StingingVelvet: My main argument is that clients are not inherently DRM.
For many people the argument has already changed itself from "what is DRM in theory?" to "what actually matters in practise to those deliberately seeking out a bullsh*t-free way of backing up games"? In response to the endless
"inconvenience isn't DRM" cop-outs, removing DRM has always included increasing convenience - ie, the effort of seeking out NoCD's to remove DRM from old games is outweighed by the gain in permanently no longer needing to insert a disc / enter a serial number / mess about with a code disc / manual check to play each time, or being able to mod an unprotected .exe. For the bulk of PC gaming history, it's been increased convenience / reduced hassle that's part of what's driven a desire for DRM-Free, so
"no matter how inconvenient it's still DRM-Free" doesn't quite ring true in 2020 the way it used to 15 years ago when the underlying intention for today's Galaxy 2.0 is seemingly to almost continuously "accidentally on purpose" artificially degrade the offline installer experience by choice.
What's happening now is the bullsh*t factor of gating single-player content behind not-so-optional clients : (
1. First you have to research which
"not DRM but (tm)..." games require a client on semi-complete community lists,
2. Then you download and install a client (may not be possible on public / work PC's),
3. Then for those running a Whitelist firewall, you have to create a firewall exception for the client,
4. Then you run the client and use that to download a game,
5. Then as a potential separate secondary stage, you download the
"Not DRM, but (tm)..." 'bonus content' deliberately excluded from the offline installer,
6. Then you download and install InnoSetup / 7zip,
7. Then you research and include any dependencies the game requires (.NET, VCRedist, etc) / silent registry keys (including OS compatibility settings),
8. Finally, you create your own InnoSetup script and use that / 7zip to create your own installers that includes the bonus content that GOG should have created themselves in the first place...
...ends up with Galaxy imposing almost as many "hoops to jump through" on those not wanting to use clients than competing platforms DRM itself that people buy at GOG to get away from, and when it absurdly becomes more of a hassle to backup such "DRM-Free" versions than it is to download a competing platform's cracked DRM version, then
"well it's still DRM-Free in spite of Galaxy" becomes completely meaningless in practise when this situation only arose
because of Galaxy. (There was no "GOG DRM / 2nd class citizen problem" during 2009-2014). It's also clearly not why people make a deliberate conscious choice to buy GOG games for the offline installers in practise, and certainly not the "future" that people want GOG to start pushing via gradual passive low-level acceptance of diluting
"Not DRM, but (tm)..." into pragmatically meaninglessness nitpicking.