I never thought about it that way but you have a point.

We've been there for a long time already, you're probably just not participating in it. This is exactly what the current youth is growing up with on their mobile phones. If you think it's going to get better in the future, it's not. DRM-Free is likely to stay a niche at best.

So not much has changed... Wasn't PC Gaming in general a (relative) niche 20 years ago, when (online) DRM didn't exist yet?

20 years ago people did dial-up primarily still...

I didn't have dial-up (or any other form of internet) - it did'n stop me from playing single player PC games.

Here in Europe (AFAK, at least in my country), there was no such thing as free local phone calls. So dial-up internet was pretty expensive.

Edit: Why did you say that? I don't see how internet speed relates to DRM?

They don't want GOG to take over, if GOG takes users from all the DRM platforms, GOG is going to be the biggest seller especially for newly released titles.. they don't want that too happen.

Steam is an evil they can deal with, despite it being competition, it is DRM, so even if their own platform doesn't take off they can rely on Steam.

If shit hits the fan and GOG is at the top of the ladder, there will be literally nothing they can do, unless they want to sacrifice sales by having it on their own lowly platform nobody likes. Besides there are other reasons such as subscription services and all that jizz, they want to fleece gamers as much as possible.



You spend your money so they can buy and eat cake, then they eat the cake you bought for yourself too. They get all the cake and all you get is crumbs.
That is also true, i've seen some people do it on the web, thinking DRM-Free means they can give the game away to everyone on an entire forum.



GOG need to be specific on that, that this purchase is for you, and you only, it cannot be shared with anyone else. In big fucking letters so the dipshits can't miss it.

Some of them likely want to pretend it didn't happen as long as people still buy/play DRM addled versions, and their boards usually buy into the "DRM protects games so better keep it on the games" mindset as well.

They would likely also need to make a DRM-free version to gog if they didn't have one pre-made, and they would likely see it as giving pirates an easier version to pirate.

And lastly, some have agreements with some stores to sell exclusively there/for a set period.



That first bit is a load of hogwash. In many cases the game is virus free and works just fine....most other stuff is due to mistakes when cracking/people using the rare virus laden torrents(some set by devs as traps to taint people's opinions of cracked games or to track them for lawsuits)/etc.

We already have people whining about some MP needing an account as bad/drm....if they did that many more people would complain about it going against GOG's principles.

That reminds me of this:

It wasn't about speed, it was about not being on 24/7, most people logged on to check email and then more or less got off.

But games like Diablo 3 requiring constant internet connection, would CERTAINLY make the game impossible to play.

Also download speeds via dialup are abysmal, so games are probably via CD/DVD.

Honestly i prefer offline singleplayer games too.

Me as well...or maybe SP local co-op(family love playing these with me sometimes).

(btw I am reading all the responses even if I rarely respond, thanks :)

I'm coming from the idea of, AAA publisher protects game's initial sales with DRM (a few months to a year maybe), then when the DRM is cracked and game is pirate-able they bring the game to GOG. But most don't.

Even if you can play those games without Steam, how easy is it to install them without Steam? That might be important here, if it's still not something the average person can casually share with their friends the way they can with DRM-free installers.

Simple: Put the game folder on a USB stick, casually hand the stick over to a friend, friend copies the game folder to his hard drive, find the .exe, play.

It's arguably even simpler than an installer, since you don't have to install anything.

Works for just about every game I mentioned earlier (haven't tried the SEGA titles myself and the Batman game requires a minor addition to the command line - but that's still kid's stuff).