I thought this game was DRM free

[Memerdink]

I usually play this game without any internet but was greeted with a account credentials screen I thought I only needed to login once and it was mine turns out not the case at all I feel lied too, I was told by many other players before buying this game that it was in fact DRM free and I could do with whatever I wanted. Turns out not the case.

[CastIronFabric]

You can still play the game indefinity without being connected to the internet. The launcher stores an encrypted authorization token in a file on your computer but your player interaction still 'login in' to validate that token. However, next time you are connected to the internet and login in, their servers will validate that token with your file. I think that effectively still qualifies as 'DRM' but it does mean you can play offline.

Now, here is what I do not know, what if 'their' servers are down? Are they running the server in their office? paying a cloud service? I have no idea but its fair to say our access to the game at any time is trusting Anego instead of for example Steam. 

 

Edited Thursday at 12:00 PM by CastIronFabric

[Memerdink]

I get piracy can be a problem but I just wanna own the games I buy I've slowly been drifting down the path of anything but video games cause I'm just tired of not owning.

[LadyWYT]

9 hours ago, Memerdink said:

I usually play this game without any internet but was greeted with a account credentials screen

You should be able to play without internet access, but I think you'll need to have logged in at least once on that device while connected to the internet, so the game can store the login information in the files. After that, you should be able to play anytime, with or without internet, as long as you use that login information.

I will also note that if you switch game installations, you will also be prompted for your credentials every time you switch between them, but you should still be able to enter that information offline and continue playing.

[Zaph42nd]

For the most part it is, the only time you need to log-in as others have stated in on initial installation or updates, though once logged in once, you don't need to re log-in. Mainly I suspect log-in is there for multiplayer and game-authentication purposes, otherwise it's not really too intrusive

[Memerdink]

2 hours ago, Zaph42nd said:

For the most part it is, the only time you need to log-in as others have stated in on initial installation or updates, though once logged in once, you don't need to re log-in. Mainly I suspect log-in is there for multiplayer and game-authentication purposes, otherwise it's not really too intrusive

Yeah but I've had to log in multiple times I mean everyone says what you do just once but this like the 5th time I was asked and told I need to sign in to play it just sucks

[Dilan Rona]

Do you have multiple installs for vintage story? For example on 2 or more computers, or 2 different versions of vintage story on the same computer? If so, thats why it keeps asking you to sign in again.

[Memerdink]

5 minutes ago, Dilan Rona said:

Do you have multiple installs for vintage story? For example on 2 or more computers, or 2 different versions of vintage story on the same computer? If so, thats why it keeps asking you to sign in again.

No I don't I do close and open the game a lot throughout the day like multiple 1 hours sessions so maybe that? Maybe the game flags it as unusual behavior.

[Dilan Rona]

That actually happened to me, took a support ticket to clear that "Unusual activity". Also, you close the game, and dont select logout. right?

 

[LadyWYT]

7 hours ago, Memerdink said:

No I don't I do close and open the game a lot throughout the day like multiple 1 hours sessions so maybe that? Maybe the game flags it as unusual behavior.

 

5 hours ago, Dilan Rona said:

That actually happened to me, took a support ticket to clear that "Unusual activity". Also, you close the game, and dont select logout. right?

 

Weird, because I've had days where I've opened and closed the game multiple times. I never had to relog unless I was switching installations, and never had problems otherwise. I'm not saying it could never happen, of course, just that it would be a very strange problem if that were the case. Especially since mod testing/troubleshooting often requires opening and closing the game multiple times, and having separate installations for unstable/stable releases isn't that uncommon(at least, I don't think it is).

[Dilan Rona]

Only happened to me once, and so far, not since. Still its an edge case scenario.

[CastIronFabric]

20 hours ago, Memerdink said:

Yeah but I've had to log in multiple times I mean everyone says what you do just once but this like the 5th time I was asked and told I need to sign in to play it just sucks

yeah, so if you have to log in 5 times in a normal situation that would assume that you are trying to work around DRM somehow. I am not saying that you are I am just saying if that was a support ticket that would be the natural first assumption.

