Asking if modern gamers care about DRM is not a hypothetical question, it's a real question.

Anyway my guess is that modern gamers care somewhat but not more than old gamers. It's difficult to quantify really. I guess they would still prefer not to have DRM, and they are somewhat informed about the disadvantages of DRM, but it doesn't seem to be a very important point for most of them, at least not very decisive regarding the buying decision for a game that is only available as DRM.

Thank God, at least the notion that the Steam client is actual DRM has become accepted. Man, that were tedious discusssions, informing people about DRM. All these discussions are over and you can just refer to them whenever the topic comes up.

Basically all about DRM has been said, a million times, and now is the decision phase. People currently decide if they like DRM or not. Most seem indeed to be okay with it. Of course, I'm not, and I will continue doing so and not buying games with DRM (with very few (two) notable exceptions), but I feel like that is all I want to do.

It's even more difficult to predict what people will think in 10 years than now, but my guess is that DRM will probably still exist in 10 years from now. People in general don't hate it enough to make it go away that soon. It could even be more widespread than today.

Yes, as i said before.

Most people don't probably care or even think about it as long as everything goes smoothly, and they don't even think there could be any other way. Also, they might have the wrong assumption that the service provider is somehow obliged to make sure their purchased digital items are always available to them as a customer, even if the store itself closes for some reason (like all those people claiming that Valve has promised to remove shackles from all Steam games in case the Steam service would ever close doors; hogwash).

Some of them start thinking about it more when it doesn't go so smoothly anymore. I recall reading the article of some casual customer who suddenly became into realization she lost all her purchased digital items (I think it was e-books?) because of the account closure. Apparently it had been unthinkable to her that something like that could possibly happen, is it even legal right? (Yes it is.)

As I also said, this group of people is different from those who do realistically understand how DRM can (=will) eventually break their access to their purchased digital items... but still don't care, and just think that it doesn't matter if their hundreds or thousands of Steam games or e-books one day ceased to exist. So what, buy them again elsewhere or do something else, right? It is only money.

Another thing is subscription services like Netflix or Spotify where you get content for a monthly fee... but there people understand from the start that you are not purchasing digital items, but paying a subscription fee to get access to the library.

People were able to make this distinction already in the past, understanding how it is different whether you rent a DVD movie (or subscribe to a cable TV), or buy a DVD movie to yourself. In the first case it is understandable you don't have unlimited access to the item, while in the latter case they expect that to be the case.

That's too wide a brush. Some people can't be trusted. Some people can. The DRM net has been cast to try to force the untrustables into compliance. But for as long as DRM has been around, the untrustables have cracked/avoided/bypassed it, so DRM has failed miserably in that regard. And yet publishers and devs continue to insist on using it.

So this insistence on DRM has accomplished almost nothing, if the goal is to foil the pirates. If the goal is to control the use of the product by the legitimate consumer and/or to gather data, then it's succeeding admirably.

Do modern gamers care about DRM? The vast majority, it would seem, do not, as they go out in droves and buy the latest AAA DRM-ed title without a second thought. Hell, how many times have you seen 'No Steam, No Buy' posted on various forums?

Yep, this is my attitude as well. Unfortunately, sometimes I end up buying a DRMed game and really, really liking it, and know I'll want to play it again. But, since I only buy DRMed games at a deep, deep discount, I sometimes move those games onto a re-buy list if they ever appear in a DRM-free format.

It's ......... [drum roll] .......... Oblivion ! :p

I have used Linux before. Gaming felt really troublesome to me. Having the steam made things somewhat easy, still never was that fond of steam. For other things however it was great. Having a repository made life much easier, and working on Gnome 3 was a breeze. :)

Snip:

It seems you use "modern gamers" for meaning "young gamers" but to the question I would say yes.

I am sure anybody 7-and-under has no clue on this and doesn't care about DRM.

However, considering the outrage at the XBox One E3 reveal and launch, the fact Microsoft did an Xbox One-Eighty (what they really should have called it 180) and changed all the policies they had and still got killed in sales by the PS4 it seems to still matter to a lot of people.

Also remember Adam Orth and the disaster of his "deal with it" tweet and getting fired.

Lastly, the massive uproar at GOG updating their Galaxy policy during the past few weeks and then revising by also now offering a classic mode and not requiring Galaxy to be added to every download.

As a modern gamer, the kind of DRM that annoys me the most is those that take your ability to play without a day one patch. Ironically, the last big game I bought that had this feature was The Witcher 3 and that is ignoring the fact it wouldn't let me install without first installing Galaxy. Hmm... funny how this works.

