Please stop feeding the obvious troll.

Not true though this is mostly hair splitting. When you purchase a game DRM free you don'r own the IP but you do own the license and the usage rights. With Steam you don't own the usage rights.

Wrong again. The problem isn't games as services but rather that the EAs' and the Actervisions' of the world don't really want to "serve us" I think Jim Sterling put it best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_cKAySEuD8



If you're expecting me or anyone else to set aside 300 gigs of hard drive space for a mirrored repository for about 3 or more programs then yes that is impractical. Also repo mirroring is more of an archive backup rather then an offline solution. It's not like you can go to a friends windows computer or download a exe from your phone and just copy it over now is it.

Exactly this.

Then don't do a full mirror. Partial works too or you can make an "as-you-use" mirror to capture only the stuff you install. And it's more like 60GB for a full "current" mirror, not 300GB.

EDIT: Just to be clear, speaking about Arch Linux repository mirror here. Sure, other distros could have 300GB repositories, like Debian.

Disk space is an odd thing to complain about too as it is super easy to acquire (I paid £20 for 2 500GB drives recently).. bandwidth is a more obvious stumbling block.

Yep. I've fixed Linux installations by downloading the packages from a Windows machine and copying them over. It's one of the reasons I carry the mirror I mentioned with me: so I don't have to do it again!

Windows verify if it's licensed via MS servers. Hence, The Witcher 3 require DRM platform (Windows) to run.

(Insert any name here) needs atoms to exist. It's DRM.

I'm sorry, my avatar has facial hair and a hat, your avatar has facial hair and a hat, and I thought we're all hipsters here:)

Or in other words it was just a joke on your keenness to categorize all of GOG's customers, nothing more, so please don't consider it as in any way an 'attack'.

This is an amusing initiative considering you refuse to fully support the most open and DRM free desktop OS out there with GOG Galaxy etc.

I thought this was the FCK DRM initiative, but apparently it's also the FCK RELEASING GAMES THIS WEEK initiative... :(

When it comes to inviting discussion about DRM, that page is more of a monologue ;)
Seeing how many people have different opinions on what DRM is, pointing them to one place that just presents one definition isn't likely to solve the problem - rather, they'll just fret about others trying to impose their definitions on them.

Also, the page is lying. It says there's a killswitch in my music*, books and videos.
Nope, I've never bought a song unless I could get it in mp3 and/or ogg. I also don't use streaming music, I don't have a need to do so.
All the books I've ever bought are either printed or pdf.
Videos... I'm not even sure if I ever bought one, but the ones that are available for free (e.g. youtube) I just download in mp4, webm or similar formats.

I do have a few games with DRM, but that's mostly a byproduct of Humble Bundle offering DRM-free games bundled with DRM-games. Although I gotta admit, if I see heavily discounted DRM games, like $5 for a bunch of games with DRM, I may buy them taking a risk that even if in the future I won't be able to play those games, $5 isn't much. But in general, I'm willing to pay 5-10 times more for a DRM-free game.

* Now that I think about it, there is some music that I bought that could be classified as DRM-locked and that's even in games that claim to be DRM-free. And yes, I'm referring to game soundtracks. If a game I buy has all the music hidden in some encrypted game files and expects you to buy the soundtrack separately to get the mp3s (essentially telling you to buy the music AGAIN), or just doesn't offer the music separately at all... then that's DRM. I mean, if you buy a game and it has music, it means you bought the music with the game, so you have that music... you should be able to play it without the game. Offering soundtracks separately should only ever happen as an offer for people who don't want the game at all, just the soundtrack :P (but, most stores require you to buy the game to buy the soundtrack, so that doesn't seem to be the case for them).

Anyway, I see there are a few more definitions that many people seem confused about:
1. Talking about buying games.
Technically speaking, in case of most consumer software, you only buy a license. The game is still owned by the publisher. If you actually bought the game, that would mean you would own the intellectual property and you could start selling the game, modifying it (not only for personal use but for resale) etc.
Whether it's DRM-free or not doesn't change that. For example, GOG only sells game licenses, they don't sell games.

