darkwolf777: And you people wonder why no one cares about DRM-free. You can't even agree among yourselves what is and isn't DRM, how do you expect anyone else to grok it?
First, I don't wonder. Second, come on. This is not so difficult. You buy a game here and you are not allowed to resell it. That's just a fact and you will hardly find a place on earth where this is different. But then nobody will check if you actually try to sell it. Checking would be DRM. Steam has it, GOG doesn't. Now, this wasn't very difficult, was it?
darkwolf777: Sure... if you want to constantly be buying larger and larger hard drives (or more and more discs and optical burners) to store all your game installers on and keep them backed up on at least a second hard drive (or more and more discs because discs don't last forever) in order to account for drive failures, if not yet another off-site backup in order to account for catastrophic events like your house burning down.
I saw the folly in that approach ages ago when games started growing past a handful of floppies into full CDs, then several CDs, then DVDs, and then several DVDs... now we're even starting to blow past BDs. Sure, most of the games on offer here aren't in that category, but I know there are quite a lot in the 3-15GB range, and Witcher 3 I'd bet is going to be at least a 20GB download, and around 40GB to install (yes I've seen the specs)... that's 60GB if you're holding onto the installer. For a single game. And that's not even including the expansions if you get those. Even if you keep your installers/downloads on a separate drive from the game installs, you're still needing that space whether you contain it to one drive or two (or more).
I'll take the more pragmatic approach, follow gaming press and keep up on the status of GoG and CDPR, and until I start catching a whiff of potential closure, I'll be fine to keep my downloads/installers on GoGs servers until I need them.
I actually use that approach too and feel quite good. But then I have an unused 1TB hard disc in my computer and use it for GOG games and other stuff. I know that this is not a 100% safe but I guess that I have stored over 90% of my GOG games there without problems and still a lot of free space. 15-20GB for W3 should not be a problem at all for me.
So yes, for many of my games I downloaded them right after purchase (although not for all) and I think it's quite unlikely I need to ever do it again.
One more alternative. I could probably download the GOG installers also from torrents. After all they have no DRM, are all identical and I know I bought the games, so I could actually download them from any place with a clear conscience.
Or I could store them somewhere in a cloud. That way I would be protected against burning down houses. However still cloud storage is a bit expensive for that.
darkwolf777: Except for the DRM-free games on Steam, of course.
Except for the DRM-free games on Steam, of course.
And, have you looked lately at the popular games on Steam, maybe the top 100 list or the games from the big publishers? They have all (or mostly - it's been a time since last I looked) DRM. So this exception is not really very big but okay, let's just restrict on those many, many, popular games on Steam that have DRM. Then:
If you start counting right after download, games on GOG never have DRM while many popular games on Steam (those with DRM) have DRM.
That I think is the core point here and that's what people here agree on and at least about this there should be no confusion.