Well, I thought that I’d talk about gaming on a low-spec PC and avoiding games that have online DRM too. This was something I ended up thinking about after watching some PC building channels on Youtube and realising that the 3GB graphics card in the video which was supposedly “showing its age” these days would be a ridiculous upgrade for my PC.
For context, I use a second-hand small-form factor PC that I got in late 2018. It has Windows 10, a Core i5-3750 processor, Intel HD 2500 integrated graphics, 8GB DDR3 RAM and a 1TB HDD. And this itself was a massive upgrade from the old Windows XP machines that I used between 2006-2018. These had mid-2000s integrated graphics, a single-core Pentium processor (2-3GHZ) and maybe 2GB RAM at most.
I’ve also made a point of avoiding any game which has online DRM (eg: “Sign in to let us give you permission to play this single-player game you’ve bought…”) since about 2015 or so. I also pretty much exclusively play single-player games as well.
Yet, I still play computer games. And, no, I don’t use cloud gaming (since I consider it to be online DRM. Or “You don’t own what you’ve bought”). So, I thought that I talk about PC gaming on low-spec computers without using online DRM or online multiplayer. Because you can actually still play games in a situation like this. Yes, certainly not every game – but you’d be surprised.
In short, older games, open-source games, some indie games and games with good options menus are your friends here. Sometimes, you might have to get creative too – for example, in order to play both “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Special Edition” (2016) and “Tormented Souls” (2021) – at a vaguely playable speed, I actually had to find an external window resizing program (called “Sizer”) in order to lower the game’s resolution below the minimum that the game allows. Likewise, in order to get “Dreamfall: Chapters” (2014-17) to run at a playable speed, I actually had to manually edit the game’s configuration file in order to get it to run at a lower resolution than the game allowed.
Still, you shouldn’t expect to be able to play the latest “AAA” games. Computer game “FOMO” – fear of missing out – is something that every low-budget player has to deal with in their own way. It’s something that you get used to after a while, seeing modern games almost as if they are something from another world. Remembering that even the “trendiest” players don’t have the time and/or money to play literally ALL of the popular games can also help here too. Being glad that you’re avoiding the many pitfalls of modern games – such as mandatory “updates”, greedy micro-transactions etc…
Most of all, it makes you think about games differently. You focus less on popularity and more on quality and fun.
There are absolutely tons of older and/or lesser-known games that will run on low-spec PCs and are ridiculously fun to play. Whether this is older “AAA” games like “Bioshock” (2007), “Fallout: New Vegas” (2010) or “Saints Row: The Third” (2011), or whether it is lower-budget retro-style indie games like “Amid Evil” (2019) or “Alisa: The Developer’s Cut” (2022). There are an absolute ton of games that will run on low-spec computers. Just because you can’t play the latest “AAA” games doesn’t mean that you can’t play games. And, of course, if you’re a fan of some older games – like “Doom II” (1994) – then there’s also a huge modding scene online, which extends the life of these games pretty much indefinitely.
And, again, not being connected to the hype or modern culture surrounding games means that you’ll have different priorities with them too. Some of the best games I’ve ever played are ones that have objectively “terrible” graphics by modern standards, but it doesn’t matter because the actual gameplay is fun, because there’s actual creativity behind the game, because of good art design etc… Games are games. Literally the only major practical difference between modern “AAA” games and old games/ modern low-budget indie ones is the graphics.
And, on a side-note: This is one of the things to remember if you’re buying a PC. Unless you are planning to play the latest “AAA” games on it or edit videos or something like that, then you’d be surprised at what you can get away with for basic tasks. Once, on the old mid-2000s computers I was using as late as 2018, I briefly tried using “Puppy Linux”, a tiny free open-source operating system. Aside from gaming, I could do pretty much all of the basic stuff with it – web browsing, writing documents etc… if I remember rightly, it even had a “MS Paint” style program for very basic image editing/digital art. If you stick to older or open-source software, then – except for literally a tiny number of things – you don’t need a “powerful” PC.
As for avoiding online DRM, this will limit the games that you can play. Thankfully, there are shops online – such as GOG and Itch.io – which make a point of not including online DRM in the games that they sell. Likewise, proper honest old-fashioned freeware games are also a thing too. Yes, you’ll mostly be limited to older games and/or indie games, but there are still tons of really fun DRM-free games and there are some advantages to sticking to these games.
You can make a backup of them, ensuring that you always have your games. There’s no middle-man who, like Steam did with Windows XP computers in 2019, can suddenly decide that your OS is “too old” and prevent you from playing the games that ran perfectly fine before this decision. There are no forced “updates” (putting you in control, especially if updates remove stuff from the game or add unwanted stuff). And with no requirement for online connectivity, games can’t force greedy things like micro-transactions on you either. You actually get a proper, honest game – just like in the good old days.
So, yes, even if you’re running a low-spec PC and despise online DRM, then you can still play computer games. The selection might be more limited, but this just forces you to focus more on FUN than on popularity. And, honestly, gaming always finds a way. Again, I was using ancient mid-2000s computers as late as 2018 and I still posted game reviews on here back then.
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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂
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