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It’s a common misconception that all games purchased through Steam have DRM (Digital Rights Management) enabled by the very nature of being on Steam, but that’s not the case. Here’s why, and how to tell if your game is DRM-free.

Why Don’t All Steam Games Have DRM?

If you were under the impression that all Steam-purchased games have DRM enabled and the Steam launcher is required to play them, that’s perfectly understandable.

You can add your spouse, kid, roommate, or whoever to your Steam library to share games within your home, but Steam shares the entire library at once not the individual games. That means if you want to play Game X in your library while your kid plays Game Y , it doesn’t work even though you’re not playing the same game at the same time. While we understand their logic (they’re trying to avoid somebody sharing a 1,000+ game library among a group of friends and the missing sales that would result from that) it’s frustrating when you just want to share the games you paid for with your kid down the hall.

If you know a particular game is DRM-free and can launch without the Steam launcher, then you know that game will always be available even if somebody in the household is using the family Steam library.

It’s Easier to Archive DRM-Free Games

We don’t know about you, but the nuance of game licensing and DRM aside, our attitude is “I paid for this game and therefore I own this game.” While the chances of Steam closing up shop and leaving literally millions of gamers high and dry with no recourse is very, very slim, we also have been burned by DRM too many times over the years to not think about that possibility.

If a game in your library is already DRM-free to start with, that makes it very simple to backup the game and keep a copy that will work no matter what becomes of Steam.

Whatever your reason for wanting to check if a game is DRM-free, however, it’s easy to do so.

How to Tell If Your Steam Game Is DRM-Free

Curious if a particular game is DRM-free? Here’s how to tell. Let’s start with the most obvious ways to weed out DRM games and then dig into the finer details.

And if you’re not interested in playing DRM detective, don’t worry, after showing you how to check for yourself we’ll highlight some great lists you can check to skip the whole field test experience.

Check the Game’s Steam Page

It’s elementary but it’s the fastest way to rule out a game. Games that use third-party DRM are flagged as such on their Steam listing page. In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that the Bethesda game Deathloop uses the Denuvo anti-tamper DRM (an always-on DRM that requires you to be online even if you’re playing single-player mode).

Do note, however, that checking the Steam page for a game is just intended to rule out the big DRM systems. Just because you don’t see a notice that the game is using Denuvo, or UPlay, or any of the common DRM systems doesn’t mean it’s a greenlight.

Install the Game and then Run It Without Steam

You’ll need Steam to get the game files in the first place, but once you have them whether or not you need Steam is up to the publisher.

With that in mind, an easy test is to simply load up Steam, install the game, shut down Steam, and then temporarily rename the root Steam directory and the steam.exe . So during the test your /Steam/ folder will be renamed to, say, /Steam-Old/ and your steam.exe file inside that folder will be renamed to steam.old —this is to ensure that should the game go looking for Steam, it can’t find it.

Then locate the actual executable file for the game and try to launch it without Steam. If it runs, great, you have a DRM-free game on your hands. If it doesn’t, don’t give up quite yet.

Some games have a steam_api.dll and/or SteamworksNative.dll in the root game directory along with the game executable. Try changing the file extension from .dll to .old , temporarily, to run the game. If that works, you can leave the file as .old .

Changing the directory and Steam executable is a bit of a hassle, however minor, so we’d recommend testing a bunch of your games at once to save time.

Add an ID Text File to the Game Directory

Some games are DRM-free but require a simple text file in the game’s app directory to launch without the Steam launcher present.

You can test to see if your game is such a game by putting a file named steam_appid.txt , in the game directory with the actual ID number of the game from the Steam database as the sole contents of the text file. The game A Short Hike is an example of a game that requires this text file.

The simplest way to get the ID is to simply visit the Steam page for the game and look at the URL. The full URL for A Short Hike is https://store.steampowered.com/app/1055540/A_Short_Hike/ —the number between the /app/ and game title is the ID.

