Are you a fan of DRM?
Yeah, never mind that all the big publishers are now pushing games as a subscription service. Then, even if you've downloaded the game, one day they can just decide you can't play it anymore and they turn the switch. I hope legislators actually step in at some point, like they did with refunds and loot boxes.
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And with my laziness in playing games purchased years ago, that would mean I could never even have a chance to play them.
Ironically, in that eventuality, cracking groups can fix the situation, basically giving back what was purchased to the owner, which was stolen by the publisher/developer.
The same can't be said for MP-only games, though, but that's expected.
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For sure, but at least for now Steam lets you access games you bought, even if they are no longer sold. My real concern is that the next step the publishers want to take will outright negate this and we can have a game downloaded and be logged into a legitimate account but no longer be allowed to play those games because they aren't part of the service any more.
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Before GOG and Humble Bundle went out with their DRM-free policy, every company claimed that dropping DRM would mean quick financial death to anybody who tried it. And yet GOG became 5th largest player on the market in 2016. Personally I believe that only exclusives on UPlay and Origin prevented GOG from beating them. Add to that huge costs today DRM systems generate and it becomes obvious that companies like Ubisoft, EA or Take2 stick to DRM for more ideological than economical reasons.
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There is no such thing as "physical copies". DVD just providing the content of the license. Nothing more. You buying license and you have agreement between you and game publisher/developer (not with eg. Valve).
Many people thinks that the Valve sells games. Wrong, very wrong, Steam platform just delivers you license content. There is no difference between DVD and download from Steam or GOG.
Steam or GOG I still can't resell my property so for my there is no difference. Bad platform and worst platform.
And my private opinion: GOG is the worst platform. CDP never offer Witchers game series with steam keys and (this is very, very bad) for many yeras GOG was registered in Cyprus and I do not like companies that do not want to pay taxes for my country.
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As long as you have the account on GOG you can access and download all your games. You are free to download the games, put them on any form of storage after which you do not have to access GOG ever again. That is what I think they meant by DRM free. The game will work anytime, anywhere. Unlike many games protected by DRM.
Reselling the licence is tied to the EULA.
"2.1 We give you and other GOG users the personal right (known legally as a 'licence') to use GOG.com to download and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content and other GOG services. This licence is for your personal use."
You can legally play the game you bought for your account but you cannot transfer it to someone else either by gifting or reselling it. That is not DRM.
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So, let me get this granite-solid logic: GOG is the worst platform because its owners are not offering keys for a competing platform on their own product on their own platform.
Dear gods, I shudder to imagine what you think about Origin then…
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EA is a big (and smart) player. And they simply finished cooperation with Valve. So it is obvious that they do not offer own games on competitive platforms where they have to pay for it (30%).
CDP is a small company who plays dishonestly (as I said earlier).
Look at eg. Obsidian Entertainment. They promote GOG but offer Tyranny or Pillars of Eternity as steam key. They don't tell me: buy on GOG or f. you same as do CDP with Witcher. Yes I know, I can buy Witcher on Steam but the price is horrendous. Remember!!! Publisher (not Valve) sets the price. CDP he did not even offer a real price to players from their country. So f. them and f. their GOG.
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So, let me process the continuation for the granite-solid logic: fuck GOG for selling their own product at their own store cheaper than anywhere else, just because at their own place they do not have to pay the additional 30% royalty they have to give Valve after every Steam purchase.
I am also pretty sure no company ever sold its own product cheaper at their own store than everywhere else, in the entire history of commerce within the human race.
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Obsidian has no links to either platform owners, and want to maximalize their profit by being available everywhere.
By your logic Valve is a jackass for not selling Left 4 Dead, Half Life and Portal on any other platform, only on their own.
Also Witcher 3 on GOG costs 61.79€ with 11.80€refunded to wallet , while 50€ on Steam. Exact same price - even more, GOG makes you pay 11€more and then site-locks that money, so at the end the game still costs 60€. It's indeed horrendous that on Steam the game costs 16% less than on GOG. Unheard atrocity.
Your arguments are nitpicked and lack any consistency in what do you even want to achieve by comparing totally different things.
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ROTFL. Valve created Steam as a platform for selling their own games digital and Half Life was distributed as standard/normal/typical game - install from cd, enter cd key and play and never required any games platform.
