Agreed but some companies like Rockstar will sooner liquidate rather than lift DRM.

I'm going to be the unpopular opinion guy and say that we can't be completely sure that gog decreases piracy.
YOU think it decreases piracy because YOU think drm free is better.
I can't give you graphs on this since its something very difficult to calculate on my own like that, but from what I've seen, there's a genuine concern about drm free facilitating piracy, at least among a lot of devs. They've given reasons as to why they will never release their games here, because drm free means losing control of the game's distribution. They weren't AAA companies either. I can say that among several gaming forums and sites, the general consensus would be "if it's on gog, you can just pirate it easily". You don't have to wait for a crack, and that makes it a whole lot easier to just pirate things.

Hell, CDPR themselves used to release games lie the early Witcher entries with some nasty DRM.

And I don't think you can completly blame indie studios who want to have a modicum of control in their sales and also make *some* profit, *if* they make a profit. DRM might be evil but it's easy to paint them as villains when you're just sitting there at the comfort of your house, receiving the very end of the entire production process.

However, there's also the interesting angle about cracking games. All of the games that had their drm systems removed were cracked in one way or another. And I always bring up this example, because it's something worth mentioning, but an Arcanum modder told us (forum posters, in other site) that the Arcanum version which gog sells is cracked. The .exe was modified in a similar manner that pirates will use. He even said that gog was "selling a torrent".

But thats a deeper question. EA even removed DRM from some games (if you redeemed the Sims 2 collection, the drm was patched out). And National Libraries which are now including games as part of their catalogue are demaning software to be cracked, not just games, because you need to be able to replicate it easily for showcase. As I said, it's something deep. But it is what it is.

True
If you have a product and it has x value in a persons life it can therefore be related to the cost of a loaf of bread and without accounting for currency differences you in fact have a highly variable value proposition.
Some people will go hey that costs as much as a beer even if i don't like some of it's merits I'll give it a go because it's cheap enough;
While others will say I need to pay my rent and that's too big a chunk out of my food budget to justify a little entertainment.

It's an unfortunate side affect of capitalist globalization that won't go away because on one hand capital requires a cheap source of labor with a place to dump and on the other hand a stable market that has wealth (and with that comes principles & guidelines which of course it would rather do without) so it can exploit both.

Who here has ever claimed that?

For sure though, every sale at GOG is one that could have resulted in piracy once upon a time.
Many of us have mended our ways since the advent of GOG, with admissions of that all over the forum.

So it ain't wishful thinking based on desire, instead it is a desire to use GOG instead of supporting piracy.

Many DEVS suffer from irrational fears.
If their fears had any foundation to them, GOG wouldn't have lasted 12 days let alone 12 years.
Many just can't accept that a few bad eggs will get a freebie. It's not about a lost sale, but the notion someone got their product for free.

mmmm i'll say overall it probably decreases piracy vs if it was DRM'd. If someone thinks they can get something at any time they are less likely to get it, or go out of their way to find it from somewhere shady.

Oh it makes it easier no doubt because there's no DRM restrictions. But it's sorta the Streisand effect I'd say. The more you push to remove something, the more people want to go find it, learn it, and download it. By not making a big deal of it and not trying to purge there are those that will go find it, and many that it just leave recent memory and they forget about it.

Bethesda games are on sale now.

Thanks to this, some friend who used to get some games from less than reputable corners of the Net was able to get full and legal licenses for the games, worry free... that friend is happy now. ;-)

I'd say GOG deals a massive blow to piracy. Why risk a cracked torrent when a safe, DRM-free download of your game is less than USD 2...?

(I'm not sure what all I can say without getting in trouble)

I think that as or if GOG grows in popularity and gets more AAA titles, it will become more popular to pirate GOG versions of games because of how easy it is to do, and I wouldn't be surprised if, when one goes to a pirate site and happens to search for a game that's on GOG, the GOG release might be close to the top. I also know there's a site dedicated to hosting GOG games for free, sadly. (I know this might be perhaps a pessimistic or an unpopular view; I could be wrong but I don't want to avoid potential harsh truth.)

I just checked a site, and looking I saw some currently-popular t*rr*nts :p were GOG games, including one that just released today, but it looked like the "top 100 games for the month" had no GOG games, since many were AAA titles.

Well that's good info, cheers :)

Welp I do now!

Mmmm I smell contradiction.

The most popular pirated games are AAA ones, and by their very nature they were not a minimal development effort. Sure they may not have been completed as well as they should have been (bugs etc), but major effort went into them.

It has been my experience for many years, that price is the biggest determining factor when it comes to getting a game. And a pirated version may then be acquired if easy enough to get ... certainly in many cases. DRM is also a factor for some, who don't like its intrusive or controlling nature.

I've never heard of anyone getting a pirated version due to minimal developer effort. If it's that bad, why would you even want the game. Sure though, some might have been disappointed with the last game by a developer or publisher, and thus no longer want to pay them again, or desire to try before you buy, especially in the case of series. So if you feel ripped off, that could certainly motivate you to grab a pirated version instead.

Financial state would have to be the single biggest governing factor. The desires of most usually outstrip their cashflow. If you have a huge desire to play a game but cannot afford it, then the temptation to get a pirated version may be very great. Or it may be, that all your friends have a game, and you want to be part of the party or keep up with latest releases etc etc.

Due to piracy, lack of money isn't a barrier ... though buying a good enough PC might be. Sometimes people can only afford one or the other ... especially in this age of expecting you to get a new OS and computer every few years and the ever increasing hardware demands of many games. Not surprising that some spend all their money on just the hardware and then get pirated games etc.

And what about the troll poo, don't you smell that;-)

what is the contradiction? people want a good game ofc they pirate expensive ones most as there they would lose the most money + those are the most known games

I began buying games again because of GOG. I wanted to play Ultima VIII and a myabandonia link sent me here. Since then I've bought hundreds of games here. I think there's many that started buying games again because of GOG. I wasn't even much into games anymore before, just the occasional MAME or old game.
I've seen free games in pirating websites, and full-time pirates don't even bother with freebies.