Posted April 26, 2018
MariusHispano: The achievements, the profiles or the cloud save have been very demanded by the community and are options that will attract players to gog. The good thing that gog has is not only the no drm but all the players have a place within the community despite a small group of users who want to impose their rules.
"Achievements" are extrinsic reward schemes and game statistics that only work when you can't easily cheat/manipulate the score, when you're online while playing and when the game in question busily communicates with the GOG server all the time. Only the naziest of nomenclature nazis would claim that this is not technically DRM.
Same goes for cloud saves. It's not technically DRM, but it 'accidentally' serves the very same purpose while employing the very same technology used in online verification.
And all the social media crap like the profiles? That's a customer loyalty scheme. It binds you to this particular platform, softly and unfelt maybe, but a more effective and unbeatable piracy prevention measure has not been invented yet. It's literally the ultimate copy protection.
Personally, I often wonder how people can openly sneer at Valve but then go on to install and use Galaxy "because DRM free". Valve could dispense with the Steamworks DRM tomorrow to the horror of their business clients, but they'd still have all those social media, cloud and workshop schemes going on that there would literally be no difference in the level of piracy protection the platform offers.
Consequently, those that raise a concerned eyebrow at basically everything that brings GOG as a service closer to Steam, those I understand much better.
I hope I haven't offended you with these notions.
Post edited April 26, 2018 by Vainamoinen