So to run A Short Hike without Steam, you would create a text file in the directory titled steam_appid.txt with only the text “1055540” inside.

Additional Methods

Beyond these simple and risk-free methods, there are ways to run games purchased through Steam without Steam. These methods, however, require patching the game in some fashion ranging from altering the existing executables to replacing the executables or other files with “fill in” files from other releases of the game.

For example a game might be sold on Steam with DRM but sold elsewhere without DRM, so you could, in theory, swap out all the relevant files and your Steam-purchased version would now be DRM-free.

That’s beyond the scope of this article, however, and it introduces a not insignificant risk that whatever replacement files you acquire might be compromised and harmful to your computer. We can’t, in good faith, recommend it and would instead recommend that if DRM of any sort is that big of an issue for you that you should instead just purchase games that come DRM-free such as those sold by Good Old Games .

Useful Lists of DRM-Free Steam Games

It can be a bit time-consuming to fiddle with all your games to test their DRM and launcher status, so we completely understand if you’d like to skip the sleuthing.

Fortunately for you, there are a number of actively maintained lists where other curious gamers have slogged through games to determine if their DRM-free or not (and what steps are required to play them without Steam).

Given that there are roughly 50,000 games in the Steam marketplace no list will be exhaustive but checking these lists will give you a headstart.

• SteamWiki
• PCGamingWiki

If you don’t see a game you’re curious about, by all means fire off a quick search for the name of the game and additional parameters like “DRM-free Steam” to see what’s out there. The game might not be on a curated list, yet, but often times somebody in a forum or a subreddit has done the legwork for you.

Whether you test it yourself or do a little internet sleuthing, however, it’s not too difficult to get to the bottom of a Steam game’s DRM-status.

Has your iPhone been damaged to the point of no longer being usable? Is the screen smashed or does it not even turn on? You can buy a new iPhone , but the data on your old device may be irreplaceable. Fortunately, you may be able to recover it.

Was Your iPhone Backed Up?

If you have a recent backup for your iPhone , you’re in luck. There are two different types of backup you may have: an over-the-air cloud backup to iCloud, or a local backup on a Mac or PC.

iCloud backups are the easiest to work with since they take care of themselves once they’ve been set up. You’ll need enough free iCloud storage for this to work, which for most people will involve paying for the 50GB ($0.99/month) option.

You can see whether you have backups turned on and when the last successful backup was made using other devices connected to your Apple ID. These include other iPhones or iPads, a Mac, or a Windows PC running iCloud for Windows :

• On an iPhone or iPad: Launch the Settings app, tap on your name then navigate to  > iCloud > Manage Storage > Backups.
• On a Mac: Launch System Preferences, click on Apple ID, then select the iCloud tab on the left. Click on Manage then select “Backups” in the window that appears.
• On a Windows PC: Launch iCloud for Windows, click on Storage, then select “Backups” on the left.

If you have an iCloud backup that’s recent, data on your iPhone is safe. You can restore your iPhone using the “Restore from iCloud Backup” option that is presented to you when you activate a new iPhone. Your device will be put back just as you remember it, though how long this takes depends on the speed of your internet connection .

Note that if you have iCloud Photo Library enabled (and enough free space to copy everything to the cloud) then your personal media will already be backed up. You can log in on iCloud.com to see the latest snaps copied to the cloud.

If you have been backing up your device to a Mac, you can see your available offline backups using Finder. To do this, launch Finder and click on Go > Go To Folder… at the top of the screen, then copy and paste this location followed by Enter: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/

On Windows use the search bar to enter %appdata% followed by the Enter key, then navigate to “Apple” or “Apple Computer” followed by MobileSync > Backup. On a Mac or Windows PC, these local backups can be restored by connecting a new device and selecting

To transfer a local backup to a new iPhone first connect the replacement to a Mac or Windows with iTunes, choose “Restore From This Backup” when prompted, then select the backup you want to restore.