Regardless, something is not working correctly. Maybe its something related to being offline before a full circle of authentication happens? I am just guessing as if I was a new hire on a support desk

 

Edited Friday at 01:14 PM by CastIronFabric

[Dilan Rona]

Once you are logged in, you can still play when offline (as long as you dont click logout, or switch to another install of vintage story, say 1.22 to 1.20 for example). Best course of action is a support ticket.

[Ravensblade]

Vintage Story unfortunately has DRM, and there is many stuff that your system can do that will cause its key to go invalid and then you need to log in online. You can't play offline infinitely even if you don't update game or mods in it. Game requires periodic re-log.

 

On 7/23/2026 at 1:46 PM, Memerdink said:

I get piracy can be a problem but I just wanna own the games I buy I've slowly been drifting down the path of anything but video games cause I'm just tired of not owning.

This sort of DRM never actually prevents piracy. Which can be easily proven, as you can easily get the pirate version of VT 1.22. It makes sense for big AAA games as it makes the pirate version appear a few days/week later, and it has an impact on first-day sales. But for most games, VT included, DRM is just dev cope that they "did" something, even if all they actually did, is punishing people who got the game legally.

[Rainbow Fresh]

6 hours ago, Ravensblade said:

But for most games, VT included, DRM is just dev cope that they "did" something, even if all they actually did, is punishing people who got the game legally.

Just because the digital world is an open sandbox where noone can ever prevent you from doing anything and most DRMs do little to nothing to actually "protect" doesn't mean that the notion of protecting your intellectual property, especially if it's a paid product, is bad. If you think it is, feel free to post anything and everything you ever did in your life to a public filesharing hoster under a no rights reserved copyleft license so anyone else can take it and do whatever they want with it. Cause under the same logic, any form of EULA or Copyright License is useless too as there is only a few situations where people actually get in trouble for breaking them.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

On 7/22/2026 at 11:46 PM, Memerdink said:

I usually play this game without any internet but was greeted with a account credentials screen I thought I only needed to login once and it was mine turns out not the case at all I feel lied too, I was told by many other players before buying this game that it was in fact DRM free and I could do with whatever I wanted. Turns out not the case.

Totally understand the frustration — let me explain what's actually happening, because "DRM" isn't quite the right word for it, but I get why it feels that way.

Vintage Story does an account check, but it's not a persistent online DRM lock. Here's the real mechanism: the first time you log in, the game requests a signed session key from the account server and caches it locally. Every launch after that, it verifies that cached key offline first (it's a cryptographic signature check, no network needed) — and only if that fails does it try to reach the auth server. If the auth server can't be reached at all, the game is actually designed to fall back to offline mode and let you keep playing rather than hard-blocking you.

So under normal circumstances, you should only see the login screen once, and after that it should just work without internet — that matches what you were told before buying. If you're being sent back to the credentials screen repeatedly while offline, it means the cached session got invalidated somehow, which typically happens if:

• Your config/settings folder was cleared, reset, or you reinstalled without keeping it
• The cached key/signature got corrupted or only partially written
• You explicitly logged out at some point
• You moved to a new machine/profile without the cached session

None of those are "the game phoning home to check you're allowed to play" every launch — it's closer to "the offline pass expired locally and needs to be reissued once."

If you haven't touched your config folder and this is happening on a stable install, that'd actually be a bug worth reporting rather than expected behavior — could you let me know: does it happen on every launch, or only sometimes? And did anything change recently (update, reinstall, moved folders)? That'll help pin down whether it's the "no cached session" case or something not falling through to the offline branch correctly.

[mayushii]

51 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

Totally understand the frustration — let me explain what's actually happening, because "DRM" isn't quite the right word for it, but I get why it feels that way.

Vintage Story does an account check, but it's not a persistent online DRM lock. Here's the real mechanism: the first time you log in, the game requests a signed session key from the account server and caches it locally. Every launch after that, it verifies that cached key offline first (it's a cryptographic signature check, no network needed) — and only if that fails does it try to reach the auth server. If the auth server can't be reached at all, the game is actually designed to fall back to offline mode and let you keep playing rather than hard-blocking you.

