It's just an unnecessary annoyance set by the dev/publisher so not terrible but not yeah, give it to me either.

In the end the DRM question always comes down to who has the final say/the control, but even unecessary annoyances like this or creating a login or whatever can be annoying and therefore decreasing the fun in a game. All we want is start a game and have fun right from the first moment (and potentially forever and unaffected by anything the dev/publisher/seller does or doesn't), isn't this what we want?

Define "we".

Personally I want a large glass of wine.

*Puts glass bucket on table.

See, I want that too. Doesn't that make a we? :)

Of course you're right. Who am I so that anything I would say about anyone except me is pure speculation.

For matters of taste sure. But for other things it's totally surprising how equal we all are. Ever saw someone who wouldn't take a million dollars as a gift for free? I bet that would take quite a while. Probably equally difficult to finding someone who likes to enter serial numbers. So I want my we from above treated as an estimation of a general great acceptance.

And wine, I like it, you seem to, so we should enjoy it right now. :)

I wouldn't say that I actually mind entering serial numbers, as long as it's not a "one time use, now you've entered it, you're doomed and can never enter it again, hahahaha!" type of serial number.

As for the side-topic, I've had my couple of glasses of wine, now I'm drinking some Far Eastern beers :-)

EDIT: Oh, and the serial keys also have to be of the type that don't require an authentication server at the other end of an Internet connection.

That is because you think Hatred is really a portal to hell that could open up and swallow the Earth and should not be sold in stores.

Nah, I just think it's an uninteresting looking game and that stores get a say in what they choose not to stock.

Could you list what they are if you recall? I found that Rise of the Triad 2013 attempts to connect online but doesn't require it. I think it just checks for updates and a changelog though.

Just checked my firewall rules and the games are as follows;

Stalker: Clear Sky
Clive Barker's Undying
The Witcher 2
Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition
Braveland
Braveland Wizard
Battle Realms

They run OK without internet connection but I'm not sure what they are trying to connect to or why. As they come from GOG I assume it's innocent but I'm not happy with anything that tries to connect quietly - it is only the fact that I've got my firewall set up to tell me if anything is phoning home that I know about these.

Cool, thanks. I own all of those except the Braveland games, so I'll have to do a network packet capture to see what they are trying to do sometime.

AFAIC, both Introversion and GOG deserve equal measures of blame for this: Introversion deserves a healthy of dose of blame for dishonestly supplying GOG with a "DRM-free copy", and GOG deserves blame for failing to fix this problem even though it was reported to them earlier.

If we can't trust your claim to be "DRM-free" for a game like Defcon (in the sense that your games won't need any form of online activation like Steam) then how do we know you're not lying about the DRM-free state of your other games?

Not an ideal solution... and I agree that both parties are to blame...
Tried contacting Introversion though with proof of purpose to get a unique key?

But yeah.. calling in if connected to internet is NOT DRM free...

I think the thing a lot of people are now wondering is, why did you accept this in the first place? Did you know about the DRM and accepted it anyway or did you not realise (in which case surely the developer is in breach of contract)? Either way, the game should not be on sale in its present form. You have failed us on your one remaining principle, the one you dropped others to further pursue. The game should not have been sold in this form.

EDIT: If you've been in contact with the developer for some time and they're still not holding up their end of the bargain, I hope your contract with them has some kind of clause that actually requires them to provide a DRM-free build.

You might need to actually apply some pressure because it kind of seems like they're taking the piss at the moment, making the game DRM-free in single player should be pretty trivial for someone with source code access. It comes across like they're just not that bothered. Not being DRM-free, the game shouldn't be sold at the moment and there should really be a deadline for them to provide a DRM-free version by. Perhaps the threat of the game being removed and customers refunded (from their pocket, not just yours) would motivate them.


By the way, I have asked for a refund in my reply to that ridiculously poor support response but have yet to hear back. Given that the game was sold under false pretences, I expect this to be sorted sooner rather than later. The solutions of 'put up with it' or 'wait' are not acceptable to me. The game was sold to me as DRM-free and it isn't.