I certainly hope it is not, as then it would mean I'd lose all the licenses (=right to use) for hundreds of GOG games, if GOG.com ever goes down permanently.

I have usually considered e.g. the email receipts as my proof of purchase/ownership for the license.

I wonder what forbids it? Local laws? Certainly the store (in this case GOG) and the game publisher opposes this, but I am not convinced it would be illegal (in most countries at least) to sell your GOG game licenses to someone else. It would be quite problematic though, like what is the proof for the new owner that he is the current owner of the game license.

Selling a service (e.g. your store account) might be illegal though. Or maybe it isn't directly illegal, but the service provider would probably have the right the terminate the whole account in case it was sold, making the reselling of an account pointless. Similarly as a gym might terminate your one-year subscription, if you had sold it to someone else.

Re-selling the software license to someone else wouldn't oblige GOG.com to transfer the service to the new owner. So the new owner would only have a local copy of the installer file, but not the delivery service offered by GOG for that game. I guess this alone makes buying "used" GOG games less lucrative, as then you wouldn't have the service on top of it that you normally do when you buy the game directly from GOG.com.

And for the record, I personally feel reselling your DRM-free games would be indeed problematic and bad news for DRM-free gaming overall. To make reselling of digital goods work reliably, you really need DRM. So I am not endorsing nor promoting it (quite the opposite), but just pointing out that I don't think it would really be illegal.

Damn it, where is that old discussion on this forum? It was about some similar court case which pretty much outlined that one is allowed to sell the license to a digitally downloaded software similarly as for retail games. However, at the same time it was made clear that e.g. the digital store is not obliged to transfer any related service to the new owner.

That was how I remembered that discussion, I try to find it to refresh my memory.

And that they are, the same as after buying online a physical product - you also only got an email. Additionally one could probably also use the account report of your credit card or paypal account as proof of purchase.

Sorry, when I said illegal it didn't mean it's against the law, only against the contract. The license you buy clearly excludes reselling. So if you try to resell you do not actually break any law but you infringe the license. So it would be a case of license infringement.

Now terms in licenses disallowing reselling are often illegal for physical goods, based on the first-sale doctrine for many practical reasons including resource preservation or scarsity because of degradation. And also because customers did not like it very much.

If the first-sale doctrine also applies to digital goods is heavily disputed. To services it typically does not apply, as far as I know.

So I'm not aware of all the legal implications but it might be that the license just forbids reselling and that's the state and nothing one can do against it.

But we could find out. You "sell" me some of your games and then we ask GOG if they want to sue us.

Actually, although I do not like Steam very much, I strongly advice them to introduce reselling (with a 30-75% cut, minimum $3 fee) of games. They have the DRM necessary for that and they can get a big advantage over GOG by this.

The email receipt might very well act as such as well, should GOG no longer exist, but would it be valid if your GOG account does not have the game?

I think "ease of use" trumps learning about what you're buying, or in Steam's case, renting.
As long as there isn't a problem, people in general just don't care.

When I've been extolling (read: babbling) about the virtues of GOG, even to gamers, let alone non-gamers, they just look blankly at me when I mention DRM.
One of the things about Steam DRM is that it's so unobtrusive that people don't notice it. They don't read the EULAs when they redeem a key or install a game.

Back in the day when CD's and music were first being ripped, and companies were still experimenting with their piracy issues, DRM was extremely intrusive. Having a limit on how many systems you could play your downloaded music on, etc. But they learnt from the lessons. DRM became smaller and harder to spot. It became spun into a download client whereby you keep all your games handy and in one place, instead of we keep an eye on your games on our client so that we can make sure you're not doing anything we don't like. So, your computer could be swimming in DRM'ed programmes, but it isn't restricting the operation of the PC, at least not that you can see up front. Which means for a majority of users, it doesn't exist. Especially when you've grown up with Steam as the monopoly.

And that's why the public are so confused about DRM. It's too much in general life. In lots of countries, police carry guns as a matter of rule and fact. In the UK, the police don't. If the police were to start carrying firearms, then the UK public would be looking askance at them. But an American or a Japanese person wouldn't be fazed by it at all.

Something that I think causes a lot of confusion as well is how many things also advertise themselves as DRM free, whether adds or sales people telling consumers that things are DRM free, and they actually are DRM like Steam or ITUNES. Sometimes I get annoyed when I am looking for DRM free providers for music, books, etc, and I keep running into places that say they don't have DRM but when you check it out more find yourself about to get screwed. So many don't consider the lighter forms of DRM as bad, well at least until it punches you in the nuts one day when you can't use it because your not online or haven't synced your account recently, etc. Ask your average person where you could buy a DRM free ebook, most couldn't answer or would just tell you to use the amazon store for the kindle or barnes and noble for the nook. People don't know, aren't always interested in doing the research, and companies do their best to keep them confused and thinking that what they are selling is the only way. Most of us that have taken the time to find out have because we have been abused by DRM in the past and we don't want to spend our hard earned money on crap that doesn't work.

How can you explain about Steam DRM when these are the same people that consume apps and content on an Iphone and have no issue with Itunes?

I'm not sure I understand your question.
I think though you might have misunderstood what I was saying. I'm not saying Steam isn't DRM. Steam is a form of DRM, as is iTunes etc.
I was just saying that because people have grown up with it, they don't necessarily recognise that it is DRM, because it's so prevalent.
When you log into your email account, you don't think about what you're doing. It's the same thing with Steam or iTunes etc. They just see it as another account whereas other people would classify email as needing an account, but games or music, not necessarily. If you're playing your own music or game, why would you need an account? Steam disguises its DRM as a handy-dandy your-games-all-in-one-place-and-easily-manageable games client. That's all. Same with iTunes, Amazon Kindle, Google Play or various apps for that matter.

