IMO the only way to stop illegal copies is to offer a better service and a superior product. Good support, guaranteed malware-free, timely updates for newish games... you name it. And all for a fair price.

The will always be people who aren't willing or able to spend money on games (or music, movies), those are a lost cause anyway. Most people are prepared to pay for entertainment, if the the package is right.

And time is money too - if you need to find the right torrents, and the right torrents for compatible updates, need to thoroughly scan every download for malware, have to tinker because the re-packed version doesn't like your OS, and then a third into the game you realize weirdness because the crackers oversaw one deeply hidden copy protection check, and your save is destroyed... Really worth it, when you can simply buy, download, play?

I would totally agree with your statement. Money is not the issue for me (though I understand it may be for others). My issue is that I get a better service from torrent sites. Smaller downloads using various mediums (e.g. file server, or torrent), smaller file sizes due to proper packaging (sometime 50% or more), and optional component download - something that GoG is unable to do even with its own games. Plus a lot now doing patching, part downloads etc. Also, they don’t force any type of client, the drm and online components are often dead (not always the case here).

In fact most of the items on the to be fixed list are still here on GOG years later, and are actually getting worse. Most games now don’t bother with change logs, patches are rarely seen (see the huge full download need to get the latest version of serious Sam 4) etc.
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/provide_a_full_and_complete_changelogged_download_system

The attitude is, ignore, and if pushed then suggest galaxy, and that doesn’t wash for my money.

No, people shouldn't steal. Yes, people have stolen or try before you buy since the first games were sold.

Sierra even burnt a laser hole in 5.25 floppys at one point. People lined up the reference points on the original and a blank disk and used a pin to make a hole.

I hope that people who 'borrow' a few games from a friend soon find it easier to watch the sales and buy the games from the website. Its unlikely their friend has every game they want and its usually a very reasonable price. Even if they never purchase the original borrowed ones, a 'pirate' has been converted into a paying customer.

Archives of GOG games found in the darker side of the internet usually have caught diseases far worse than Leisure Suit Larry ever faced. Some of them come with pirate armies of their own eager to ransack and take you hostage for ransom.

You're actually arguing against a point I didn't make... Yes I know there were DRM measures from before the internet. It just wasn't clear from the first post that they meant checking against some embedded information.

The thing is, you not only have to implement it into the installer, but you ahve to implement it into the game's exe. Obviously most titles here already won't have the capability .However, even further, GOG would have to abandon their current offline installer setup and make a whole new one (which i suggested, for other reasons) but it'll never happen. And do you really trust them to make something stable and reliable?

And, like i said, it'd take no time at all to remove unless they implemented the most complex of methods.

But is it POWER of x86 after all?

Sorry, your question, reference, or comment got lost in translation.

Agreed. I didn't mean that AB2012 was completely wrong, just that that specific roadblock was far from unpassable. All the other roadblocks still apply and all reasons why it was a bad idea, be they technical, moral or economic, still hold true.

1: so they hack what ever name in they want, that's easy. The compression for gog is well known and easy to break into.
2: see #1
3: hacked keys injected make this moot, and this breaks the DRM rule GOG stands by as it would need to touch the network violating your own 1st rule.

Congratulations! You just invented DRM and watermarking!

I'd agree that the only way to allow people other than the original owner to unlock the game is to have an online check... of course we COULD include an offline database of hashes for everyone's password and username.... that would totally be secure right? This really is basically a CD key, isn't it?

Never really understood the point of the offline installers though, most games on GoG can be installed just by copying them to your c:\ drive. There really isn't much added benefit packaging direct x and other runtimes with the installer (other than to bloat the size).

However, people here do underestimate how many sites exist purely to distribute GoG offline installers. Torrents are rather old school, now you can just download whatever you want directly from a website. It's rather sad when looking for "Name of Game" + GoG and what comes up are a bunch of websites to illegally download the game.

There is only one reason why someone pirates, all this lying about moral piracy is bull. A person pirates because they don't want to pay for something but still want it. Piracy is about the individual who is pirating and no one else.

All this "I pirate because I'm too lazy to download the crack and pay for the game (also called the "if it didn't have DRM I'd buy it" rationalization)" or "I pirate because a game doesn't have a demo" are all just rationalizations. The only reason people pirate is because they're too cheap to pay money for what they want to play.

Registry. An unfortunate feature of windows that seems to just continue to plague the system is the system registry, and some brilliant programmers thought it'd be a good idea to use it. I've suggested to GOG before to somehow use RPMs or develop something similar to cut back on such obvious dependencies, but we all know that'll never happen, despite how much delta-updates can save. I think we're all quite aware. And how many of those actually distribute them, though? Have you ever tried? I assume it's not much different than from when i used to go to shady sites for pokemon roms so i could play them on my new computer instead. Man, gspotbot.exe was always a weird entry in my task manager, after i discovered it. I'm sure it was legit (real name, too, which is how i eventually learned what that was). If that's the case, how the hell did they get the offline installers to give 'em out? I actually pirated Spore back in the day. You know why? 'Cause my disk from walmart was blank (i'm still not sure what to do with teh disk, 'cause i'm tempted to actually put something on it), so i felt it morally justified to go ahead and download an ISO for the game i bought and didn't actually receive. Of course, i later bought a GOG edition, too. Similarly, there are games i've recently found interesting, but refuse to buy because they have DRM on them. I thought about looking into how to crack them, though.

Of course, you're obviously lying because anyone with half a brain would call support and request a refund. Obviously you pirated the game and pretended you bought it just like the criminal you are. Criminals are liars, and they will lie to serve their means.

Games haven't needed the registry since windows 7. They'll store information there, but no games (well, except for a few DRM'd games, like Rockstar stuff) actually NEED information to be in there to run. Of course, if you knew anything about how computers work, you'd understand that there is no difference between a registry and a config file... with the exception that the registry has benefits of centralizing where everything gets stored.

Of course, being a criminal, you don't know this... since criminals aren't smart enough to study programming.

So the thieving criminal who has no problem stealing Spore suddenly thinks that a piracy site is going to give him a Virus? Of course not, the criminal just wants to pretend he's not a criminal and act dumb.

With stolen money, hacked accounts, etc. Criminals are fond of places like Kinguin because selling keys that they used a stolen credit card to buy acts as a money laundering scheme. I bet you know all about that, seeing as you're defending the enterprise of criminals.

One shouldn't put up the equivalent of a Yard Sale sign, then, if they want people to keep off of said lawn. ;)