Is Your iPhone Recognized by a Mac or PC?

If your iPhone screen is smashed or the device appears unresponsive but still turns on, you may still be able to make a fresh backup that you can transfer to a new device. This will save everything on the iPhone to your Mac or Windows 10 or 11 drive in a format that can be restored using Finder or iTunes for Windows.

To do this, make sure your device is turned in then connect it to your Mac or Windows PC . Launch Finder (on a Mac) or iTunes (on Windows) to see if the device is recognized. Be aware that you may need to “Trust” a device by allowing access on your iPhone screen before it will communicate with your computer, and this can be difficult if the device isn’t functioning normally.

You can create a new backup on a Mac by selecting the device in the Finder sidebar and then clicking “General” followed by “Back up all of the data on your iPhone to this Mac” (you can also choose to encrypt the backup with a password if you want). Click “Back Up Now” to start the process.

On Windows, launch iTunes and click on your iPhone in the top-left corner of the window followed by Summary > Back Up Now. You can restore these backups to a new (or as-new) iPhone using Finder or iTunes for Windows.

If you already have an iCloud backup and are using other iCloud services like iCloud Photo Library, you don’t necessarily need to do this (but more backups can’t hurt).

Recover Data by Repairing the Device to a Bootable State

If the device doesn’t boot or isn’t being recognized by a Mac or PC, and you haven’t used iCloud backup or other iCloud services to save data, you may not be completely out of luck. Repairing a damaged iPhone is often not worth it, since the cost of repairs is often comparable with the price of a new unit.

But you may only need to repair your device to a bootable (not necessarily usable) state to back up the data. If the speakers don’t work or the screen is partially obscured by a crack, that’s not a problem provided you can communicate with a Mac or Windows PC running iTunes (as per the previous section).

What this entails depends entirely on the damage done to your device. For example, if the only thing stopping your iPhone from communicating is a damaged Lightning port, you may be able to disassemble the iPhone, replace the Lightning port, then perform the backup.

Apple introduced a Self Service Repair program for iPhone owners in 2022, which allows “individuals with the knowledge and experience to repair electronic devices” to fix their iPhones. Apple supplies repair manuals, tools, and replacement parts (for a fee) to allow you to repair your device, but it’s not for everyone.

You can also use iFixit’s iPhone repair hub to get instructions on how to disassemble, diagnose, and repair your device. You’ll probably need a set of specialist tools for prying the device open and removing screws and ribbon cables. How far you go with the repair depends on how much your stranded data is worth to you.

Third Party Repair and Recovery Options

If you’re not feeling particularly confident about a DIY repair, third-party data recovery services exist. The problem is that they can cost as much as a new device, and there’s no guarantee that your data will be recovered.

Take a service like iPad Rehab which specializes in all manner of iPhone and iPad repairs. The service promises to “perform open-ended troubleshooting and micro soldering to identify and correct faults on the logic board to bring the dead phone back to life enough to provide a path to your data.”

Play Video

The quoted price for this method is $300-$600, though they do offer a “no data, no fee” promise and a queue time of around four weeks. You can throw in another $100 to jump the queue if you’re desperate.

There are plenty of other companies that offer data recovery services, and many will be local to you. These companies often don’t provide quotes until you request an evaluation, though payment plans often exist. Paying someone else to recover your data doesn’t require soldering skills or specialist equipment, but it will likely cost you more since you’re paying for expertise.

Set a Backup and Don’t Let This Happen Again

By far the best thing you can do to safeguard your data is to use a backup solution. iCloud backup may cost you anything from 99 cents to a few dollars per month, but it’s a lot cheaper than paying for specialist data recovery services.

Set up an iCloud backup under Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud > iCloud Backup by toggling it on. You might be asked to sign up for more iCloud space, so why not learn what else you can use your iCloud storage space for ?

