After seeing this thread i started paying a bit more attention. Recently, i found some issues with the mobile VLC, and it would seem the magic workaround has exposed a privacy issue, where VLC refuses to not store the password. And let's not forget, megacorporation Google is ensuring it has representatives pushing to drastically change C++, despite the proposed changes more or less being in other similar languages already (and thus not necessary), even going as far as trying to break the ABI which would cause issues with DLLs (so far, despite how much hate i've gotten from other coders on the issue, it seems ABI stability is managing to win every vote so far).

So I ask, when are regular people going to finally tell these corporate shits where to shove it? When are we going to stop towing the anti-capitalist corporate lines and not become blind consumers? If we don't, why should those of us with knowledge and skills even bother trying to make technology more free, reliable, private, and safer when people, including those who tried to make things better, just throw it out the window? What good is supporting companies like GOG when the DRM-creep is still happening?

The main problem is a combination of ignorance and convenience. Many people still don't realize the value of privacy and DRM-free products because the offending parties love to make their privacy-invasive, DRM-laden distribution platforms the easiest and most convenient ways to enjoy those products. Invasion of privacy and DRM are both ways to control people. Our modern society is obsessed with convenience. They'll ignore genuine issues as long as they can consume, consume, consume without much effort.

The best thing we can do is to refuse to be discouraged. We have to keep spreading the word, explaining our point of view and showing people why it's important to guard our privacy and why it's important to promote DRM-free avenues of enjoying products.

I'm afraid it's getting harder and harder for us to be consistent. Vigilance is getting alot harder as we go.

Because there are no viable alternatives to GOG that offer a reasonably large selection of good DRM-free games.

It's like the saying goes: "beggars can't be choosers."

Since the market is starved for DRM-free choices which mostly don't exist, then we are compelled to "take what we can get," even if the only thing we can get is not that great (i.e. the GOG store).

I agree with you that GOG suffers from DRM-creep, and I'm not happy about that either.

But a pseudo/sort-of DRM-free store is still better than the full-on DRM'ed stores...at least, for now.

That could easily change though, once the DRM-creep on GOG gets too far out of hand.

That's true but as cheesy as it may sound, we really can't give up. GOG has grown quite a bit over the years to the point where other DRM-free platforms have risen so it's clear that it's making progress.. it's just that it may be a bit too slow, sadly. With very minor exceptions, GOG has nothing even resembling DRM and none of it is actual DRM even then. Multiplayer routed through a game client does not equal DRM.

Wirth's law... That's a whole other topic, and believe me i'm on that one, too. That's not remotely true. I've been to dlsite as of late and most games are DRM-free, and, unlike gog, the ones with DRM in them actually come with a warning and don't get DRM added to them later if they don't have it. Now, of course, for the english-exclusive audience, that's not enough games, but i keep seeing similar things on other sites like Zoom, itch.io (which has some nice exclusives GOG missed out on), etc. I only keep up with GOG because they haven't crossed the line, yet. I've seen a few other DRM-free stores with the DRM-creep. The next step for GOG is mandatory galaxy for some games, most likely, and then it'll be on part with the rest, honestly. Even many steam games don't have DRM. I've more or less moved my shopping to dlsite, 'cause the 70% RPG-maker games manage to have more variety than GOG (somehow people have managed to make "action games" out of RPG-maker and it still impresses me). DLSite also isn't playing politics like GOG is, either.

Galaxy-only multiplayer games definitely have their multiplayer aspects gated behind the Galaxy DRM, there is no question about that. That certainly is DRM.

And in recent years GOG has also allowed DRM into some of their singleplayer games too, like Cyberpunk 2077.

There is no such thing as "minor exceptions." GOG advertises itself as the home of DRM-free games, and not "DRM-free games, with minor exceptions."

And if there are so-called "minor exceptions" in which DRM is allowed, then it means GOG is failing to live up to it's own stated mandate, and also not advertising itself properly either.

