No, this is mistaken. If a digital storefront sells their media in a DRM-free format, you receive the files in an unrestricted way, similar to if you bought a physical book, movie, or album.

Unrestricted is not to say given permission to copy and distribute as you'd like, but that's the same as for physical media.

[–] Kushan@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Okay sure, for DRM-free storefronts that's true but I'm talking about arguing that Game Pass is somehow worse than say Steam when the reality is that you can lose all your content on both storefronts. Most aren't DRM-free, which is the issue.

[–] xcjs@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Steam's DRM is optional for publishers at least, and many titles are DRM free. You also at least have access to the files so you can attempt to bypass it.

[–] ElectroVagrant@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Fwiw I can see where you're coming from, but I don't really understand why/what for. Game Pass isn't really comparable to Steam or a digital storefront anyway, which already makes the comparison kind of silly. That said, I recognize you were going off the other commenter's framing in the argument there, so not faulting you for following along with it. I did just the same in my reply before giving it some more thought with this one.

Nevertheless, it is worse in terms of ownership, but that was never its selling point to begin with, so it's silly to criticize it in that respect, much as it would be to criticize Netflix for not providing ownership of what it gives access to. Also regarding Steam DRM, xcjs covers that nicely in the other reply here.