Is Keeping a Steam Free Weekend Game Legal?

[MDPS]

Hey LTT,

 

   So this weekend Steam had a free-weekend for the game Wasteland 2, and even though it's over, I can still play it by manually accessing the .exe in its files. Now I'm not one to torrent or pirate or anything like that. I just don't like the feeling of not having paid for something, so I wanted to know if it is in fact legal for me to keep the files and continue playing. Under my licenses i still have the complimentary license for it even though the free-weekend is over, in case that changes anything.

 

Thanks, MDPS

[vanished]

They are not supposed to launch once the weekend is over.  If you are able to, without having done any other "hacks", I would consider it equal to taking advantage of a game with no DRM, such as sharing a purchased installer from GoG with a friend.

[Belgarathian]

Interesting... I guess it's technically illegal since you were only given access for a defined period in time.

 

This is so grey, I have no idea. 

[MDPS]

1 minute ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

They are not supposed to launch once the weekend is over.  If you are able to, without having done any other "hacks", I would consider it equal to taking advantage of a game with no DRM, such as sharing a purchased installer from GoG with a friend.

Sorry for the noobish question, but I'm not really educated on DRMs or that sort of thing. It did successfully launch with no exploits or anything, so would your scenario be "legal" then?

[vanished]

1 minute ago, MDPS said:

Sorry for the noobish question, but I'm not really educated on DRMs or that sort of thing. It did successfully launch with no exploits or anything, so would your scenario be "legal" then?

You have to check what the EULA says, but my guess is that it will say that you are only supposed to have access for the weekend.  Whether it needs to be cracked or not, using the software outside of the terms of the licence agreement is wrong.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, MDPS said:

Sorry for the noobish question, but I'm not really educated on DRMs or that sort of thing. It did successfully launch with no exploits or anything, so would your scenario be "legal" then?

Not legal as you don't have permission to use it, even though there are no explots. Nothing bad would come of it though.

[MDPS]

1 minute ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

You have to check what the EULA says, but my guess is that it will say that you are only supposed to have access for the weekend.  Whether it needs to be cracked or not, using the software outside of the terms of the licence agreement is wrong.

Alright thanks a lot. I think I'll just uninstall it.

[ShadowCaptain]

7 hours ago, MDPS said:

Alright thanks a lot. I think I'll just uninstall it.

Super respect for being honest

[xentropa]

What you did is 100% legal.

 

DRM makes it illegal to reverse engineer for the purpose of circumventing payment.

 

Double clicking an exe file doesn't fall into the category of reverse engineering in the computing sense.  You could easily argue that the game/program was in the exact same state and no unauthorized editing of the program source code or any of its proprietary libraries was performed.