So under normal circumstances, you should only see the login screen once, and after that it should just work without internet — that matches what you were told before buying. If you're being sent back to the credentials screen repeatedly while offline, it means the cached session got invalidated somehow, which typically happens if:

• Your config/settings folder was cleared, reset, or you reinstalled without keeping it
• The cached key/signature got corrupted or only partially written
• You explicitly logged out at some point
• You moved to a new machine/profile without the cached session

None of those are "the game phoning home to check you're allowed to play" every launch — it's closer to "the offline pass expired locally and needs to be reissued once."

If you haven't touched your config folder and this is happening on a stable install, that'd actually be a bug worth reporting rather than expected behavior — could you let me know: does it happen on every launch, or only sometimes? And did anything change recently (update, reinstall, moved folders)? That'll help pin down whether it's the "no cached session" case or something not falling through to the offline branch correctly.

AI SLOP jesus christ can you type for yourself?

[Teh Pizza Lady]

57 minutes ago, mayushii said:

AI SLOP jesus christ can you type for yourself?

Actually I can. I used an AI tool to pour through the game's source code to find the relevant code related to the login process. It generated a summary of what happens in the background and after reading it and double checking everything myself, I copied and pasted the correct and factual output. A lot of work actually went into this and I'm really disappointed you think that just because it reads funny that it's wrong. 

Maybe I should be asking YOU, can you think for yourself?

[Dilan Rona]

What you said actually makes sense.

2 hours ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

Totally understand the frustration — let me explain what's actually happening, because "DRM" isn't quite the right word for it, but I get why it feels that way.

Vintage Story does an account check, but it's not a persistent online DRM lock. Here's the real mechanism: the first time you log in, the game requests a signed session key from the account server and caches it locally. Every launch after that, it verifies that cached key offline first (it's a cryptographic signature check, no network needed) — and only if that fails does it try to reach the auth server. If the auth server can't be reached at all, the game is actually designed to fall back to offline mode and let you keep playing rather than hard-blocking you.

So under normal circumstances, you should only see the login screen once, and after that it should just work without internet — that matches what you were told before buying. If you're being sent back to the credentials screen repeatedly while offline, it means the cached session got invalidated somehow, which typically happens if:

• Your config/settings folder was cleared, reset, or you reinstalled without keeping it
• The cached key/signature got corrupted or only partially written
• You explicitly logged out at some point
• You moved to a new machine/profile without the cached session

None of those are "the game phoning home to check you're allowed to play" every launch — it's closer to "the offline pass expired locally and needs to be reissued once."

If you haven't touched your config folder and this is happening on a stable install, that'd actually be a bug worth reporting rather than expected behavior — could you let me know: does it happen on every launch, or only sometimes? And did anything change recently (update, reinstall, moved folders)? That'll help pin down whether it's the "no cached session" case or something not falling through to the offline branch correctly.

 

[Ravensblade]

10 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Just because the digital world is an open sandbox where noone can ever prevent you from doing anything and most DRMs do little to nothing to actually "protect" doesn't mean that the notion of protecting your intellectual property, especially if it's a paid product, is bad.

That notion is neither bad or good. It's acting on them that can be judged. But doing anything just to do "something" is not good.

Please then explain what benefits this gives it to the product? I see negatives for legal players, you even have 2 accounts just to play 1 game. You can't have multiple instances for easy mod change. It's another password to remember.

But what are positives? We established it actually don't protect it from piracy.

[Rainbow Fresh]

3 hours ago, Ravensblade said:

That notion is neither bad or good. It's acting on them that can be judged. But doing anything just to do "something" is not good.

Please then explain what benefits this gives it to the product? I see negatives for legal players, you even have 2 accounts just to play 1 game. You can't have multiple instances for easy mod change. It's another password to remember.

But what are positives? We established it actually don't protect it from piracy.