You (and others) want tell me that GOG is not DRM system but there is no difference between GOG or any other game platform.
GOG, Steam or Origin I still can't resell my licenses so when I read "Keep your consumer rights." I just laughing.
So where are your arguments?
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Please give me a list ofavailable digital retailers for all the games related to Valve, instead of nitpicking their single (and first) game that came before Steam so obviously, it wasn't entirely possible to be solely Steam-bound. See? You're again doing the nitpicking, casually ignoring HL Source, HL 2, HL2 episodes, two Left 2 Dead games, 2 Portal games...
Also, The Witcher 3 "was distributed to retailers by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment in North America and Bandai Namco Entertainment in Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand."
GOG IS different from Steam, uPlay or Origin, no matter how hard you try to prove they are the same. Download a game from GOG, log out, and play it. Download a game from Steam, log out or change your account - if you don't own the game, you can't play it, despite being on your harddrive. And that is D-R-M.
And please, tell me how you intend to resell your license on GOG while casually keeping an extra copy, and how would it be viable for any developer or publisher to sell a game for 10$, then let them resell it for ... how much? 10$? Or does digital games degrade, so only 6$? Wouldn't it be just a market perfect if a developer could sell a game for 10$, so afterwards people would re-re-re-re-re-resell it for 6$, everyone enjoying the game for 4$ while the developer EVER seeing 10$from it? This is exactly the situation grey markets are causing, they fill the market with cheap copies, halting sales and endangering the developers. Also, it's not your customer right to sell licenses because it's for personal use and not to be sold. You can sell a physical CD / DVD ( I know you don't believe in physical stuff to exist), but you can not sell something you don't own, neither the physical, nor intellectual property-level.
My arguements are still what they were. You don't understand the situation, want rights that can't be hold up, never existed, you have no idea how the law works, and nitpick / twist every statement you can get your hands on. Oh, and the recurring theme of protecting Valve while ignoring their bullshit, while repeatedly saying falsehoods About GOG.
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Actually Steam was created to provide an easier way to update games like Counterstrike, so that everyone could get the updates with ease instead of having to download a half life update then install it, then download the CS update install it. Hell sometimes you had to uninstall all old updates before installing the latest ones.
Creating Steam to update games made it easier and it got rid of hassle of doing it how it was done before, also it enabled everyone to get the updates at the same time, because before Steam some people wouldn't know there was an update for some time after it had been released only noticing when a server they played on was also updated.
Valve didn't even start selling games on Steam for many years after it's release.
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Because Ubisoft has a stupid management? They paying 30% to Valve and offer better prices on Steam then uPlay shop.
They should have done the same thing as EA do: bye bye Steam. They have "strong" titles. I remember when players screamed: NO Origin. What was then? BF4 PC = 4 millions players.
Even Epic Games will not publish mobile Fortnite through Google Play.
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Or what Activision plans totally cannibalising battle.net and refurbishing it into their own store and client; or what Bethesda attempts again with Bethesda Launcher and Fallout 76 (which will be on Steam, because it will be light years away from their expected income numbers in the first year).
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Facebook pays taxes in Ireland and so does Google in Europe. And I bet you still use both of them...
GOG gave away several Witcher 1 & 2 keys (on GOG of course) AND they let you transfer some of the games from your Steam account to your GOG library... now when will Steam allow to do the same (transfer your GOG games to your Steam library)?
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They are not companies from my country so I don't care where they pay taxes. But when company from my country register business in tax haven country I will not support it.
Why I can't transfer Witcher 3 from Steam to GOG?
Why Steam allow you activate games from keys? You want Steam buy only at Steam directly.
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But you use Google daily and for example if you place and ad on Facebook your money goes to Ireland, instead of your own country's budget. That's pretty bad, isn't it?
I wouldn't use Steam if it wasn't mandatory. There are many games which are steam-only.
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For the sake of argument, how would reselling of used digital goods be practically implemented? The reason reselling physical goods works is because their value changes after use due to deterioration, while as there would be no practical difference between a 'used' or 'new' digital item. The only difference I can think of is the services that come with the digital good (online multiplayer) since you could say that the customer doesn't own the right to those services, but then what about games that aren't tied to any such service?
