In the same educated and reliable way where a customer service employee tries to discuss politics and other shit with a customer, that is completely irrelevant?

I'm talking about the way that these are partnered with the company that actually made the game; therefore, they'd have better customer service capability when it comes to glitches and bugs pertaining to their own game etc. Nothing to do with personal attitude and such.

I've never understood why people have been so gushing about Steam for this. Many people make it sound like developers have been encouraged to push out patches en masse since Steam supposedly made patching easier. Even most Steam games barely see more than 1-2 patches (unless, of course, you're talking about Early Access crap)

Newsflash: Auto-updates are not a panacea for bugfixing. It's still a lot of work to develop and release a patch. The only thing auto-updates facilitate is the downloading of these fixes.

you could basically say that about every steamworks title ever.

I was talking about consoles in addition to PC. What I'm saying is; games will get as many patches as the developer puts the effort in making and handing out. Auto-updates weren't my target subject there at all.

CD Projekt ist intentionally making the used game unsellable for me. At this moment the standard PC boxed edition is 50€ at Amazon. Now let's say I don't like the game for some reason, or something happens and I really need some cash badly. 50€ is not a small amount of money and being able to get some of that back if I want to is what makes me comfortable spending that much on what is basically just a toy.

However, once I register my GOG code that's it, the entire thing is worthless. Whoever buys the game cannot download any updates. I am all for choices, but this is no real choice. CD Project is getting as close to being Valve as they can while still being able to call themselves technically DRM-free.

Maybe I'm just some weirdo, but I do not want companies to artificially devalue the products I pay good money for. Yeah, I know, pretty stupid of me, right? I mean, who doesn't love planned obsolescence. I just don't want to be stuck with a 50€ expensive coaster for my drinks.

Yes, you could. The difference being that the Steam client is mandatory for installing and updating Steamworks games every time (and without the Steam client as well as Steam account + working connection, a Steamworks game disc is just a coaster) - you can't just back up everything and never have any further involvement with Steam like you can with GOG.

QFT.

A big part of DRM-free is that games shouldn't be tied to a service. This is explicitly CDProjekt tying their game to a service. Not cool.

Yeah. Same thing for "reclaimed" physical copies of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. etc., but it wasn't a popular argument in that thread.

I think that if this is true that is kind of DRM on the side of CDP or the rather bad kind (online authentification like) and that will surely result in the retail version more or less useless (basically they just send the data physically instead of digital and in a box).

Nice way to kill physical!

Well, pirates will thank CDP. Soon after release a complete version will be available and buyers of the retail version will feel like they pay for the inferior product.

That for sure.
Because CDP is not as nice as Daedalic.

Tieing patches to accounts is known for years as DRM and bad practice. I mean, not many games are really bug free without patches.

CDP already tried it for Witcher 2 back then and failed for technical problems and then on day one the patches were available on their site. Maybe we are lucky and their system fails again and so we can have downloadable patches.

CDP just takes part in killing retail.

Not different at all. So yes, for sure the retail version of TW3 has DRM (online authentification).

At least they should clearly mark it on the box. Probably they haven't.


That's a good question. I guess you cannot download the file for yourself. Otherwise where would be the meaning in all of this? Just screwing all those without internet for no real purpose would be a bit idiotic, wouldn't it.

Do you mean the new reclaim feature? That's optional for people who already have the game elsewhere and want a GOG copy. I am all for choice, and seeing how that feature didn't even exist when the games were released it's no problem. My problem is that it is mandatory for customer service now.

It's like with Blizzard and Battle.net: with the old Battle.net everything was optional, your CD key was not tied to your Battle.net account unless you really wanted to tie it. When you did you got a Battle.net store copy of the game. But if you didn't you could still play online, over LAN and download patches, you just didn't get the digital copy. Then WOW happened, and being an online-only game it made sense, but Blizzard got drunk on their success and all of the sudden every game had to be tied to Battle.net.

And will increase piracy. 5 years before they lectured everyone in the world how stupid it is to use DRM because that only makes the product inferior to the paying customer and only promotes piracy and now (already with TW2 they tried to deliver patches only after online authentification but had technical problems) they just do what according to them is kind of stupid behavior...

lol

Still, it's seriously eye-opening how immediate internet access can change one's perspective on things. If I still didn't have internet (like I didn't back when the Witcher 2 was released) and read in some magazine that an extra file will be required for me to play my drm-free game and on top of that mandatory gog account for patches, I'd be beyond pissed at the news. Now I'm just mildly disappointed.

Obviously, the file itself won't get published online until the actual release. That's the point.