I don't like that, I think the intellectual property law should change so that we could own the software we buy, but that probably won't happen any time soon. Oh well, at least games in public domain are free of intellectual property and licenses :)

2. Equating Steam with DRM.
This one is tricky and a big reason why so many people argue that Steam is or isn't DRM. The thing is... it both is and isn't at the same time. Steam as a store and download manager isn't DRM. It's just like the GOG website, where you can buy games and download them, and you can't do so without using the website or Steam client / GOG galaxy. Therefore it is possible for Steam games to be DRM-free, so long as they don't require Steam to run. However - many Steam games use Steam API and won't start without the Steam client - and that IS DRM. Even the offline mode still requires internet connection to verify games once. Therefore, if Steam servers are down temporarily or permanently, you won't be able to move those games to another computer of yours and play those games there. So the conclusion is some Steam games have DRM and others don't.

3. Multiplayer and DRM
Many people say that the only true DRM-free forms of multiplayer are LAN, hotseat, splitscreen and similar things limited to a local network, with possibly hamachi allowing for DRM-free global multiplayer. Many will say that if a game requires login and password it's not DRM-free. And that's a right assumption - in most cases.
However there is one exception - private servers. If the server-side software is available and anyone (who owns the game) can download it and run their own server, then even if it requires logins and passwords to verify users, I'd still say it's DRM-free. After all the purpose of the verification in this case isn't to confirm who bought the game and who didn't, but rather to identify users. And most importantly - if the game's publisher disappears, or changes their licenses and policies, people will still be able to play the game. Owning your servers means there's no killswitch.
Therefore, in my opinion, any game that offers client-server multiplayer and wants to be DRM-free should also offer server-side software for download so that people can make private servers.

I see what you did there. It may not come off as open to discussion as you want. I mean... it's not even vague that your initiative has an english language cuss word in it haha
I respect what ya'll are claiming to strive for, but to me this just come off as what makes you money therefore what you support. Any corporation that sees an initiative that is called "FCK DRM" will blow it off as handily as not listening to it's customers either. If the people we want to realize how bad DRM is are just blowing off any initiative you have to attempt a discussion about DRM and the problems with it, is it really doing anything to begin with?

Oh I totally agree. Before GOG, games would never get pirated because every single game had DRM of some form or other on it since many decades ago. Pirates would never crack games and share them on the internet before GOG. And I certainly never saw cracks or whole game rips or anything of the sort before GOG came around.

The above is what I would say if I lived in some kind of freaky-deaky bizarro-world where not protecting a piece of software with malware that is buggy as all hell and punishes customers far more than pirates somehow magically means "the game is finally free! Pirates rejoice! Argh!".

So let me just get this thought straight that you appear to have here: the only reason you buy games is because they're not available for free on torrent sites? So if you can easily steal something, you just do it?

Also, have you only just recently started using the Internet or something? Because otherwise how could you be ignorant of the fact that piracy (and copy protection - which I remember it being called on the Amiga, since no one had come up with the "DRM" acronym yet) has been a part of games ever since they were games.

And yes, copy protection back then also sucked.

And before someone corrects me: yes it didn't operate in quite an evil a manner as DRM does today - for one thing, there were never any servers to connect to (because people didn't have Internet - though I used bulletin boards a fair bit). Most importantly, it wasn't possible for a publisher/developer to revoke your license via a digital mechanism, which is the main focus of the FCKDRM movement - the fact someone can decide that what you have payed for is now revoked and you can't have it any more.

Side note: In the past, if a game had DRM (e.g. required me to find the FCKing CD/DVD before I could play it), I would download a crack for it so I didn't have to do that shit. I payed for it, why should I have to go and look for my physical copy when I want to play it? WTF did I spend many minutes of my life staring at a progress bar slowly filling up, using up my then-limited HD space, if I was still going to be required to do things in the physical world (non-computer-peripheral world) in order to run the damn game?



So, TLDR:

- piracy was always a thing.
- DRM did sweet FA to stop it.
- DRM punishes paying customers - pirates get a crack.
- There will always be people who are selfish and don't want to pay. It's human nature - you get enough of these disgusting hairless primates and squeeze them into a society, most will work together, but some will just take what they can and contribute nothing.

Classy. Real classy.

@gog: Great Initiative, however you say: "We strongly believe that if you buy a game, it should be yours...". The games are not mine cause when I die I cannot leave them to my children because of this in your T&C: "Your GOG account and GOG content are personal to you and cannot be shared with, sold, gifted or transferred to anyone else. Your access to and use of them is subject to GOG’s rules which are set out here, as updated or amended when necessary.".

Beside DRM, modify the T&C to make it so that people can transfer their accounts/games to their next of kin.