Also, If you could indefinitely resell 'used' digital goods without any charge, you could potentially create your own rental system for said goods with relatively little overhead, via a chain rent>return>rent>etc. system like gamefly. And things just get really messy from there.
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Not to mention how you want to resell a DRM-free digital copy, while you can just keep extra copies of it, resell the original, and have free games. Or resell at half price, and then two people will have the game for 50% of the intended price, and they can continue to do so while just keeping the extra copies?
Some people really stuck in the "but I wanna" mindset without even thinking about if it's viable/sustainable at all.
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I think you're misunderstanding their Galaxy client for a DRM. It's not the same thing.
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Let me put it this way: GOG's Galaxy is like a cloud storage for your installer files, without caring for when, where and how you use or install your games. You can simply choose to not use it at all and just use physical copies instead. The Management part from the DRM (Digital Rights Management) is removed and this only leaves you with Digital Rights. Yours, not theirs.
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ToS is not a law. I'm customer from EU contry so I don't care any ToS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_of_intellectual_property_rights
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It does not matter where you are from. You willingly entered into a contract that you agreed with at the moment of your purchase. Nobody held a gun to your head, did they? Therefore it is binding both for you and the other party. When either of your break the contract, there are consequences.
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Actually, if a contract goes against law, the law takes over. One may sign a contract that agrees of getting shot in the head, but the one who does it will still be tried for first-degree murder. This is why it is cute that Humble really wants to use the "you resell the keys you bought from us" card, but in the EU, it really does not work as it is legal here, overwriting their little contract.
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That is true and it is the case for civil law of every country. I thought that what he meant was the reselling of a used digital key "as console players" that he mentioned above. Which is a completely different matter. Reselling of used digital keys is nonsense and many reacted to this above.
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It is in reality a shortcoming of GOG, Steam, and all other platforms. The EU has ruled that we can sell used software and so far they are hiding behind the notion of "but these are just licenses", which was also overruled AFAIK. So we should be able to sell out library games, losing access to them. Funny enough, it is a lot easier to pull off on Steam and all DRM-dependant clients and a legal nightmare on GOG (since there is no guarantee you did not keep an installer on some HDD or DVD somewhere).
Heck, this second-hand market is what keeps the console gaming really going.
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The breakthrough is usually pointing out these EU laws, pointing out that you are an EU citizen, and helpfully making the conclusion that what they are trying is illegal so do they really want to pursue this further or not.
Essentially, the same way you try to get past any other outsourced Indian tech support guy. Be convincing enough that you know what you want to make him unsure about the two-page pamphlet he was given to handle all cases, so he eventually either gives in or escalates it to his boss, who then sends it back to the Western office where someone will approve of the request.
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100% agree. Businesses running the servers aren't going to last forever. They may not even be around, or running them in a couple of years. At that point, you're relying on developers who may not even be around, or have access to the source code, to fix things up. To fix up the game YOU paid for.
Anyone supporting this sort of solution is a pathetic apologist, and a walking aggregation of fecal matter.
Now bring the hate, so I can feast...
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Yea yea denuvo burnt hundreds of computers and chop off 70% off ppl fps. XD
Not every drm works like that page says. And yea we're on STEAMgifts which can get You Steam games if You win and look how steam treats clients and their rights...
I don't mind drm's.
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Surprised (positively!) by the poll results, considering Steam is a DRM (and the worst kind: an online one that collects stats).
Thanks for bringing up that topic, apparently the first challenge is to make people aware of what DRM is...
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True. The poll is rather misleading. Should have been more careful with the wording. I think that the answer does not necessarily means "I hate DRM" but rather "I prefer my games without DRM". However, the rest of your statement about Steam is quite true.
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edit : Now look what you've done! You prompted a neurotic moron to mash up a wall of text. Good luck if you try to breach this mess :P
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I don't feel DRM is a particularly bad thing on its own, but mismanaged DRM services that don't have failsafes, or have any substantial margin for human error are disasters waiting to happen. In the event of a platform or product crash, it should be legally required for the owners of said platform to quickly organise a work-around. Where a game requires an online provider and they do not give an alternate, they should be unable to file takedown notices against unofficial servers. Valve have previously stated that in the case of a total shutdown of Steam, they would find a way to make your owned games available to you for download without the client. While that is only their word (I didn't check the EULA for binding sections about this), the fact they acknowledge the concern at all signals it's probably not total bull. Though the idea of having to broker a solution that each property-holder will agree to boggles the mind.