At least half the IQ bell curve at last count according to statistical distribution. That means there's officially 3.5 *billion* idiots. Try not to let this thought depress you. And I'm not very convinced by the 35% to the immediate right of the bell curve either.

The whole license/assigned to you is part of why I don't think digital downloaded games should be as much as their physical counterparts. Not to mention the distribution should be cheaper than pressing discs, printing manuals/boxes, etc.

CD/DVD, I can sell if I choose to, whereas, a digital copy is less so.

Now, I seem to recall an article by GoG that said it's mostly on the honor system with their copies. They obviously can't stop you from giving the copy to someone else so they can play it, but by doing that you should refrain from playing yours (possibly even going as far as uninstalling it) until they are done playing the game.

As far as confusion about DRM, can show people these videos:


LGR - History of DRM & Copy Protection in Computer Games
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjEbpMgiL7U

LGR - Arcade Game Copy Protection & DRM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuswuoPPr_0

I didn't mix up anything. The thread is about DRM. Not about DRM on GOGs files specifically. I have to go through a DRM process to get my hands on the file. Period. Yes, the file from GOG is DRM free once I've got it. I never said otherwise.

Could you then maybe say how you would obtain the files (or just anything that you bought online) DRM free?

If there is no way to get something delivered DRM free it also doesn't make much sense to call it out as DRM.

Windows 7 was originally made available with DRM free delivery*. Anyone could go to the digital river website and download whatever version of windows 7 they needed. Of course, that was where the DRM free ended with windows 7. You need a CD key to install it. You have to activate it. To keep getting updates you have to pass WGA ownership checks.

I'm not sure why there's such reluctance to accept that there is DRM on delivery. GOG had never claimed that they were completely free of DRM. GOGs sells DRM free content, which is great! That's why most of us are customers here. There is DRM to access that content, and that's fine. As has been indicated, that's the norm among digital retailers.

* I say originally. In early 2015 Microsoft shut down digital river.

Edit: Humble also does things a bit different. I don't need an account to purchase things at humble. If I don't have an account, humble emails me a URL to a page that I can download my files. There's never any sort of ownership check. If I've got the URL, I can download the files. Humble also allows you to have an account, and then it's the same type of DRM'ed delivery as GOG.

It's funny that you can sell a physical storage medium, while selling the information on the medium is harder. Let's think a bit about this why it is like this.

What is so special about a CD/DVD? Well, it's unique. You cannot easily copy it.

And the data on the other hand is not unique, so one cannot easily prove ownership.

But maybe it does not have to be a CD/DVD. The smallest thing in terms of weight that is unique is an ID, a key, a long number.

So, what we need is a safe storage for unique long numbers (license keys) and then we can happily buy and sell digital goods and prove ownership aboout anything.

But isn't this totally unsafe? Well, the amount of money in your bank account is also only a number, so if you trust your bank, you can trust license keys as well.

But don't you need some kind of DRM for the license keys to be useful? No, you trust the customer. They can pirate if they want (anyway). You just enable them to trade with license keys.

But then why did GOG, Steam, .. still kill the second hand market if they did not have any need to do it? Well, they fear that digital goods do not degrade (in opposition to CDs/DVDs) over time and therefore their revenue is greatly diminished. So they rather forbid it.

For CDs/DVDs they might not be able to forbid it because of first-sale-doctrine but then more and more games are mostly download (at least the patches). And if that fails they will switch to a online server subscription model. No chance you can sell that.

The age of resellability and physical storages is over. It's sad but it's just over and we have to face the consequences. I know what I like and what I don't like and I don't take part in things I don't like, but most of customers don't care enough about all that. That's just how the world is.
This is not a good example because maybe then there was no DRM during delivery but a lot right after during unpacking of the parcel.

Basically it seems you don't know of any paid product that is delivered DRM free and stays DRM free afterwards.

This whole discussion seems to me a bit useless because well, the opposite thing (DRM free delivery plus DRM free afterwards) is very rare and the delivery is just such a very short time period compared to the rest of the time you install/re-install/play/just own it, that the impact is rather small.

Even if one would see it as DRM and I'm not so strict, it would still be vastly less severe than any Steam implementation (except for their DRM free games).

If you don't take account of the practical implications (it has to be delivered to your computer somehow, but on GOG you can easily download it right after purchase and never be bothered again and reselling is forbidden anyway), it's mostly just playing with words.

I think that people are more likely to be "uninformed" then actually "stupid". I've seen some very intelligent people say misinformation on DRM matters but they did shut up after seeing and understanding they are wrong.

One common thing is confusing the "distribution methods" with DRM. For example, the question like "DRM vs DRM-free" where they put Steam app and its functionalities (digital distribution of games and associated services) as the advantages of DRM. Desura offers similar (but somewhat limited) game organization/download/update app and most games are still DRM-free. There are even some DRM-free games on Steam. What they see as DRM is just a plain game distribution method. It's got nothing to do with DRM. The fact you can't start most of the games without Steam being installed does. Or the fact that you might loose the games you bought if Steam ever comes out of service because you don't actually own any of the games purchased on Steam. Citing the "Steam Subscriber Agreement": "The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services."