
the game does not have the Steamworks API act in a DRM-like capability when provided with an appropriate steam_appid.txt file. If a Steam game fulfills both of these requirements, meaning they can properly be launched separately without the Steam client installed or running on the system, it's marked as DRM-free within the DRM column of the availability table
Our main issue isn't with the way the templates are treating this — it's with people filling out the fields without improper testing (which only education and training can resolve) and legacy data provided and inserted from PCGW's younger years before we separated the client/launcher from the DRM tracking (which can only be resolved by someone going back and retesting all of the games)."
I hope it cleared a bit of misconception, because once again store is not drm.
Also on steam offline installers exists as well via "backup game files and restore feature as well, because these stores aren't native aplications so it's impossible to enforce drm level hidden deep in the kernel level because these stores are just basic browsers for example in the steam case chromium browser in an app (store + community) which can be thought of it as if "app is installed. Install _example" from the web browser to create desktop shell extention from the browser that is for example similar on edge and chrome for example with libary (which is only "native" part of the package) which comes with remote installer on top of invisible offline installer who developer uploaded it e.g steam pipe https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/sdk/uploading and other equilavents which encrypts the game files in a secure way on cmd and whenever user click "install" button, it remotely connects to remote installer, un encrypt the game files and directly sends to the user local disc via internet + local disc data to achieve greater speeds, installing required dependencies and API wrappers for example directx and other which was designed for the users and dev alike to have as no friction as possible.
Which is the same thing also aplying to every other mainstream digital storefront as well.
Also the reason why some games do still search for steam even when uninstalled is because of locally cached store tokens and registry leftovers which game may think steam or other store (depending from where the game was bought) may be installed and almost all of the time, it can be fixed via transfering a game to the pc with fresh OS install which has no stores installed ever as well.
Also the other fix may be done to make store API calls optional, is by creating steam_appid.txt file with apropiate steam app id inside it which can be found on steamDB website.
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Topic: How steam and other pc stores works under the hood
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