Yeah, I thought so. So, basically, they prefer to use someone else's DRM(Steam) instead of implementing their own but in no way they want their games to be DRM-free.

-1 for wanting the DRM
-100 for lying to everyone.

And I used to have Bethesda relatively high in respect. I can understand a company wanting DRM on their products but I cannot understand, or tolerate, lies and hypocrisy of this kind. It is like they think their customers are complete idiots.

Actually, having your game on Steam doesn't necessarily have to mean that it's DRMed - it just means it's distributed via Steam and there are many games on Steam which can be downloaded, freely copied and played without the client like Half-Life 2 or Transistor. On release, that was the case with Skyrim - it was DRM-free. And then Bethesda went out and retroactively patched Steam's DRM into the game, the DRM haters.

To be honest, I still have a lot of respect for Bethesda's developers - I think that their products show they care for their games very deeply, and they are one of the few companies which consistently support modding. But then, bloody management gets in the way, and those guys are terrible over at Bethesda.

Either that, or they use Valve's definition of DRM, in that what Steam does (CEG and whatnot) is not DRM (because it's based on user account, not on hardware).

Even if your game is DRM-Free(like Age of Wonders III) as soon as you release DLCs on Steam, you cannot play them without steam, since all steam DLCs are required to depend on Steam's DRM system to verify. So, my steam set of AoW III + DLCs will render the DLCs unplayable after one month of offline use but I will still be able to play the base game. Really?! This truly makes things even worse for Bethesda's hypocrisy! I have respect for developers, in general. However, a company does not consist of the developer's department, only. Thus, a company gains or loses respect according to actions as a company. And Bethesda is failing more and more as it goes.
LOL, yeah, right. So, UPlay and Origin are not DRM's, either, then. What a joke. It looks like they are trying to convince people using the most ridiculous arguments that exist. It is obvious to all, I hope, that a DRM is *anything* that prevents people from freely playing their games anytime and anyway they want without restrictions whatsoever. Hardware or internet based DRMs are the same thing. They restrict the person that bought the game in its free usage.

Yep.

And here's the discussion on Bethesda's own board:
http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1517108-we%E2%80%99re-anti-drm-as-far-as-we-can-be-clarification-pls/

Reading that discussion, it is funny that people using steam have no idea that steam forces you to online mode at the later after a month of your last connection.
Also, even if a game is DRM-Free on steam and you can play them without the client(like Jagged Alliance 2, for example), you have to find it on the disc and run directly from the executable to play it. If you try through steam-offline mode, it won't let you.
And, as I already said, if the game is DRM-free and has DLCs...say bye bye to the DLCs. This is how companies force their legitimate customers to piracy(I know people that have bought HoMM VI and then downloaded the crack because it was a pain-and in some cases impossible- to play the game with the DRM).

I signed up with GoG quite late, because I thought it only had old games. As soon as I realized that there are new titles here and after realizing that steam games are lost if you lose your internet connection, I switched at once.
Unfortunately, though, it seems that a lot of companies prefer steam for their games. However, I can, certainly, do without those games. I never liked the insistence of companies to control my computer and my games. Thankfully, now there is a way out of it.

First of all, find me games similar in scale, complexity and budget to Elder Scrolls games which came out without tons of bugs. I'm sure there are some, but I honestly don't know of any. Sadly, software this big is buggy and will be buggy, and that doesn't only apply to videogames - it plagues software development everywhere, and is an issue which needs to be dealt with, but Bethesda is not really at fault here.

Now tell me how many of these games similar in scale and complexity to Elder Scrolls games allow customers similar level of customization. Keep in mind that releasing official development tools actually costs game studios time and money to polish them and make them reasonably user friendly.

Lastly, allow me to point out that Bethesda spent 6 months supporting and patching Skyrim and nearly a year doing the same for Fallout 3, that can be hardly considered "getting modders to do your work for you for free"

I'm not saying Bethesda didn't do a lot of crappy decisions lately, but making shit up which you then proceed to fling in their general direction is not helping your case.

Honestly I was just angry and flaming shit whatever came up first. I would choose Red Dead Redemption for an open world any day. It's actually well made.

Sorry, but I looked under a waterfall in Oblivion. In an rpg. There wasn't anything there. Under a waterfall. No chest of awesome treasure, no secret underground lair.

Just procedurally generated souless junk. Auto leveling, sliding animations and butt ugly characters. Just plain bad game design, some of the worst I've experienced. That would be the shoddy part.

Oh I never said it actually works properly :-P Just that it's supposed to. Supposedly.

Well naturally it does :-P Seriously tho, I'm sorry for sounding arrogant (I always do, it's part of my winning personality!), but I really don't like when stuff gets unfairly pinned on a company, especially one which has done something wrong recently. I don't like it because doing so diminishes the things they actually did do wrong - like 45% cut when they tried selling mods or how they fucked over Obsidian. These actual, proper issues then get burried beneath things people either make up or blow way out of propertion and Bethesda can happily dismiss them.

In my book, needing to "decipher" one's meaning to get the actual fact is that you cannot trust them as he/she/it speaks with a forked tongue. Like the politicians. 99 times out of 100, it turns out that what they said was different from what they had *appeared* to have said. Which, in my opinion, is the same as lying, as these things are done intentionally.

Just like Bethesda.

In addition, when you say that "normally, you should be able to play in offline mode indefinitely" but this is not the case then you are either lying or you are incompetent, considering the number of years you are supposed to be fixing the thing. And none can prove it is the former or the latter.

So, bottom line, trust is earned, not given freely and the only way for trust to be earned is if it is *proven* that your words are consistent with your actions.

Interplay lost the rights to sell the Fallout games to Bethesda, which is somewhat different than the agreement between GOG and Interplay expiring, especially since Interplay still has it's games on GOG.

Now, of course GOG knew this, everybody knew it, and were prepared to remove the Fallout games. But, knowing Bethesda and their lawsuits (Scrolls, Fallout Fortress...) do you really think their lawyers went "I'm sure GOG knows about this, I'm sure they will pull the games without us asking". There is no way in hell that there wasn't some form of legal communication between Bethesda and GOG concerning the removal.

We'll never know the details but "Bethesda pulled Fallout from GOG" is not that far off the mark, even if it doesn't really tell the whole story.

Interplay sold Fallout property to Bethesda and then handled it incorrectly, IIRC. Interplay is the side you should blame for selling the brand, not Bethesda for buying it.

I do think that there was no legal communication between Bethesda and GOG - after all, GOG had an agreement with Interplay, which makes Interplay responsible for pulling the games, not Bethesda.

It's not really about it not telling the whole story, it's about this stupid coloring of an issue in such a way that it works for people trying to get at Bethesda - like they didn't do enough stupid shit in the past and need more thrown onto the pile to obfuscate the real problems. Do you want to display Bethesda as assholes? You don't have to twist the story or make shit up, just show up and put facts on display.

I do blame them (Interplay). Well what was left of them.

Bethesda likes to cover their asses from a legal standpoint. And that's just fact based on their actions. There is no way I can believe they did not sent a legal letter "reminding" GOG of who owns the rights to sell the Fallout games after 31 Dec 2013. I'm not saying they did something wrong. I'm not happy about it, but that doesn't make it wrong.

The thing about doing stupid shit is that if you do enough of it then when people need to make an assumption (none of us has access to the legal talks/agreements so it's all assumptions) they are going to assume the worst. And frankly if you do enough stupid shit then you deserve it.