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If your iPhone is no longer usable and you need a replacement, take a look at our recommendations for the best iPhones available right now.

We already spend too much time sitting in front of a computer, but if you also have a bad chair, you’re in real trouble. There are so many “ergonomic” chairs that it’s hard to know what matters when buying one.

What It Means to Be Ergonomic

Ergonomics is a field of study and design that looks at how the things we interact with can be made to work well with how our bodies are evolved. A chair designed for an octopus would look very different from one made for a human being after all!

Of course, all office chairs are designed for human beings, so what does it mean for a chair to be “ergonomic”. The way the term is used these days generally refers to chairs that have features and design considerations that make them comfortable for long periods of time without doing long-term damage to the user. What types of damage? This could include chronic back pain, poor posture , or general discomfort. There are a few typical ergonomic chair aspects worth highlighting:

• A high degree of adjustability to match the unique body proportions of every user.
• Additional support structures and cushions for common trouble areas such as the lower back and neck.
• High-quality padding in targeting areas, with the correct amount of cushioning.

Within this broad set of features, there’s a seemingly infinite variety of designs and quality levels, so you’ll need to be a little more granular in your approach.

Chair Upholstery

Just as with any furniture, you have various options when it comes to what the outer skin of your chair will be made of. This might not seem like an ergonomic issue at first glance, but the upholstery is an important part of comfort.

For example, leather is a high-quality, durable material. However, it may not breathe as well as a synthetic material or allow moisture from your skin to escape. Perforated leather offers a good balance between breathability and the benefits of leather, but adds cost.

Consider whether you’ll be using your chair in a climate-controlled room or if your bare skin will be in contact with it or not. This should guide you towards the most comfortable upholstery choice for your needs.

Cushioning

One of the biggest differences between a cheap chair with poor ergonomics and a more expensive chair with good ergonomics is hidden under its skin. Cushioning is an all-important factor. An ergonomic chair should have reinforced cushioning in areas where the body requires support. Not only that, but the cushioning material should provide the right balance of firmness and conformity to your body.

Inexpensive chairs use uniform cushion materials that compress and become thin over time. So although the chair may feel reasonably comfortable for the first few weeks or months, it becomes increasingly less pleasant to sit on as time goes by.

The gold standard today is a laminated cushion design using different types of materials, such as varying grades of memory foam. This allows the cushions to offer breathability through a more porous top layer while providing support thanks to high-density base layers.

Frame Materials

An ergonomic chair should be stable and retain its shape over time. If not, this can affect how well it does its job of maintaining your posture and supporting your body.

Like all office chairs, an ergonomic chair’s frame is mainly a mix of metal and plastics. However, if structural elements such as the chair base or castors are plastic, this may introduce deformation or instability over time. One of the things to look for in an ergonomic chair (and really office chairs in general) is an all-metal frame or at least one that uses metal components where load and rigidity are most affected.

Adjustability

Adjustability is a key feature of any ergonomic chair and at a minimum, your chair should offer height adjustments that allow you to sit with your knees bent at a 90-degree angle, with your feet flat on the floor.

The backrest should offer adjustable lumbar support and a neck rest that offers support to your neck and head when you sit upright.

Height-adjustable armrests are also important and should let you maintain a 90-degree bend in your elbows while working on your desk. Adequate padding on the armrests is also worth considering since hard armrests can make the chances of developing carpal tunnel syndrome higher.

RELATED: Can Keyboard Wrist Rests Prevent Carpal Tunnel? Are They Worth Using?

Price Isn’t Everything

Chairs that are marketed as “ ergonomic ” can attract high prices, but just because a chair isn’t marketed or labeled with the word “ergonomic” doesn’t mean that it’s not. It’s not a given that you need to spend thousands of dollars on a chair to take care of your health and comfort. Whether a chair is ergonomic depends on whether it’s comfortable and good for your body. That can mean any chair is ergonomic if it fulfills those two criteria for you.

