Not much to say apart from the fact that I love GOG! On my website I just wrote an article about issues relating to DRM, and why people who love games should make GOG their first choice. Hopefully I am preaching to the converted here. In case anyone is interested: https://www.karldrinkwater.uk/2018/06/an-issue-that-concerns-me-relating-to.html

And the fact that GOG is happy with DRM on multiplayer.

Listen, don't mention the steamification! I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right.

DRM on MP? How else are they going to take every games under one roof? I might be a bit pedantic now, but that's not drm. Also those that starts a company usually have passion about something.

I still have my quite old netbook (900MHz, 1GB RAM) with Linux and XP installed. Playing steam games was real pain in the.. eye since the client use to use more than half of the memory. With GOG I can easily play my older games, so I can understand how serious the issue can be. Not to mention other disadvantages offered with DRM. Sure, there is a paranoid movement around, but not everyone of us seeing signs of 'incoming DRM apocalypse' to GOG. Galaxy is and will stay optional. Even on my main laptop I'm using Galaxy only on Windows and only if I want to track my gametime.

Am I converted? I don't know, avoided Steam as long as I could, used it for about two years and keeping my account there only because my hard copies are hostages to Steam.. I haven't spent any money there for at least three or four years. I'd rather spend my money here, supporting DRM-Free movement ; ) Hard to call myself converted since I never believed in any DRM anyway.
Can't say much about piracy, those days, with so many freebies and giveaways piracy sounds like some kind of bizzare hobby or other deviancy to me.

Its not really DRM on multiplayer, more an account based validation to access a service (the MP server).
You need to separate the concepts of software and service.

If i'm using a hosted service I've no qualms with using an account to access them, I'm also aware that access to that service is finite. Which is why I like to have a LAN option for my games.

I really don't see the distinction. Either I can play my game freely, or there's a system in place to lock me out. That's no DRM or DRM. That's the DRM free option. Except that "LAN" is a silly artificial restriction. If you can connect between computers on a local area network freely, then you really should be able to connect between computers across the internet freely.

It's... complicated. Sort of. Depends on what the multiplayer experience is trying to do. If offering leaderboards and the like, then it would be quite difficult to find a way to repeatedly differentiate this player from that player, and to have a persistent record for the leaderboard.

That said, many games do NOT have that sort of feature. And for those, it would be great if developers programmed in a mechanism where someone can host outside of the dev/pub ecosystem. And for those that don't really need persistence of data from one session to the next, there shouldn't be much need for account verification through the publisher.

If all you need is a persistent data store, well there are ways to provide that without DRM.

In the simple case, the publisher can host their service but leave it open for anyone to sign up with (yes, this means they also shoulder the cost for pierats). It doesn't need to be tied to my ownership of a given title in my Steam / GOG library. There are many games that work this way, and I do consider them DRM-free. But if they're forcing me to go through accounts and services "just because", in a game that doesn't really need services (and maybe even provides a LAN option, again artificially restricted to LAN), I get frustrated. I'm pretty sure they do that intentionally because it is effectively DRM.

The other approach is to let the client or the hosted servers keep your data. E.g. community-run Q3 (and derivatives like Enemy Territory) are already tracking players and keeping data on the servers. In ET, each player has a unique id by which they're recognized. Client-side storage is another option, and can be made tamperproof through digital signatures. Obviously this is only good for data that is only needed when the client is connected.

Seriously though, if all they want to provide is a goddamn leaderboard, no, no, there is no need to check that I'm signed in to GOG and that I have the game in question in my library.

"Who is this player" can also be implemented thru signatures. Obviously some sort of repository hosting the public keys must be available. Even with millions of players that's going to be pretty small and read-mostly, thus easy to distribute. A little bit of latency with new sign-ins wouldn't generally hurt but even that can be optimized out by only syncing as unseen keys come up.

The problem is that game devs have zero incentive to take this route when even supposed DRM-free advocates are more than happy to sell their soul for multiplayer. So devs tie their product to your store account which is convenient for them and gives them DRM as a byproduct.

And then some DRM-free advocates praise the "good guys" that provide a "LAN" mode artificially restricted to a switched network or private address space. (It's still UDP over IP or TCP over IP under the hood and would work all the same even if there's a router or ten between the players)

Yugh I'm so disgusted :(

I completely agree. I've heard the whole "service" argument before. It doesn't hold water. Playing a game with a spouse in the same household is not a service as far as I would prefer the definition. Legally, who cares. DRM for all. But Neverwinter nights has DRM. Multiplayer DRM. Baldurs Gate does not ( the classic one). One is a pain the butt, one isn't.

I've been online with my gog key and been booted from nwn (my personal key). Because the game thought I had the same key as someone else. Really, I think it was was confusing me for myself between quick log ins. The serial number system had other uses, but it was truly intended to be drm.

Yep, the CD key issues are a good example of genuine crap we have to deal with. There is no doubt that they were intended to discourage piracy.

I'll note that some old games that lack services can be a pain in the butt for people behind NAT. It's especially bad for those behind CGN. So I understand why some services are provided and desirable. However, they can be optional; NAT can be worked around; and there's no need to tie hole punching or relay servers to a game store account & game ownership.

I can't comment on this because I don't play multiplayer games at all. I see the discussion below looks at it far more knowledgeably than I can! But I imagine that's still at least as good as Steam, which is similar - and for people like me who only play single player, it's not an issue (though I can understand people being frustrated by it). Regional prices - I don't fully understand this one. I just buy the games and sometimes seem to get credit added back into my account.

Galaxy opt out bundled installers - this did frustrate me at first when they made the default downloads include Galaxy. I didn't understand what was going on and it caught me out a few times. Now I know to choose "Classic installers". I still think I should be able to choose those as my default in my settings.

Public profiles of everyone - yes, I was shouting loud about that too. I'm glad they pulled back, though it has still left a mildly clunky mess (I used to click on my name to see my games - now I just get a 404 error, and have to use a drop-down menu). Still, that doesn't stop me backing up my games and rarely visiting GOG if that was my preference.

In fact you are preaching to some archbishops of the DRM-free conviction ;). I tend to see myself as a traditional orthodox in this belief - keeping with the true DRM-free faith upon which GOG was originally founded. Do not stray from the path and ye shall be guided to gaming deliverance!

Autocorrect, or just a hilariously misplaced space? XD
(I admit, it took me a couple of tries to parse this before I figured out what you meant.)