Interesting.
Aparently they've used the default SteamStub DRM then.
This doesn't count as "Reject DRM" to me too.
I think they said that (OP) specifically about Denuvo and Denuvo only.

Some devs and publishers seem to think Steam is not DRM...

I think the way is:
You think some topic is wrong, dumbly treated or shoddily discussed and/or proposed and self-serving to the ones who put it on the table or just presented in a deeply flawed way even if important? Bury it! Don't talk about it. Let it undo under the dust. And please speak about that same topic in a more approachable, feasible, forward-looking way.

We have to fight what we evaluate as noise.


As for the game, for me, same as Bloodlines. Not really interested as now, but I'm happy for the chance to know about the franchise and I think I'll try the first one (GOG apparently is in my same line of thoughts, as it offers a discount on it). Also, it's probably similar, almost as much spectacular, and less demanding in several ways

It probably has SteamStub DRM then. If you close Steam completely, move the game outside of the Steam folder (to say C:\GOG Games\Warhammer 40000 Space Marine 2" then temporarily rename the Steam folder, then try and open the game, does it work?

These days the only true "Litmus Test" for DRM-Free is downloading on one PC then testing the game on a second PC that has never had Steam installed by copying the game folder over and running the .exe. That may sound "nitpickity" but there's a good reason - some "it seems to run offline" games actually do a silent DRM check via the client during game install then cache that authorization into the Windows Credentials on an OS level (which gives the false illusion of being DRM-Free because the DRM check is "silent" and offline, but obviously that authorization will get wiped on a new Windows install and start failing in future unless the client authorises it again). Even Epic Games that use Epic Online Services do this, ie, read up on the Epic's developer EOS documentation and you'll read sections such as "The SDK automatically receives a refresh token from the authentication backend after a successful login to the user's Epic Account and stores the refresh token in the local keychain of the locally logged-in user on the device. For the local keychain, the SDK uses the secure credentials store provided by the device's operating system."

tl:dr - These days you can't trust anything to be "Actually DRM-Free" unless the game in question is proven to be 'portable' to another PC that's never had a client installed.

Hear, hear.

I wouldn't trust Harada if he told me the sky is blue with all the bullshit Tekken 8 had since release.

Thanks for the info! I imagined that it was SteamStub.
The bad thing is that it is still DRM, even if apparently the devs think only Denuvo is DRM.
The good thing is that this kind of DRM has easy workahounds agaisnt it for people to play the game their bought without the launcher.

Well I can't say for the steam version, but the version on Epic is in fact DRM free. It can be run without the Epic client directly from the 'Warhammer ... retail.exe'. Running it via the shortcut or the launcher in the root folder does seem to launch the Epic client, but it can definitely be run without it.

I still rather wait for whenever it gets dropped on GOG - in a much more polished state and discounted to boot - for squeezing the last sales out of it than give that Swiney hypocrite any of my shekels.

I started doing this with my physical copies almost two decades ago and I didn't stop doing that even with my GOG games, because I tend to find the installation process to take almost always far more time than what it takes to simply copy an existing installation folder to another computer and then merging any exported registry keys if I find them on the installation folder.

Exactly. And it's not like people don't have any games to play in the meantime...

If anyone is wondering Goldberg did not work on SM2 when I applied it.