No one using Steam cares about DRM in the first place, this is not big news ;)

Yeah that's the vast majority. Either way you've acquired a copy of that game that does not need Steam to play it. And that's what the previous poster was getting at.

I was downloading those Steam games on my Notebook with Steam installed, but on my huge gamer PC there is no Steam at all and they run well...

Steam is even a bloatware... nothing enjoyable. My notebook almost was going boom because the Steam webhelper (i do not even know its use) was starting itself near countless times until the entire memory was totally busted. I had to kill Steam on startup... else my Notebook would probably be gone already. This software is not perfect... and i dunno why i should always use problematic software in order to run Offline-games.

As long as the game can be run by itself, and become backed up, it can be considered DRM-free.

There is simply no need for all this bloat... proper games can be run totally standalone.

« As long as you turn a blind eye to the DRM used for distribution, you can pretend that a game is DRM-free. »

Thanks for illustrating what I meant when I wrote that Steam users do not really care about DRM in the first place ;)

Perhaps it slipped your notice that you need to get online and sign in with an account to download even an offline installer from GOG. It's really not that different.

May I just butt in and say that's not the topic of this thread?

(And nobody'll change anybody's mind on the matter anyway.)

I take each day as it comes, and bask in the luxury of choice, which is more important than playing everything I've gotten.

I do admit to a deep sadness though, that my life will be over before I can truly enjoy everything I would wish to. That's what comes from being human and having such a limited lifespan.

And for me it goes well beyond just games, to movies and books and even music etc ... and there is always something new on the horizon I would like.

And of course, there is far more to life than those few entertainments. So much so, that I feel cheated when it comes to good health and life expectancy.

So my advice, for what it is worth, is to focus on the things that mean the most ... and variety, to keep fresh and enjoy stuff to the full. It is more important to enjoy what you can rather than feel you have to do everything. So don't allow pressure to spoil things.

Obviously you need to own a account in order to verify your ownership of a game you are downloading. In theory we could even make "throwaway" accounts which are just here in order to download a game after you was buying it. This is not making much sense because games still need to be updated and without the verification that you own a license of this game it is simply not possible. So this is as far as DRM-free is able to move... at least for commercial use (with sells involved).
What truly matters is simply that there is no hassle during gaming and installing it, and no "always-online-demand".

It even can be considered a advantage owning a account because you now have 2 backups at once: A cloud and a own backup... it can not become more secure than this.

I am not against an open source "GoG launcher", so there is way more custom possible for the users, but there still need to be some standard which will always work with GoG.

So you use an open source client to download a closed source application. What an amazing win.

Well, DRM free does not mean "open source", this is correct.

Right. Which is why the client used to download it doesn't matter much.

I would agree... because it does not undermine the DRM free condition. As long as the launcher or account is not required in order to play. Sure, online games are a bit tricky, but this is now to big of a topic... inside the wrong topic.

DRM free simply means, the software is not attached to any sort of lock or controlling mechanism that are not required for a proper functionality. Even achievements can in theory be implemented offline (or both at once, if you use the launcher) without account-demand, but it goes against the well accepted "mainstream-way"...

DRM free is the "middle way" of freedom. Fully free = open source, partially free = no DRM... and DRM... well this is a totally locked software.

Thanks to all for sharing your experience and insight. Surely this is something that affects most of us, if not all, in the time of online stores. You hit the nail there, pal. This sounds interesting. I think I remember that something like that was being done here in GOG. It was great, but if it is being done still, I lost track of it. Things like that fit especially well with GOG's background as well (even if they welcome new games all the time).