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DRM-free approach in games has been at the heart of GOG.COM from day one. We strongly believe that if you buy a game, it should be yours, and you can play it the way it’s convenient for you, and not how others want you to use it.

The landscape has changed since 2008, and today many people don’t realize what DRM even means. And still the DRM issue in games remains – you’re never sure when and why you can be blocked from accessing them. And it’s not only games that are affected, but your favourite books, music, movies and apps as well.

To help understand what DRM means, how it influences your games and other digital media, and what benefits come with DRM-free approach, we’re launching the FCK DRM initiative. The goal is to educate people and ignite a discussion about DRM. To learn more visit https://fckdrm.com, and share your opinions and stories about DRM and how it affects you.
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DontPay4Digital: GOG requires you to have an official account with them and you have to be authorized by their servers to access the games you paid for.
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hmcpretender: An account is required to use the shop on GoGs website. It's not required to use their games. For example you could get the installers from someone else (while this would violate GoGs terms of use, there is no technical restriction in place to prevent it)
You are right, +1 for you, and even a simple free to play browsergame need a login into an acount to play:

examples: battleon dot com dragonfable dot com ( US)


ogame browsergame, gladiatus browsergame and more ( Gameforge/german company)
shakes and fidget, bloodmoon , soccerstar, ( german company: playa games)

all need an account :D I have no problem with that , i dont like to use clients but steam has one and it has to be used but everyone knew that before they joined, GOG has an optional client thats why i dont use it.
Anyway, if possible i will avoid clients.... i also avoid steam games i have to run using the client, if i happen to buy one its on the blacklist and no more buys from that publisher/developer.

Anyway, some steam games have a 3rd party agreement and they happen to be games that you can play without the steam client once the game is installed, i dont know if the game phones home but thats easily solved by blocking the game using firewall.
high rated

Yes I don't understand these very vocal people about gog galaxy, as GOG still offer versions of these games without the client.
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Kanashe: Yeah, no. Some of these games still function on cloud save stuff, unless yer one of those chumps who believes "well, I should have my safe files on my PC! Nyeh! Nyeh! Nyeh!", to which I can just say "Oh sure, an what if your HD goes kaput? Enjoy losing all your progress asshole."
This kind of what if your drive dies or you lose the CD etc nonsense is a hilariously bad position to plant your feet on. That's all about your ownership, you lose them, it's on you and you alone.

Where as sever shut downs, companies closing, ISP interruptions etc are all outside of anything you can control.

I still have save games from a decade ago, even drives from the early 90s, and music CD's from the 80s that still work flawlessly.

You know what I don't have though?

The ability to buy and play Dark Spore, Premiership Coach and Sword Coast Legends.
I have always held the belief that the only thing that should keep you from playing a game is it's rating, hardware and having enough money to buy the game.
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Teppic: Is this really called fuck DRM? Is GOG run by 12 year olds?
yup it seems its run by GOG.
Why do you think its run by 12 year olds ? if there is one place where many 13 year olds would be it would be Steam, reading many reviews and replies on games it looks like Steam has many kids having Steam accounts , aged between 12 and 18.

Anyway its not bad because in away everyone is still a kid :D , a kid is hidden in many 'grown up' and they are
playing lots of games and having fun, nothing wrong having > 1200 games in total ( retail and digital)
if the steam counters are right some Steam users seem to have > 1200 games .... 1200 games in one account....thats a lot to have i am not even half way....
Post edited August 23, 2018 by gamesfreak64
low rated
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Kanashe: Yeah, no. Some of these games still function on cloud save stuff, unless yer one of those chumps who believes "well, I should have my safe files on my PC! Nyeh! Nyeh! Nyeh!", to which I can just say "Oh sure, an what if your HD goes kaput? Enjoy losing all your progress asshole."
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Icinix: This kind of what if your drive dies or you lose the CD etc nonsense is a hilariously bad position to plant your feet on. That's all about your ownership, you lose them, it's on you and you alone.

Where as sever shut downs, companies closing, ISP interruptions etc are all outside of anything you can control.

I still have save games from a decade ago, even drives from the early 90s, and music CD's from the 80s that still work flawlessly.

You know what I don't have though?

The ability to buy and play Dark Spore, Premiership Coach and Sword Coast Legends.
Uh-huh, sure it does. I'm gonna put it somewhere in my "bullshit" category.
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neonblack: @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.
Yeah, the T&Cs for digital accounts has always been shady.

At the end of the day though, my email addresses, accounts and passwords are all in my will for family.

Can you imagine if they tried to police that? Even Apple would have have a hard time saying a dead person couldn't give their iTunes to their partner who has the account left to them in their will.
low rated
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Teppic: Is this really called fuck DRM? Is GOG run by 12 year olds?
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gamesfreak64: yup it seems its run by GOG.
Why do you think its run by 12 year olds ? if there is one place where many 13 year olds would be it would be Steam, reading many reviews and replies on games it looks like Steam has many kids having Steam accounts , aged between 12 and 18.

Anyway its not bad because in away everyone is still a kid :D , a kid is hidden in many 'grown up' and they are
playing lots of games and having fun, nothing wrong having > 1200 games in total ( retail and digital)
if the steam counters are right some Steam users seem to have > 1200 games .... 1200 games in one account....thats a lot to have i am not even half way....
Oh, I'd say GOG is run by elitist assholes, who have their heads really far up their own asses. While the community is mostly made of people who consider themselves special or part of some "movement" by buying games from GoG or supporting them.
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Icinix: This kind of what if your drive dies or you lose the CD etc nonsense is a hilariously bad position to plant your feet on. That's all about your ownership, you lose them, it's on you and you alone.

Where as sever shut downs, companies closing, ISP interruptions etc are all outside of anything you can control.

