You have to get online to set it up before you can set it to offline. So let's say you buy an Xbox One in about 10-15 years and you can't connect to the Xbox servers, you couldn't use it at all. If you bought a used one you wouldn't want to format it because then you would be unable to use it after that. Honestly, people should not accept this from any company.Wait, so was I right in thinking setting it to "offline" solves it?
Do I really need to explain that to you?
LOL yeah, it's like with the Wii. You can backup all your VC titles to the SD card but they will only work on THAT Wii. When that Wii dies, your backup games are unplayable.
I'm not a PC gamer so I have no idea, but do playing Steam games require a Steam account? Like if you've downloaded it, lets say Steam is down, can you launch it without any problems?
Thankfully most of my games are disc based so on the rare chance the servers do get killed and Sony goes bye bye I'll still be able to play them, even if I have to just use a guest account.
As long as Steam is in offline mode, yeah. Failing that (lets say that you need to reinstall it or the game has some kind of additional always online DRM)...well...it's an open system, with no code signing shenanigans like on console, I can use whatever executables I like, there's nothing stopping me from patching the DRM out. I'd NEVER go all digital on any of my consoles, but I happily do so on PC.
It may be true that Steam is 'Digital Distribution done better' than on consoles but Steam is where the cancer of Digital Distribution really got popular and then spread to consoles.
Exactly
Like I said, digital distribution isn't the problem, it's the walled garden it's done in. If the consoles were more like PCs in that regard (which they never will be because the manufacturers don't understand piracy) then I'd have no problem with it. Where I get the data is irrelevant as long as I can continue to use it in perpetuity. On PC I can. On console I cannot.
Yes.Wait, so was I right in thinking setting it to "offline" solves it?
If you change to Offline... nope... all games will work.
On Sony systems you just need to change the battery and set offline and play the game you have on storage.
Since when is a battery tied to authentication.
Not true. Your windows 10 license key is stored in ACPI tables and is wiped if the battery dies. Guess what you need to do to access windows again? Authentication online.
Depends on if the license is digital or physical.
Except that's not true. Windows 10 is basically fully functional without activation of any description. All you have to put up with is a watermark (oooooh noooo) and being unable to change the wallpaper. That's all you get for your money...that's it.
So it really is just like when PSN goes down (back in PS3 days and early PS4 days mostly) and some games don't work on the PS4? Unticking connect to the internet is the workaround.
Isn't it stored in the registry? Does the CMOS battery affect a lot? I've only used it to reset BIOS passwords before
Actually they say you can still play PS4 disc games on a PS5 (but not a PS4) without a battery.
As if there are no people playing retro games on retro hardware today.
Oh, so the issue is still real for the PS4.
I don't think with steam you can do that. You can with GOG.com. But Steam likely isn't going to be shutdown and I imagine if they were, they'd release the DRM restrictions on purchased content.
You can totally do that. Whenever I reinstall Windows I install all my Steam games off my backup. All you need is the install folder, the appmanifest and to have logged in atleast once since purchasing the game.
I mean, you'd still need Steam but I read some of the later comments by you and others so it makes sense how you can still get it to still work, since we have a little more control over things on the PC side.
I doubt that they could legally remove the DRM restrictions on third party games.
Title was changed.
You won't get any future updates is my understanding if you don't activate (based on a Google search, that's 180 days after, no updates.)
Yes but Windows doesn't prevent you from using it without connecting to the internet but the Xbox does.
Yeah PC gaming is big on Linux.
Used to be that way, in XP-7 (possibly 8 too?) but Windows 10 will update happily. Microsoft would rather you were using Windows 10 at this point, even if you're not paying for it. It was also only ever automatic updates, they could still be installed manually, even if it was a pain in the arse to find all the KB's. Besides which...if your Windows is unactivated and for whatever reason you can't get online to reactivate it...well how are you going to be getting updates?