What is "DRM that take your ability to play without a day one patch", can you explain in more detail how it works, and why of all DRM(?) methods it annoys you the most? Does it annoy you even more than, say, DRM that lets you install your game only five times, and that's it?

The Witcher 3 doesn't have such DRM, and I have been able to install it without Galaxy.

I read most of the posts here and I think they all have aspects of truth, indeed. I see that younger gamers (with many exceptions, of course, but often only because they had problems with steam or internet connection) mostly don't care about DRM; lots of them don't even know exactly what the acronym means.
The real problem is that in this new millennium we're not customers, gamers, a community, whatever you may wish: we simply are consumers; point. It's not an anti capitalism speech: I can see it happening since years in the mobile market, in the consoles ones and in general in everything you can buy.
As others said before and better then me in the thread it's sort of: that's the way things work (or if you want, that's the way they want things to work).
Do we really have some sort of real power here? I don't think so; I saw lots of boycott that thing, boycott that company that went to big fails; when people don't care, simply have no time to worry about that; they feel like tilting at windmills..
So at the end the best we can do, I guess, is a personal choice. I don't believe the games market (or whatever market you my think) will stop for a second complaining about losing us as customers: instead they will find new ones, tons of! So, I don't think we can change the world: we lost that right years and years ago.

I'm still new to GOG but I can easily agree with you guys saying that one of the few reasons why we buy here is the DRM-free aspect (maybe the only one, you said); I don't know if it will last forever but at the same time we should be happy to have a game like Gwent as GOG exclusive. It could attract lots of new users and spread the GOG market: that would be positive for us, too; same thing for Galaxy: as long as it will always be possible to download (as I understood that should be the way) separate non-galaxy installation files it could be convenient because modern gamers are kind of addicted to what clients add to the game experience.
What consequences could have those stuff in a long-terms prospective, well we can't say...

I do care about DRM. But I'm not modern. For me it's the other way round: Steam = no sale. Or more generally: DRM = no sale. Which is why the road GOG is taking worries me. The way they push Galaxy and intentionally neglect everything that made them great in the first place is a sign that they actually do want to introduce DRM in the form of a mandatory client use. Step by step.

But alternatives are already springing up. DRM free will always remain a niche market. I'm happy to be in that niche and there will always be niche market suppliers. GOG is trying to leave that niche and to take on Steam on it's own turf. They will fail, of course and if they continue on this path, they will be just another Steam key reseller in a few years. But that's their decision. It is lamentable, but there's not much I can do about it apart from spending my money somewhere else.

As others have said, it's all about the convenience. People don't care until they hit the limitations, and then some of them start caring. So it all ultimately depends on what Steam and co do - if they tighten the limits, more people will hit them and thus start paying attention to these things. If they don't, then most people will keep on not caring, because why would they?

To me, DRM-free is software that comes in an installer or better yet a compressed archive that gives you full access to all functions of the game on any computer without any connection/authentification.

The retail versions of Witcher 3 did have this. It required a download for the game to work, this was purposely done to prevent piracy of the retail version before release. There was initial worry it would be behind a login to access but if they planned to, by the time it released they released it accessible for all. (there was a lot of worry/complaining).

As for Galaxy, it might be confusing because if you *had* the retail version, the install instructions specifically only explained how to install the game *with* Galaxy, so a lot of people thought it was required and/or didn't think twice about it.

if I have to be online to play a game (unless it's MMO), it's DRM to me.
As a "current" gamer, I still bother about DRM, hence my presence here. ;)

DRM is anything which stops me using my product completely without internet or further requirements. Its in the name, i.e. someone else having the ability to limit my use of a product.

Denuvo = DRM? Yes, most definately.
SecuROM = DRM? Yes, most definately.
Steam = DRM? CEG is most definately, however not everything there has CEG.
Galaxy = DRM? Not directly, it could be used that way in the future.
Origin = DRM? Yes.
Uplay = DRM? Yes.
PSN/XLive = DRM? Don't know this - can you save the games you purchase onto a disc and use on any machine, or are they tied to an account, if they are tied then yes DRM. Had this with saves from PS3 - you can't move saves from one device to another without real trouble, that is DRM.
GoG = DRM-free? Well, 99%, recent events have shown this to not be 100%
HumbleStore = DRM? In a large percentage yes, i.e. they sell steam keys. There are some DRM free games there however.
Other = DRM? All MMO's are innate DRM, much like any online only games