Arkham City Ditching its GFWL DRM?

Some major changes to the Batman: Arkham City Steam entry seems to imply that the second Rocksteady-developed Batman game will soon lose its DRM. If you own a copy of Arkham City on Steam, your purchase just might end up being a lot more “yours.”

Spotted by Neogaf, the following changes have been made:

• less than a minute ago Added showcdkeyonlaunch_macos – 0

• less than a minute ago Added showcdkeyinmenu_macos – 0

• less than a minute ago Changed changenumber – 259930 › 259939

• 9 minutes ago Removed cddbfingerprint – -693650002

• 9 minutes ago Changed LegacyKeyRegistryLocation –

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Valve\TestApp200260\SteamKey › HKEY_CURRENT_USER

What this seems to boil down to is that the CD key will no longer pop when the game loads. The CD key is necessary for anybody needing to log into Games for Windows Live. They’ve also changed where the key was originally stored. If the key can’t be found, SecuROM has no way to check how many times a game has been activated.

In short, your Steam game may finally be using Steam as its DRM. Something like this might not even get an official announcement, but watch this space for more information in the coming weeks.

Games For Windows Live has always been something of a problem for PC gamers, and for a variety of reasons. There are times when it literally just doesn’t work, and that’s before you even take into account the length of time it takes to get through actually signing into it. While it was cool to earn Xbox achievements from your PC games, it never felt like that balanced out the issue. Arkham City will be better for its removal.