Hi,
You can play Project Zomboid with a friend without drm. One copy of the gog game works well on 2 pc.

Same thing with Stellaris. The gog version works well between 2 pc. You just have to create a paradox account but fake email etc is ok

Soo the game requires you to authenticate with a third party service? Not DRM-free at all.

Not really. Fake account to play with one copy... For me it s ok. You don t need gallaxy or any soft. But ok i understand your pov.

Grim Dawn has LAN play, no accounts required.

Can you explain? What is fake account?

Does the game authenticate with Paradox or not? Can you still play if they pull the plug / block your IP / ban all your accounts and close sign-ups?

Sorry my english is bad i cant exactly explain my ideas. I would like to say that the account is not linked to your copy of the game and your account is not checked by paradox so you can put a fake email that doesent exist and play. But i understand that its a form of drm for many users.

mrkngnao made a good point against including the CD-keyed games into the 'DRM-offenders' list. Because they would hide the worse culprits behind the huge volume of CD-keyed games.

However, since this is a positive list of games that do everything right, I won't include games that require CD-keys. Unless the keys are only required for an optional form of multiplayer.

Say: playing via internet requires a CD-key, but playing via LAN doesn't. In that case the LAN-mode would be DRM-free multiplayer and therefore the game should be listed as DRM-free (LAN).

Please let me know if I made any errors and included games that require a DRM-key for all multiplayer modes.

I'm not going to debate it here further but FWIW, if a game has internet play (with DRM) and LAN play, then there is almost definitely some artificial restriction. IP based games (i.e. anything made in the past 25 years or so) normally do not care or even know whether a given host is on LAN or on the Internet (or both), so if a game can do one, it should be able to do both. It's just that they artificially (try to) prevent you from using the fully Internet-capable "LAN" code on the open Internet.. of course, you can work around it just as you can work around DRM with cracks :-/ (It doesn't help that there is no good definition of LAN vs Internet, so it's anyone's guess whether a "LAN" game actually works on your LAN.. does it require a specific IP range? Same subnet? Ethernet broadcast packets? Some other type of broadcast? Etcetra. LAN does not really exist as a concept at the IP level, it's more about the physical structure of the network, which is largely invisible to applications unless they go out of their way to snoop around or do something very non-standard)

The truth about IP networking is that your application asks your OS to connect to a specific IP (or just send a packet to a specific IP, when using UDP) and the rest is up to your OS. That IP may or may not be on "LAN" but it's not the application's concern. How the packets end up at their destination is something the application doesn't really control.

Unreal has like UT99 a working internet server browser and a LAN mode.

Painkiller has a LAN server browser as well.

Crysis Wars (which is included in Crysis Warhead) is a standalone multiplayer expansion.
There is a LAN server browser, dedicated mode and a connect to server via IP option.

I got as far as hosting my own game, but I don't know if someone would really be able to join.

Installed the game on Desktop and laptop and LAN works fine.
Connecting by "internet" asked the local ip adress, with both computers connected to the same network, I was able to find and start the game just fine.

I can confirm that Age of Wonders 3's so-called "LAN" is gated behind their Internet authentication server and is NOT DRM-free multiplayer.

Now I have conflicting info on Age of Wonders 3 from Dark_Art and mqstout. However, since this should be a list of really DRM-free games, in case of doubt I leave it out. A LAN mode that silently identifies the game in the background to some authentication server would still be DRMed. So I'll keep the game off the list for now.

Ah! Thanks ... now which is which? AoW3 is probably the 'evil' one that authenticates in the background?

It's pretty annoying that most developers nowadays just rely completely on whatever platform they they publish on for online matchmaking.
TBH, small indie developers doing so feels kind of acceptable (because making online multiplayer is pretty hard on one's own), but seeing large studios that certainly aren't tight on resources do the same...... makes me wonder if some of them are putting in any effort at all.
(Looks at No Man's Sky disapprovingly)