As time has progressed, so too has the expectations placed upon commercial games. I have often read things like "The graphics are garbage" when referring to recent titles like Absolver, or even people bemoaning the Telltale Walking Dead series for not having complete and fully-fledged diverging story branches for choices. While these kinds of criticism may not be a majority, it's still an ever-present sentiment and a sign of sliding expectations. Costs, time, marketing, research, it mounts up even if you have a well-oiled and well-backed machine churning out titles. It's only natural for companies to want to protect their investment with some modicum of security. Overly aggressive anti-piracy measures are anti-consumer, I can agree to that wholeheartedly, however a DRM platform that acts as something of a basic "does this person actually own a license for this game?" is not directly anti-consumer. As long as the data stored and transmitted pertains directly to the game and the matter of providing the appropriate encapsulated service, then it's fine IMO. We live in a digital information age, so to expect host companies to hold all data in absolute quarantine from transmission is unreasonable, especially when approached from an angle where you don't know what data is a requirement of basic gaming, and what is for convenience or profit (consider how apps on androids prompt you with what functions they need permissions for, and how often people set of false alarms or totally miss red flags). When unnecessary data is shared, or without proper prompting of the owner, that's where the real issue is. We have to be guarded against paranoia as much as frivolous trust. Consider how the whole 'updating our privacy agreement' thing turned out. Legally it was a good thing, but honestly how many of us actually read the policy prompts for hidden catches? It becomes overwhelming in the standardised format these agreements take. Unless the process is made far more transparent people will continue to sign the dotted line every time. Even when something is brought to attention (such as the original Origin EULA, with unspecified rights to transmit data as a completely separate clause from transmitting game-related data), people will often scoff and press 'okay' anyway. Or in my case, get caught out when you forget a certain game belongs to the owners of said platform, and click 'okay' under the assumption that if you refuse to use the platform, the EULA will never catch up to you. D'oh.
I don't feel the issue is nearly as black and white as "DRM bad". It depends on how it is handled, but sadly the law doesn't pay much attention to the matter unless the threatened entity is the rights-holder of any said properties, or has a large wallet and a name to hover over it. No anti-piracy measure can be absolute, and badly made ones can punish legal owners far more regularly than any patient pirate, but we also have to consider it from another point of view. As people have often pointed out, a pirated copy of a game does not necessarily equate to a lost sale, but a similar factor occurs in that while all anti-piracy measures will be broken in time, a weak anti-piracy measure does not necessarily equate to an ineffective one. It does not need to prevent all piracy, it only needs to decrease the ease of availability enough to deter a substantial number. While piracy is less of a concern for large well-funded companies with fallback funding and a broad sales reach, we should also consider how indie developers without that reach or resource can be effected by piracy.
GOG has their hearts in the right place and their service offers something great, but I wouldn't think less of an indie dev for refusing to sell there during their initial waves of sales, y'know? Games that require steam may still suffer piracy, but if I were a pirate and had a choice between a version that had been swiped from GOG and one that had even a small chance of detection through improper cracking of a steam version (thereby jeaporadising my steam account), you know exactly which one I would pick. For its flaws, Steam ups the ante by holding peoples personal licenses on the line. That is why VAC is so effective; not its detection rates, but the threatening ante it lays before you. You have to go 'all in' or fold outright.
Full disclosure : I haven't yet visited their 'fckDRM' page before I wrote this (was gonna be a short reply, I swear!). Will take a peek after I sleep. :P
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That is why VAC is so effective; not its detection rates, but the threatening ante it lays before you.
Yeah and I hear China's Social Credit score is pretty amazing too
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While I don't agree 100% with your thoughts on the issue, I do understand where you're coming from. A part of the issue is the ideology in and of itself. The reason why it's usually labeled as "DRM bad" is because it's motivated by commercial interests rather than any fair usage rights or ideology. In other words, it’s labelled "bad" because it doesn’t matter whether you’re entitled to legitimately play a game or not, it’s about whether the DRM owner(s) are interested in letting you play/access it or not. The DRM owner can control who does and doesn’t get to play, even after payment has been made. This is why there is no such thing as selling your digitally distributed game (or license) on to someone else as you typically can in a physical copy scenario. If they can (legally) restrict your use, they will.