Honestly, it seems to be the norm outside of the west, or at least is for the japanese market. Some of these may even be older than GOG. I find that ironic, too, that this is largely a problem "here." As someone who does coding of his own, i'll daresay that there's no reason we can't do things the old way as a "fallback." That's DRM, as even stardew valley, with it's client support, manages to have "specify ip and port."


EDIT: And gwent, forgot about that.

There are sites out there, though, like zoom-platform and others....problem is, if gamers don't give them much of a chance, not much will likely change.And if people were choosier a bit more, maybe they wouldn't have to be beggars.Well said

I disagree. I consider the multiplayer client-requirement (and inability to play the same copy of the multiplayer game with two different GOG accounts at the same time; I presume there are such restrictions) as DRM...

...but the thing is that I don't really mind that kind of multiplayer-DRM, and in fact feel in many cases it even benefits me, the customer (because if a cheater is banned from a DRM multiplayer game, then he would have to buy the same game again on a separate account in order to play it online; ha ha! Unfortunately that doesn't work for free-to-play games of course...).

That is why e.g. Team Fortress 2 (a Steam online game) free casual mode is infested by cheaters and cheater bots (this problem has been there for years), while the competitive mode, which you can access only if you pay a little and give your phone number to Steam, is free of cheaters. In the free casual mode the cheater bots just automatically recreate a new cheater bot Steam account, in case the current Steam account (created by the bot) gets banned.

But for single-player games, I very much oppose DRM because I can't think of any scenario where it would benefit me, the end-user.

That's one of many methods to deal with cheaters. If you know of a cheater, most cheaters dont' know how to proxy, and even if they do, their ping will be prohibitively bad so you can use iptables or something to get rid of repeat offenders on your own.

If it was that simple, then I am sure Team Fortress 2 (casual mode) wouldn't have the cheater bot infestation for many years already.

The cheater bot software is open source and the little changes that Valve has tried to do to mitigate the cheater bot problem doesn't seem to have slowed the bots down almost at all (well, nowadays the bots can't crash the multiplayer servers anymore in case someone starts a vote to kick the bot out, but other than that the bots seem to have no issues causing problems to other players...).

But as said, the paid/identified competitive mode of TF2 seems to be free of the cheater bots, and cheaters overall, because there they have a real danger of either losing money, or being able to play the game (without a re-purchase), in case they'd be banned from the game.

Most people are too lazy to invest. It's actually effective for forums as well, just not perfect. You can slow down someone by quite a lot by ip-banning them. Of course, at the company level that can be problematic if the ISP doesn't lease static IPs, but 1 week is probably enough. And that's one of many methods. Most people don't know how to change a "unique ID" either that could be hashed from some serial number and a timestamp or something. Of course,cheat tools might then code for that, but then there are still other methods out there. Most effective, though, is not using global match-making in the first place. Play with friends, and if you want to have a global competition, you can have sign ups, which can be far, far more rigorous than a steam account setup. Valve isn't particularly competent or good in this field. From their perspective, a "ranked" setup would actually work quite well, too. Once you pass a threshhold, which could be further factored with ownership time, you get matched with different players. There's also a game, which i forget the name of, which got some interesting fame for, intead of banning "hackers," it would throw them into a category where the game would prefer to match them only with other hackers, which has some odd psychological effects, as you might imagine. Of course it's effective, but it requires DRM.

But, hey, i'm also against centralized cheat detection, too. I remember playing Call of Duty: United Offensive, back in the day, where people used aim bots and stuff regularly, but it wasn't all that bad. Meanwhile, actual cheat detection isn't all that good, either, with many methods being known for false positives and anti-consumer expectations on the systems (can't have certain programs installed, even if they have no effect on the game). I'll pass on that. Halo handled this stuff well, too, with bans without needing DRM outside of a CD key (which is totally crackable).

So question. I went to check on F-Droid, since Anti-Features are often prominently displayed there, and none of the permissions were highlighted as such, nor did any of the permissions listed on Aurora Droid really alarm me.

You sure you're using a legit VLC? The Play Store is known for being terribly rife with clones, fakes, and worse.