What’s perhaps more important is to try out a chair before you buy it or at least order it from an online retailer that allows for easy returns if your new chair ends up being a pain in the backside.

It’s been 50 years since Nolan Bushnell co-founded Atari, which brought video games to the mainstream. To celebrate, we asked Bushnell what he learned during the early years—and what we’ve lost sight of since then.

Atari in the Nolan Bushnell Era

When you hear the name “Atari,” if you’re of a certain generation, you might think back to a period in the very late 1970s and early 1980s when the Atari 2600 home video game console seemed unstoppable. But prior to Warner Communications purchasing Atari in 1976, the young company experienced four wild years of uncertainty and success while its employees relentlessly innovated a brand new class of electronic entertainment.

The guiding creative force at Atari during that time was Nolan Bushnell, who co-founded the company with Ted Dabney on June 27, 1972 in Sunnyvale, CA. Bushnell and Dabney had already worked together on the world’s first arcade video game, Computer Space , at Nutting Associates, and they were ready to take the business more fully into their own hands. They soon had a monster hit with the arcade game Pong in late 1972, which spawned copycats that spread video games all over the world. But Atari still faced an uphill fight as big names jumped into the market.

With that in mind—and the 50th anniversary of Atari at hand—we thought it would be fun to talk about lessons from Bushnell’s early years at the pioneering company. Bushnell spoke over the telephone, and his answers have been edited for formatting.

Benj Edwards, How-To Geek: Do you think the video game industry has lost sight of any innovations from the early days of Atari?

Nolan Bushnell: A little bit. Remember that Atari was founded as a coin-op company. And coin-op has this requirement that a newbie has to get into the game almost instantly without reading instructions. So the simplicity of onboarding is lost by a lot of people right now.

HTG: If you play a modern game, you have to sit and wait for loading, go through a tutorial, watch all the cutscenes, and it’s an hour into the game before you can finally play something.

Nolan Bushnell: Yeah.

HTG: What did you do “right” in the early years of Atari that people could learn from today?

Bushnell: We did really good branding. And I think that, in terms of our graphic badges and our logo and everything, we wanted to have a distinct look. I think it’s held together. Right now, the Atari logo is the only thing that’s still really vibrant.

HTG: Apple used iconic branding successfully too, and Steve Jobs was one of your early employees . Do you think that rubbed off on Apple?

Bushnell: I think so, because Jobs used to ride up to my house on Sunday mornings on his motorcycle. And we’d drink tea and talk about things. And I talked about the importance of branding and color palettes and things like that—how a brand and look is multi-faceted. You’ve never really thought about a color palette as being unique to a company, and yet it’s axiomatic.

HTG: So Steve Jobs used to hang out at your house?

Bushnell: Yeah, he used to live—I was up on a hill, and he was more down in the lots, but I could almost throw a rock and put it on his roof.

HTG: Was he living by himself at that time?

Bushnell: Yeah. Big house, no furniture. That simple. [Chuckles]

HTG: So let’s go the opposite way now. What did you do “wrong” at Atari that people could learn from today?

Bushnell: I think that I—how do I put this without sounding like an asshole? I put up with incompetence more than I should have. I should have been quicker to fire.

HTG: Well, you weren’t born a manager, right? You’d been mostly an engineer…

Bushnell: Well, that’s actually not quite true. Remember I managed 150 kids at the amusement park. That was kind of my MBA, I’ve always felt. It was a summer job, and it wasn’t like managing a bunch of engineers, but keeping everybody happy and working was important. So was managing the numbers—labor percentages and things like that.

HTG: I read an early quote from a manifesto you wrote in the early days of Atari that said something like, “If the people are happy and the company is happy, then good things happen.” Where did you get that egalitarian-type philosophy of management?