The negatives for legal players are, depending on the chosen type of DRM, neglectable. If logging in to a game once as the only form of DRM is too much to handle the digital world might be a step too far. If someone willingly chooses Denuvo as DRM - the provenly worst DRM in history that fucks the game into unplayability with its aggressiveness while still offering 0 actual protection that isn't broken day 1 by willing individuals - then that's stupid. If someone does an EA and forces a Singleplayer only game like Sim City into an always online state, then fuck them. Vintage Story does not and with the intended normal behavior being one initial login, then not again for atleast a long while on the same game on the same device I don't see a problem with that. You needing 2 accounts is not a DRM issue it's just a weird design choice in Anego's user management across forums, ModDB and game and very much could and should be merged, yes. Multiple "instances" can easily be achieved by mod managers; something you need for multi-instancing regardless as the game doesn't have a launcher like Minecraft. Just shove selected modlists around instead of copying the entire game and changing its paths so it loads from two different folders. Which by all means could still work if you just make multiple shortcuts with different boot parameters for different data folder locations as it still is the same game in the same location and the login certificate should still be valid then. It being another password to remember should really not be an issue in the day of key vaults and somesuch and while potentially handy, integrating some form of external 2FA token would be overkill for a small game like this.

As for the positives; any form of DRM is a hurdle, however small. If anything is easily available for free, people will just take it for free. If there is atleast some hurdle to obtain it, people will consider the tradeoffs of just getting it the intended way or sailing the seven seas of piracy. And money is what continues this game's development so one day it can be even greater than now. Maybe even finished, one can dream. DRM's forcing piracy, as fucked up as that might be, is also a good indicator for a game's overall reception. Piracy has always and will always exist, there is no stopping it. It's just a matter of how much piracy gets "encouraged" by shitty design or business choices. If piracy is necessary to bypass a DRM people will only resort to it if there is enough reason. If there is no DRM, you can never know if it's because people are unwilling to pay for the product or because people are too greedy to spend any money in the first place for their products.

[Ravensblade]

Your first paragraph brings nothing to discussion as it's basically appeal to triviality. What is important it brings inconvenience to legal gamers that is not zero, and it creates maybe small, but still another barrier to play. As such any DRM is net negative for legal players and offer no value for them, regardless if you yourself consider this particular DRM trivial or not.

5 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

As for the positives; any form of DRM is a hurdle, however small. If anything is easily available for free, people will just take it for free. If there is at least some hurdle to obtain it, people will consider the tradeoffs of just getting it the intended way or sailing the seven seas of piracy. 

First, it's not actually any hurdle. You access the same website and download it the same, whatever it had DRM or not. Java Minecraft had/has also similar system. It was pirated in millions. It was sold in millions. And i never met a single person who bought it because of its DRM was too much hurdle. Opposite is true. I known several people who owned it, but still played on pirated version for offline single player. I would actually claim opposite - buying Minecraft then or VS now is bigger hurdle then pirating them. You need to register on dev website, then confirm on mail, then enter payment data, billing address, then confirm payment, then download, then login in game. And that's assuming you have Paypal or Credit Card already. Pirate version is just download and play, no questions asked. If we go by hurdles neither games should sold at all. 

Second, it's just your guessing that everybody will not pay for it without DRM. You base that guess on what? When i found VS i didn't search if a free pirated copy was available or not. I just looked at the price and decided to buy it. So it didn't impact my decision at all. Based on how easy it was to find pirate versions and how many people still buy VS I would say this also proved invalid for other people too.

The majority of gamers are either these that will try to buy games first or are those that won't ever buy games. DRM doesn't do anything positive for both. The first will still buy it and the second will not pay either way. Only in the case of a big AAA release delay of week or two is significant enough that there will be same group that will decide to buy it because of FOMO. And I still think that, even then, it's a marginal group. You can look at Witcher 3 - the game that was available in DRM free install from release. You could just copy install files to pirate it. It's sold millions. If you have money for games, you won't search for pirated version. If you have no money for games, you won't pay for them either way. 

 

[Teh Pizza Lady]

Just a reminder that one of the most popular games in the world currently doesn't haven't DRM, sold a million copies in just 3 days and won GOTY.