I still have save games from a decade ago, even drives from the early 90s, and music CD's from the 80s that still work flawlessly.

You know what I don't have though?

The ability to buy and play Dark Spore, Premiership Coach and Sword Coast Legends.
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Kanashe: Uh-huh, sure it does. I'm gonna put it somewhere in my "bullshit" category.
...and I'm going to "randomly" put quotes around a word that doens't make a whole lot of sense to do.
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clayborn902: I have always held the belief that the only thing that should keep you from playing a game is it's rating, hardware and having enough money to buy the game.
i dont do ratings , i always decide for myself so ratings are down the drain for me.
My main issues are money................. cashflow is extremely low (never been high tbh) and hardware is quite expensive
when 400 to 600 guilders were enough ( yuo could reuse old windows on new hardware) today it will cost > 600 euros ,
exchange rate of 2.20371 guilders = 1 Euro , so the new setup will be 2.2 times as expensive.

Unaffordable unless your willing to wait and save 2 years or more .....



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gamesfreak64: yup it seems its run by GOG.
Why do you think its run by 12 year olds ? if there is one place where many 13 year olds would be it would be Steam, reading many reviews and replies on games it looks like Steam has many kids having Steam accounts , aged between 12 and 18.

Anyway its not bad because in away everyone is still a kid :D , a kid is hidden in many 'grown up' and they are
playing lots of games and having fun, nothing wrong having > 1200 games in total ( retail and digital)
if the steam counters are right some Steam users seem to have > 1200 games .... 1200 games in one account....thats a lot to have i am not even half way....
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Kanashe: Oh, I'd say GOG is run by elitist assholes, who have their heads really far up their own asses. While the community is mostly made of people who consider themselves special or part of some "movement" by buying games from GoG or supporting them.
I like the movement thing you mentioned :D a nice green shirt with GOG on it would be nice, then again i'm too old for that, but 20 years ago it would have been fun to have.
Post edited August 23, 2018 by gamesfreak64
I totally support this Full Consumer Knowledge on DRM. People should be informed.

I would like to reference Magnatune, where you can get your DRM-free music. And you can share it with friends and family too!

Wasn't also another website that sold DRM-free movies? What was it called? Good Old... Good Old something. Darn, I can't remember the name!
low rated
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lazarhead: Thank you, GOG, for spearheading this conversation. DRM is not only making games run worse, but ensures 10 years from now, they would be unplayable.
I hate to tell you this but games have had DRM on them going back multiple generations. It's nothing new and doesn't necessarily effect performance.
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Teppic: Is this really called fuck DRM? Is GOG run by 12 year olds?
That was my first initial thought. Of all names, they had to pick something to immature and one that makes them look remarkably unprofessional. It kind of makes me sad as a customer to know I supported these idiots. What is also kind of sad is that people around here support it too. How stupid do people need to be, really?!

I'm waiting for the moderator to come delete our posts because wrong think.
Post edited August 23, 2018 by darthspudius
Amazon's MP3 store is DRM free, and perhaps should be added. It does (like GOG) try and get you to use a client, but you can click "just download my files" or something like that and it's a simple zip file with DRM free MP3s.
Not gonna read through all the posts to see if it's been said, and I'm not sure what anyone else's opinion is, but I've been a subscriber to Humble Bundle's monthly bundle for several months now and many of those games are available in both DRM-free downloadable versions along with Steam-key redeemable versions.

And on a completely separate note, I download all my HB and GOG games to my 3TB drive "just in case" the site is ever suddenly, and without warning, shuts down. I just hope that drive never fails... *shrugs*
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DontPay4Digital: GOG requires you to have an official account with them and you have to be authorized by their servers to access the games you paid for. I consider that to be more and worse DRM than offline CD keys which don't require an account or server authentication at any point, yet for some reason GOG gets a pass. GOG should be considered DRM using GOG's own standards which consider offline CD keys to be DRM.
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snykaas: You need an account to purchase a game(most online stores these days do require you have an account to do purchases, even for physical goods, this is not new). As long as you have the account(and GOG service is up and going) you can access and download all your games. However, you can download all the games you've purchased, put them on some form of storage(DVDs, Harddrives, whatever) and not have to access GoGs service ever again. That is what they mean by DRM free, the ability to store it away yourself, on physical media and not requiring authentication to reinstall and replay said games.

In contrast say Origin. Origin requires you to have acess to it to both play your games, install your games, and keep your games. If Origin was shut down, your access to the games(even if installed) would be voided, and unplayable(without a crack). With GoG, that is not an issue, and you can continue using the games your entire life-span(with or without internet), granted that you have downloaded and stored away all the installation files(which is reasonable). Some games do require you to have an active account for multiplayer component(which is disclosed, as others have said), which has to do with convinience, and is fair. Though I do feel it should be mandatory to have lan functionality in the games.

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what your post seems like is that you confuse DRM with Digital Distribution, and that you are against digital distribution of video games, and that everything should rather only be physical copies(which is insane, considering the size of games... I'd rather not need 2+ bluray disks to install something, which is what'll happen sooner than later).
You need the account to access your game even after you have purchased it unlike with a physical copy with offline CD key DRM, therefore it should be considered DRM.
Just because it is an inherent part of paid digital distribution does not mean it should get a pass.
Post edited August 23, 2018 by DontPay4Digital
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DontPay4Digital: You need the account to access your game even after you have purchased it unlike with a physical copy with offline CD key DRM, therefore it should be considered DRM.
Just because it is an inherent part of paid digital distribution does not mean it should get a pass.
Actually, no. You need the account to download the installer, then you can install it whenever you wish without logging on again. With a CD key you'd need it whenever you install it (using its actual installer), if you do so multiple times.