Bushnell: It was really in the air. Remember, it was the summer of love and the hippie movement up in northern California. I mean, we all had our hippy costumes, and we’d go up and be posers on weekends, and be hippies. I mean, total posing. [Laughs]

It was a kind of ethos in the air. There were Vietnam War protests and things like that, you know. Everybody was testing the status quo.

HTG: Would you do anything differently if you could go back in time and change the Atari story?

Bushnell: I think I would have been quicker to automate certain things. We were short on cash, and we were very lackadaisical about the fixtures and procedures we had.

HTG: It’s because you were hippies.

Bushnell: [Laughs] Yeah, I guess so.

“We Never Had Enough Money”

When it came time to develop and release a more advanced home video game console with cartridges (the 2600), Atari needed capital, and Bushnell sold his company to Warner Communications. Bushnell stayed with Atari until early 1979—missing both the monster-hit years of the 2600 and Atari’s spectacular failure just after that. (By then he was working on Chuck E. Cheese, but that’s another story entirely.)

HTG: Do you regret selling Atari at the time you did?

Bushnell: Yes and no. I really liked my life after I sold it. I got married, I got my house, I kinda got my personal life in order. Atari was very, very hard. And we never had enough money. We were running it as if we were going to take it public, and then the market kind of went sideways.

If I’d have gone ahead and been able to take the company public, I would have had another three or four years in the rat race and probably would have never gotten married. So would it have been a good ride and would I have made gobspocks more money? Absolutely. But on my personal life basis, it was definitely a good thing to do.

HTG: What is your favorite Atari game ever published by Atari?

Bushnell: Tempest .

HTG: That was in 1981, after you left the company. You played it anyway?

Bushnell: It was in the lab when I was there.

HTG: Why do you like Tempest ?

Bushnell: I think it’s very, very dynamic. It’s one of those games that was sort of all by itself, extremely innovative. I can’t think of another game that was like it at all and that had so many different levels, all of which kept it interesting.

HTG: It’s an experience unto itself. Almost psychedelic.

Bushnell: Exactly. I wouldn’t have said that, but I think you’re correct. It was a little trippy.

HTG: What kind of music were you listening to in 1972 when you founded Atari?

Bushnell: The Beatles, Pink Floyd, the Who, Queen. All of those. I really, really liked Queen—I can remember that. I’ll tell you another one that I really enjoyed. ELO—Electric Light Orchestra. A lot of people don’t know them. I thought the whole idea of rock orchestras was very fascinating to me.

HTG: That’s interesting because when I think of ELO, I think of the cover of…what’s the album with the UFO-looking thing on it?

Bushnell: Out of the Blue .

HTG: That reminds me of Atari design.

Bushnell: Yeah. [Surprised] Yeah, you’re right!

HTG: That was 1977. Heck, they might have been influenced by Atari at that point.

Bushnell: Maybe.

Atari’s Legacy

Over the decades, Bushnell has given hundreds of speeches, done thousands of interviews, and discussed almost every possible angle of the Atari story. But one thing still remains: 50 years is a long time. Bushnell himself will turn 80 next year.

HTG: How does it feel when someone says, “Hey, it’s been 50 years since you started Atari.” What comes into your head?

Bushnell: “Oh my god, am I that old?” [Laughs heartily.] My oldest daughter turned 50 a year ago, and I thought, “Boy, that says you’ve been on the planet a long time if you have kids that are 50.”

HTG: And Atari’s kind of like one of your kids.

Bushnell: Definitely.

HTG: I was just thinking how 50 is a huge milestone. I’m 41 now, so that’s memory past my lifespan. I can’t imagine trying to remember anything that happened 50 years ago. Is some of that stuff from the early 1970s still fresh? Do memories of that time come to you naturally?

Bushnell: Yeah, quite a bit. Plus, I’ve got a lot of old photos on my computer, and I have it set up so I have an Amazon Echo Show, and it scrolls through my library of photos. So I get reminded of things all the time.

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Happy birthday, Atari!