Alright, well I am pretty sure that the retail (DVD) version and the Steam Fallout 3 (at least GOTY edition, cannot speak for the Fallout 3 with the DLCs as "attachables") works the same when it comes to being DRM-free. Because with that version I was never asked to log in by GFWL either.

Well, in a way they have earned their dominating position as they picked up the ball (PC games) about which no one else seemed to care that much anymore. And over the years they invested more to the infrastructure than the old competitors (what were there, GamersGate (which has become mostly just a 3rd party key seller), Direct-2-Drive etc.)
Oh right, there are different Steam editions of it too. So maybe it is then the GOTY version which has the CEG while the original version didn't, or vice versa, or something.

Messy.

For Arkham Asylum you can also use a -nosteam command line argument to get it to run. Or at least you could right after they did the GFWL removal. I've personally run it that way.

Batman AA is a great example of what is frustrating about what GoG releases. The game is many years old, has three squeals, and doesn't appear to have any technical need to be bound to Steam. It has also been on HB getting sold for whatever people wanted to bloody pay for the thing. It has literally been sold for next to nothing, and yet it's not here. It shouldn't be a curating issue given it is a very respected title of excellent quality and it's more than popular enough. I don't think GoG is the holdup on the game, but it highlights that there is some issue getting in the way even when there doesn't appear to be any good reason.

On the other hand, for a lot of modern games I can see getting them untangled from Steam being a large problem that nobody wants to deal with. A lot of games I don't think you can just cut Steam out, drop achievements and net play and expect it to be as sellable a product. Replacing Steam components with Galaxy ones is going to be a lot more work, and probably not all that great an option just yet (if ever). Every time someone makes use of Steam's goodies, they risk getting locked into it. Who wants to strip out Steam on an old game and start getting "why teh fuk doznt my MP work" emails? Who wants to replace those modules and have to field questions as to why they can't play with their Steam friends, or why the net code sucks compared to the Steam version? I doubt anyone does. It's just not worth it, and I think we're screwed on a lot of games because Steam did a great job of making it impractical to walk away from it.

I still think we could, and should be doing a little better, but something is in the way. I kinda feel like GoG has always been treated like the dog at the dinner table. You can't ignore him, so you give him some scraps of something you don't care about, but he's not getting the good stuff. He's not one of the people at the table.

I think games like Arkham Asylum not being here is more of a business thing than a technical thing. Even for new games. I think Galaxy is actually very similar to Steamworks, and it would make complete sense for gog to do this way, so developers don't actually have a ton of work to do to support it if they're designing around Steamworks.

it's more a case of publishers not really wanting to bother with a smaller platform so that they may uphold their "gravitas", as well as not wanting to discourage consolidation. also, what Steam wants is a factor, too. maybe not as big of one as it used to be, but uplay still sucks and Origin is probably nowhere near where EA wanted by now. which is in the butt.

Why would that be? We already have Warner Bros in the publisher list which includes one Batman game already.

And if the game released in any given day is a turd (which... most of them have been, lately), you've got a dearth of new stuff to get excited about. And honestly, that's a lot of what makes a gaming platform interesting -- it's that feeling of "holy crap, look at all these new toys!"

That's what makes Arkham Asylum so interesting, there isn't any good technical reason, and it makes me curious as to what that business reason is that is so important that WB can't basically give us what should be a gimme.

The only obvious things might be they don't want to retrofit the game for Galaxy achievements and leaderboards and don't want to put the game out there without them. The game not being 100% may not be acceptable. OR the fear of going full DRM-free is just so great that they just can't do it. They can sell the game on HB for $0.02, but DRM-free is crazy talk. Granted it was probably an average of $10 for the pack of games but that still shows they were getting to the bottom of their sales potential for the game and that was something like 2 years ago.

I'm not sure I follow the "I think Galaxy is actually very similar to Steamworks" part. I know that is the point and hope for Galaxy, but I don't think it's going to be very useful for existing games. I think there is a barrier there in convincing developers it's worth going back and converting the game to use Galaxy features for games that have already had their major payday; especially since those Galaxy features aren't in widespread use. It probably doesn't help that a vocal part of GoG's own user base is highly resistant to it for not being in good condition or just because they have a bad associations with clients in general.

What are these features they need to retrofit to Galaxy? Does the game not run without these? If it doesn't then thats DRM, if it does, then this reason for not releasing is void. I don't see why no wanting to use a client is so bad, its worked fine for years not having one.

That was entirely by accident. Steam was conceived as DRM, as a strong anti-cheat/anti-piracy measure. That was what they cared about back then. And it eventually took them quite some years and a whole lot of strangely willing 'servant race' consumers with deeply dogmatic purchasing habits ("ALL MY GAMES ON STEAM") to get where they are now. :|

Pardon my pedantics (sic), but "sell... DRM-free" is redundant. If it's not DRM-free, it's not for sale. :)

Green-blooded hobgoblin.
Except on torrent sites, where you can get AAA games without DRM on day one. Maybe I'm wrong, I'm not knowldgeable about the subject, but that seems to indicate the client is not indispensable.

That is not meant as a endorsment of piracy, just so we're clear, just an observation about games being "tied" to a client.

I always like how the "there's no such thing as a good or bad game, it's all subjective" thing goes out the window whenever people start talking about curation -_-

I didn't say not using a client was a bad thing. I did say some people have aversions to using one. The point there being that, from an outsider's perspective, Galaxy being rejected by its user base isn't an incentive to start converting games to it.

When it comes to retrofitting features, the big one is going to be multiplayer. For some games the main draw is MP. They may have a single play experience that you can be happy with, but a big, giant, heaping mess of people are not going to be OK buying a version of MKX or SFV without netplay support, and a developer may even view putting out a lesser version as something that damages their brand.

Whether you use MP or not is irrelevant. If the the only way a dev is willing to bring a game here is if it is in it's full glory then things like achievements and MP are going to be ported from Steam to Galaxy for the people that DO want to use the client and have those features. The only way to give everyone what they want is to do the work and that takes time and money they may not be willing to spend. If they do the math and it looks like they will have to spend a dollar to make a nickle then they are going to take a pass. That's why I don't foresee us getting a lot of the more recent stuff that leans kinda heavily on Steam.

And a correct one.

*sigh* I don't have the moral flexibility for piracy anyway.

Except for Just Cause 3 apparently.