a = b.

If they give up DRM-free, they lose their USP. Let's be honest - the competition has more games, more often better prices (i.e. through resellers like Humble), almost all the AAA line-up... If they gave up DRM-free, there would be very little reason to spend money here.

Humble also has many DRM-free titles...

Not so many, sadly. I often browse their offers and it's really a small selection.
But I could imagine that Humble is one of the first new "3rd party partner" that are directly selling GOG games if you allow to connect your account (see the terms update email). That would be good both for GOG and for gamers:
- for GOG because Humble has considerable reach and coverage
- for gamers, because Humble often has pretty good deals - sadly most are only Steam keys nowadays, useless to me - but maybe that's gonna change.

Still I have a nice collection of recent indies at Humble.... most of them don't even need an installation, just unpack and play, which is something I love... Well, we'll see...

Be sure to grab The Stanley Parable. It's a really great "Meta" game (which should be here too... and yes, when it turns up I'll probably buy it again...)

Been there, thanks! ;)

Seriously, people should stop complaining about GOG and think about why different prices world wide are there first place.
Sometimes it makes sense: you can't expect someone from India to pay the same price as someone from Switzerland. There is a huge income difference. And GOG has been so far the only shop I know of to offer this. Certainly not the big friend starting with "S" (no, not Smoke).

On the other hand, this is the Internet and it is a shame that we (as customers) are not allowed to enjoy the benefits of globalization (that is, shop world wide for the best offer possible) - while every company in your country can (and deduct any costs incurred from taxes, most likely - depending on where you live, of course).

But again, this is NOT GOG's fault. If any, it's maybe your (or your parent's) fault, because you or they voted for those people in power (in most countries) and allow them to protect their cronies in the industry instead of you, the citizen (and customer).

This "protection" of the industry (forget about that fairy tale, it's not protecting the industry, it's protecting the owner's profits -look at any industry in decline, they never held up for more than a few years) happens of course at someone else's expenses, and this someone else is almost always you (if you don't know who profits it's not you. If you don't profit, you are paying for someone else's profit).

Think about it. Nothing of this is GOG's fault. It's your government's fault. And if you let them proceed, it becomes your fault.

Another pillar of Good Old Games is down. I guess drm free is only one thing left that keeps me here. Get to enjoy it while it lasts (as we've seen with other examples - it wont certainly be 'always' )
I will certanly spend a lot less money here now on, sadly.
Appreciate your honesty nevertheless.

Will GOG still make money off of games bought with the new Direct to Account system? I would assume so, but I've seen people speculating on it.

Absolutely this!

Thanks for being upfront about this and good luck GoG!

I know as long as you stay DRM free with an optional client I'd love to be a customer here for a long, long time to come and if this is what it takes to make that happen, so be it.

Now I'm bummed I didn't do my part to give GoG a "capital infusion" during that Lantern Sale - I kinda wanted to grab Battle Chasers and didn't :(

I think it's safe to assume that DRM will never be a thing with GOG games, not because of their stance but because it would cost money to implement.

I buy from GoG to get DRM-free games. That's pretty much the only reason that I buy from them. I'd very much like for them to provide features and services on par with Steam (if not better), but all of that is just gravy on top. Even if GoG's features are worse over all, as long as they're selling DRM-free games, and Steam is not, I'm buying from GoG. GoG could even charge much higher prices, and I'd still buy from them, because it's almost always the only way to get these games DRM-free, and I want to be able to play the games that I buy long after the store that sold them or the companies that made them bite the dust. IMHO, by far the biggest problem with GoG is how many games I have to buy from Steam, because they aren't on GoG, but that's usually going to be because the companies making those games are too chicken to go DRM-free.

Now, I'm from the US, so the loss of the Fair Price Package program doesn't affect me, but I'd still be buying from GoG even if the US had the highest prices out of all of the countries where GoG is available, and the prices were always worse than those on Steam. I'd try to buy stuff during sales, just like I do now (it's not like I want to pay high prices), but I'd still choose GoG, because they actually sell games without DRM.

The loss of the FPP program is obviously a loss for those who were benefiting from it before, and I think that any regional price differences which aren't caused by stuff like taxes or anything else outside the control of the game publishers are stupid. So, I feel for those who are now going to be stuck paying more, and I wish that the game publishers were more reasonable about pricing, but if I were in a country that had benefited from the FPP program, the fact that it's going away wouldn't make me leave GoG for another store, because other stores don't provide what GoG provides - DRM-free games.

Now, if the sky fell, and GoG actually decided to not release games DRM-free any more, then I would have no reason to buy anything from them, and I hope that that never happens, but ultimately that is the policy change that would change where I buy games. Sadly, GoG can screw me over all over the place, and I would still be buying from them simply because there is no other option if I want to buy games without DRM, and any game with DRM is a ticking time bomb that will eventually no longer be playable. I sure hope that GoG doesn't screw me over, and I wish that they had more of the features that Steam has, but GoG pretty much has a monopoly on DRM-free games. So, GoG is where I buy games, and I'm ticked off every time I have to buy a game from Steam instead of GoG, because the publisher releasing the game isn't consumer-friendly enough to release it DRM-free. This news - bad as it may be - changes none of that.

I don't mean to bash on GOG right now, but I think it's been some years since there was any chance of anyone accusing GOG of "blind idealism". I'm afraid we even sailed past "needs-thick-glasses" idealism a while back. At this point we're at "just had laser eye surgery and threw the glasses away" idealism.

See, about GOG being the only DRM-free store...
You mean there's any trace of idealism left in them? Heh... THAT's in itself idealism.