well, like I said, while GOG maintained fair pricing policy, it worked fairly well, now, not so much.

I admire how you blame buyer for not exchanging money for product, instead of blaming the product for not being attractive to buyer..

Whole DRM started from idea of "making product more appealing if buyer pays", however they misinterpreted what makes it "appealing". Restrictions do not make it appealing. Regular updates, contact with devs, support, good price, easiness to get, irrevocable right to use the software are. Even DRM can start to become appealing, if the life becomes hard "without it" as in case of online cheaters. Its really a dialogue between a buyer and a product, and no, seller has no tools to modify the buyer' features.

I had a look at a famous website - the most famous to my understanding - for pirated games and none of the games there comes from GOG, even when a GOG version is available. Everything is Steam (or Epic exclusives) cracks, with even an emulated Steam client that makes the games believe that Steam is running. In page after page of pirated games I could't see a GOG installer.

If the product isn't attractive to the buyer they they can... not buy it or play it? How is that an excuse for piracy? Lordy.

NO.

GOG actually decreases piracy somewhat.

Steam DRM increases piracy.

That just doesn't make much sense to me. It doesn't matter how attractive something is if one cannot afford it, and if other easy means to acquire it exists, then many will take it because they can, or because they have very little empathy for developers. They may even be like that if they can afford it, because they want to spend their money elsewhere or just feel like getting a freebie or perhaps want to try before they buy, etc, etc.

No idea where you got that notion from, and that and the rest of what you said makes no sense. Some form of DRM has been around for decades, and plenty of media never had DRM but people still paid for it, still do at GOG and some other places.

DRM for games came into being to stop people getting or making a copy of a game for free.

Yes!

When publishers are so stupid as to not offer a DRM free version of their game, I have to pirate it instead of buy it on GoG!

;)

Kidding by the way - I don't swim in the malware infested thief factory of pirated software, just thought it was a funny joke to make.

*starts sweating*

Piracy has always been an issue long before gog came around. People will pirate games regardless where it comes from.

Some people will pirate games regardless where it comes from, unless it is free.
It's not always about DRM either, though that can certainly be a big factor for some.
Price is always going to be your big determinant, followed by ease of obtaining a pirated version.

Over the years DRM has become less tolerable for many of us, due to its increased intrusiveness and online requirement. Even more so when seen as an unwanted overhead, especially when so many have issues with the running of a game and the amount of bugs so prevalent these days.

It is such a pleasure to run a game without any overheads, including no need for an optical drive or virtual drive.

I'm not one for buying AAA games, especially if they come with DRM on top of a ridiculous high price.
That said, I also choose not to get the pirated version ... I refuse to be that desperate, and in my world view, worse than not buying a DRM game at a high price, is not getting a pirated version either, meaning the DEVs and PUB don't even get free advertising and promotion.

GOG have plenty of good games on offer, and often for great or fair prices, and I am happy to oblige them and ignore piracy altogether, and I am not alone.

Thank Dog for GOG.

Depends on publishers, some want to sell more and will make product more attractive, some don't care. You don't have to have empathy, games are measured in a "fun per-cent" / fun percent. If you have so much to pay, but so little fun - no buyer is interested. Thats why people don't like when product gets split in tons of DLCs etc.

Try before the buy is definitely the way to go today, I have games when there are critical bugs middle of the game - and devs say something like "we will sure fix it after we finish our next title", time passes - no change. (I am looking at you, Halcyon 6) How high do you think is the chance I buy something from them again, hm?


Yes, this is the weird interpretation of "attractive", when you poison all meals and release cure for those who you think have paid :-) And if few legal buyer die, its okay as added income outweights the damages.

I consider piracy is not a good reason to avoid GOG, just look at the witcher 3 sale and you'll see there is no excuse to not sell on here.

Mhmm.

Piracy tends to be a good thing. Historically when Napster was a thing, only the big bands were complaining they weren't getting all their money. But then smaller bands got music out there much wider more popular and as a net result a lot more sales. And people who genuinely love your music will buy it once they know about it, but you don't want to slap down $10 per CD on 10 CD's you don't know to find music you may like, and might have one or two that are good; Instinctively you go with what you know is good, and what you may have heard on the Radio/TV and get discovery that way. Though sample players with 30 second clips do give you previews...

Sorta the same with games. And good games will sell regardless.

No one is going "Oh no! DRM on GTA was broken, so everyone download and pirate the game and never purchase from Rockstar again". Sorry doesn't happen. Not anymore than going to the library and 'War and Peace' is on the shelf and so no one goes to Barnes and Nobles or Amazon to purchase it.

Does Piracy cut into sales? Probably. But the sales generated tends to outweigh the sales lost by a huge margin. If you have 1 million people who pirate a game and play it, and only say 500 of them would have been forced to open their wallet rather than wait or not get it, that's 500 lost sales. But 50,000 enjoyed the game and purchase it, that's 49,500 gained sales. The other 950,000? Maybe they never touch the game. Maybe they played it, but have other things to do, or said it's not worth their time and deleted it 30 minutes in, or those that wanted the cracked file and already owned the game. Or maybe... Some game features like music was removed from a recent patch and they wanted the music back so get the whole game from an older version.

Who knows...

No.