You mentioned the basic commercial interest part as being fair which it is (e.g. making sure only paying customers have access to the game) but in reality that’s really not that difficult to achieve and you can see how this is simply not how things play out when we’re talking about digitally delivery games. This is why we had online passes for a time (as publishers wanted to control/monetize who plays the game, directly targeting the used market), why we can’t transfer games to another person, why we can’t play some games unless you’re constantly connected online, why you can’t modify some games, why DRM owners are not all that interested whether they’re products will work after they’re no longer around, etc. All of these things could easily be accommodated while verifying that the game was legitimately purchased, but DRM owner’s aren’t interested in fair, they’re interested in maximizing profit.
If the pen was invented today, you would have DRM owners exercising control over the product to ensure the pen was only able to be used by the first person who bought it, to only write on approved stationary (want to write on a 2x4, sorry, it compromises the integrity of the pen and cannibalizes the sales of the DRM owner’s other pens which are designed to write on 2x4s), to not work unless able to verify the fingerprints of the hand using it register with that of the online database (despite it being an offline product…they’d add leaderboards or something else to try and make it about something more), to not be sold on to anyone else, to not be modified in any way or it will stop working, oh and sign this 50-page EULA or else you can no longer continue using the pen. These are all quirks of a desire to control a market to the maximum extent possible and it’s driven really by the fact that the market is controlled by large publicly traded entities that have an interest to maximize (and grow) profits every single year. Under those conditions, that’s the behaviour and tactics that you’re going to produce. You can try naïve attempts to push back as a market but it just doesn’t work, at least not when the coordination on the other end takes far less effort.
And just to be clear, I’m not trying to be anti-capitalist or anti-business, I’m just explaining the nature of the beast. The drive to maximize and continually grow profit is a product of the economic system, like natural selection is a product of nature. The only argument I would make is that simply because that’s the way it works doesn’t mean that’s the way it should work. Again, like natural selection, I would’ve advocate that we apply that for human beings, despite how efficient it is at achieving progress at a macro level.
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That's a great summary analysis. Thanks for taking the time, the post you were replying to was no small scribble to have tredged through, heh.
I suppose the nature of the beast is tricky to tame, here. For a property owner to protect what they made with our current methods, we are essentially allowing a vector for corporate control. Trying to strike a balance seems only possible with legal intervention on what is permissible, because trying to overhaul long-established patterns from the ground up (while they're currently in widespread use no less) is nearly impossible, especially with the resistance that would be shown.
Having considered this, it does actually put a slightly different spin on GOG in that sometime in the future if they gain critical mass, they could be substantial enough competition to DRM models that others feel compelled to offer alternatives, or adjust how license verification operates. Doubtful, but as you said, coordinated pushback on an individual consumer level is more exhausting than what commercial entities have to do just to maintain a holding pattern, especially when the prevalence of DRM at the moment has the whole deck pretty stacked. Even if a change was easy to facilitate we would still find ourselves facing the problem of how they would then counter piracy. It's certainly no easy puzzle to solve, and I suppose that's why our current state of affairs is going strong. It works, though it certainly has its obvious warts, and without a severe pushback it ends up as a kind of "if it isn't broke, don't fix it".
While I still haven't looked at the site that prompted the creation of this thread (and suspect it may be more promotional than I would like), this exchange has reminded me of the importance of the base policy GOG offers. Even if it never takes off or amounts to anything, just having the alternate is important. Thanks for giving me something to chew on!
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"...that's why our current state of affairs is going strong. It works..."
This is also at the crux of the matter. This all depends on how you define success. You can make the argument that it has delayed the availability of pirated games sometimes, but beyond that, there is no evidence to suggest it has increased or helped sales at all outside of people's anecdotal comments. So if we're measuring by $, I would argue that the current state of affairs DOESN'T work. Matter of fact, there was a study done not too long ago showing that piracy did NOT compromise sales. Granted, a single study is not enough to close the debate so there would need to be more of these done by independent/objective parties to provide weight to the argument (and yes, there are other studies arguing the opposite but those were funded through organizations with an agenda so they don't count, like Oil & Gas companies funding studies on climate change).
