Except it wasn't removed from Steam, its still there now. Bethesda is listed as the publisher and Interplay as the developer. I seriously doubt logos had anything to do with it, since even if the publisher/rights holder changed, Interplay will always be the developer of record. Even if it was due to some obscure trademark issue or something, they obviously were able to get around it on Steam, why not on GOG?

Sorry, but i will disappoint you, darling. If only i could ever prove ANY of my claims, i wouldn't even be here in the first place and in such a sorry state, too...

If memory serves, they were taken down from Steam as well for a time before appearing there again. Or am I completely out in left field on this?

Possibly, I don't remember them leaving Steam, but it was a while ago. Either way, the point still stands: if whatever may have forced the games removal from GOG and Steam was some kind of legal shenanigans, why are they now back on Steam and not on GOG? Obviously whatever facilitated their removal in the first place was something that could be corrected, otherwise if they were removed from Steam, they never would have come back. I can't imagine GOG would refuse the games they launched the site with, so I can only assume Bethesda (or their lawyer) is the one at fault.

They were removed on 2 January 2014, and returned on 18 June.

I'm talking about the in-game logos and not necessarily what is displayed in the games' store page. From what I have heard, there has been some in-game tweaking in the Steam versions to remove references to Interplay (like copyright information) and change them to Bethesda. Can't personally confirm it as I don't have the games on Steam. As for not signing up with GOG later, well yeah, can't argue there.

It's hard to say, but it sure seems like Bethesda is enamored of Steam now (even though the games are DRM-free there, it may just be a matter of momentum for them at this point). Maybe they found negotiating with Valve was easier than GOG? Maybe they found Valve's terms better than GOG's? Perhaps it's something contractual such as a period of exclusivity for Steam. Who knows?

The point being, I guess, that unless we know the real reason the Fallout games aren't offered here, it's silly to draw any kind of inference, good or bad. But I will say it's decidely odd that there are no Bethesda games here at all. Seems the Falout games would have been an excellent stepping stone to get Bethesda's games on here.

Isn't Steam's software a form of DRM, though? Meaning that it wouldn't be entirely genuine to describe anything sold via Steam as DRM-free.

There are drm free games on steam also. Not that they are clearly advertised, but there is a list easy to browse (google 'drm free games list on steam' and you should find it immediatly)

It's more a matter of going on Bethesda's forums and asking them to please sell those games on GOG.com. GOG can want something until the cows come home but unless the publisher that owns the rights to the game(s) in question have any interest selling their products on GOG it just wont happen.

GOG can (and does) of course initiate contact with such companies for their games but at this point it is pretty safe to assume that after being in business for 7+ years or so that GOG has been in contact with every major and probably most minor publishers as well and tried to get every possible game they could even imagine that they'd want here and if the games aren't here it's entirely in the publisher's ballpark to do something about it. The only way that happens is when people swarm the publisher to indicate they want to see it happen as publishers are unlikely to read threads like this one and even if they did, 10 people alone aren't going to change anything. :)

No. The Steam client is not DRM. The client supports DRM.

If you can launch the game while offline without the client running and you have no problems, you aren't dealing with DRM. For DRM-free games, the client is little more than a download manager with purchase authentication. Some people don't like that, and that's just fine. But it's not DRM.

Still, if enough people keep calling it DRM, it'll eventually become the connotation. So perhaps in the future everything I've said about DRM will end up being false. /shrug

You can also use SteamCMD to download them.

thanks for the links JMich

BTW : http://www.old-games.com/download/6229/elder-scrolls-adventures-the-redguard

Thanks for the input, everyone.

Years ago, when Steam was first becoming big, the Steam client was necessary to everything. Even a single-player game offline needed you to log in online. For that reason, I didn't want to use them, and for me that was a form of DRM—requiring me to check-in with them every time I wanted to play a little game on my own.

To me, GOG is synonymous with DRM-free games; it was the foundation of their business model, which is no doubt why they find it very difficult to change that now, even if they might want to in order to gain new business.

A web browser is a client also.