To me, the problem is not that difficult to resolve, even in today's environment, if you just let go of some of these misconceptions and understand that you (as a publisher) won't have 100% control all of the time. Now, does that mean some people will illegitimately obtain games? Sure, at that point, if someone is willing to go to the lengths required to do so, I wouldn't bother investing more money and energy into solving that problem via DRM. A great separate study would be to see how many people wanted to pirate a game, couldn't, and then subsequently decided to buy it. I'd be surprised if it was even single digits % of the population. They likely end up doing something else.
Should that happen? Of course not. But it's no different than someone who takes advantage of free samples at a grocery store. It's obviously meant to be 1 per person, but if someone is going to go through the trouble of visiting multiple times with multiple outfits, etc. (the equivalent of jumping through hoops to pirate a game), then so be it. Those customers are not going to suddenly start buying your product because that option is closed off. You do NOT want to start asking for ID and creating a registry just for the sake of controlling the situation better. At the end of the day, that behaviour (piracy) is usually a product of having more time than money. If you have a lot of time and little money (like say a teenager), then you'll likely resort to that sort of thing. If you have little time (like a working parent), then you'll likely not bother wasting so much time to play something you want.
Man, this keeps being long posts. Sorry. I'll stop there unless you wanted to continue.
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Speak with your wallets. Nothing changes as long as money is being made.
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I'm more of DRM-free but sometimes updates mean you'll have to download everything again.
Then there's also that money conversion thing, which sucks on GOG because I don't think they support other currencies.
At least I could sync Steam games to GOG
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GOG is just another company trying to earn money.
This is just advertising their own platform isnt it? Look at us! Were the good guys!
Oh please....
Some games have an expiration date these days sadly. And believe me, things will get worse in terms of drm, online gaming and subscriptions next 10 years.
And lets face it. More than 90% (just a personal guess) of the gamers dont care and thats not gonna change. Its always the same anti-drm people who are vocal and they cant change shit.
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for most people here transfered with gog-connect games - just +1 in game library and they will never install them.
Look at "for honor" giveaway thread here on forum. People got uplay version few months ago and never touched it. Now there's giveaway on steam - and people got it for +1, for cards, cause they prefer have it on steam - but u still need uplay account to play it.
if most of my games are on origin/uplay/steam - i will not pay twice for gog version. And big publishers like 2k, bethesda, warner brothers will never let to transfer steam version i bought to gog version.
This fck drm initiative - just a marketing move
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I agree with your example on For Honor regarding the power of trading cards. I however play every game on its own platform - have Witcher on GOG, Dead Space on Origin and Far Cry on Uplay. I wouldn't use Steam at all if there wasn't a ton of 'steam-only' games I'd love to play with.
So yes, it is a marketing move - but if they are the good guys in the business, why shouldn't they be proud of it?
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Looks like just another marketing ploy to me.
What I think is that extra DRM on top of Steam (or whichever platform) is unneeded. There is a real need to protect the creative indie devs who just can't afford to have their games leaked on the internet. DRM is generally bad but not all the time. I'm okay with it as long as it only checks that my license is legit. Any other info gathering or performance impact I oppose.
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There is a real need to protect the creative indie devs who just can't afford to have their games leaked on the internet
This is quite a moot point after basically everything is cracked and torrented ; anything that is on GOG / HB with a DRM-free copy would fail as it only requires a single upload to be torrented and used without any additional effort; as a single example Darkwood devs uploaded their full game on piratebay without any "pirate-jokes" in it, and they are very well on Steam as well. DRM is not a (useful) protection, and it's far from needed.
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I don't like DRM, but the reason I use Steam despite it is because:
I like GOGs whole anti-DRM stance, as well as how they try and make sure the games on their store actually work, but otherwise I see very little reason to support them.
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Games that do have DRM-free / GOG versions tend to be updated much less frequently then their Steam versions.
I like a finished game though. I can understand why multiplayer games might need more updates (although old-school multiplayer games didn't really have many updates, apart from their anti-cheat system), but as far as single player games go I like when they are released stable enough and then get as few patches as possible.
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Oh absolutely. But unfortunately the days of games being released complete is long over, nearly every game releases with a 'ship now, patch later' mentality. Hell some games release so early the developers have hardly even figured out the gameplay mechanics themselves yet and are still in the design phase. It sucks, but unless there's a serious shift in how consumers treat such products (Some people even defend this kind of thing) it's not going to stop anytime soon.
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Yeah pretty much this. I also log into Steam virtually every day and enjoy many of the benefits of the community (forums, guides, friends, etc.). That's mostly missing from GOG so I really never play its games. I tried GOG Galaxy once and then ignored it for awhile then it stopped updating correctly. I should delete/reinstall, but why bother?
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DRM-Free does sound nice but Steam is simply more convenient. We just had our own currerency which made most of the games on my wishlist much cheaper, and there are many games that you can only get through Steam (ex Final Fantasy games, Borderlands). Not to mention there are many third party websites with frequent sales and bundles of Steam keys. Not to mention Steam market and trading. I have thought about using GOG more but I simply can't afford it compared to Steam. Humble Bundle have DRM-Free games too which are nice but they don't make bundles much anymore which is a shame.
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Copied from my gog post:
Back in the days when I started playing you were required to have the CD in your drive if you wanted to play a game. As a result, listening to a CD while you play wasn't possible without some extra work, but you also had to switch disks back and forth. I can understand why they would want to check whether or not I had a genuine copy at the launch of the game, but some of them forced you to have the CD-drive working the entire time. HD space was more precious 2 decades ago, but even with a full installation, you always had that annoying background noise and unnecessary hardware deterioration.
So in order to fully enjoy a game I was "forced" to instal some no-cd patches from various shady sites, not only doing something illegal, but also risking to infect my computer in the process.
Fast forward 20 years and the state of DRM is actually worse: games won't launch without internet connection, shut down when you lose your wifi-signal, stop working after you switch hardware, run some spyware in the background and more. As part of the online DRM, you also have to instal poorly tested patches that sometimes introduce new problems or in the worst case make the game unplayable for you.
Thank god that there are sites like gog that show the industry that releasing games without DRM isn't a risk, but an opportunity for them, since gamers are more likely to purchase a game when it comes without these digital shackle. Given that gog is part of CD Project Red (aka the Witcher guys), they put enough trust in the concept to not only sell other companies' games that way, but their own AAA titles and are very successful with it.
FCKDRM
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gog is part of CD Project Red (aka the Witcher guys), they put enough trust in the concept to not only sell other companies that way, but their own AAA titles
Looking forward to buying Cyberpunk 2077 DRM free at launch :)
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I love GOG and to be honest I feel bad whenever I buy something on Steam and could have bought it on GOG instead :/
All the games on GOG work perfectly (as opposed to Steam) + they are the awesome guys who made the Witcher series.
Do I need to say more?
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Well, I live in Hungary and the prices displayed here are usually higher than what my 'poor' American (USA) friends see over there... so no thanks, I usually don't want any of their 'affordable' prices. I usually use Humble Bundle and Fanatical for buying purposes.
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This site is a bit misleading.
FCK DRM and all, but no need to lie about it. It's bad enough on its own.
"Access offline DRM=X"
That's just untrue. You could play EA physical games offline, even though you had the CD-Key and disk DRM on them. You can go into offline mode for Steam, Spore ran offline and so on.
But yeah, again, I don't disagree with the notion. It's just that DRM isn't the big bad. It's the companies that don't handle DRM well.
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Everybody's (well almost) favorite digital games store GOG.com has come up with an initiative that aims to make more people aware of what Digital Rights Management (DRM) is and why it is bad for consumers.
https://fckdrm.com
DRM is basically a technology that controls how, and when, the user can use the bought digital content, whether it be games, videos, music, books or other piece of software.
Nowadays DRM sends user information to an online server, where it runs checks to see if the user touched any files, or it can even refuse access o the software unless you're logged in online somewhere.
The FCK DRM Initiative states that DRM is basically a kill-switch built into your games (which is usually the case). Many of us might think that the DRM is not that bad. It usually works right? But what about when it does not. There are plenty of examples out there in the world wide web that illustrate how terrible idea the DRM is.
So what are your thoughts about DRM? About GOG.com? About this Initiative?
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