I agree that's how it was when I "left gaming" a few years ago, but since I've been back I bought two Ubi games on Steam both SEEM to have redeemed on Uplay with no Steam attachment. I could be wrong though, I haven't launched them yet.

In any case I see you meant more that Uplay launches either way, rather than games being exclusive to the Uplay store, which yes is the case. Origin literally is the only place to get EA games, which is a big distinction IMO.

I always wonder why EA do not sell more old games that they have had license.
Even if they think old games are not popular enough, put them on store cost almost zero.

In my experience, logic has never been EA's strong suit. :P Ditto for Nintendo, even though they evidently had a great year, so what the hell do I know?

You only care about DRM when it bites you back in the ass, like...

- when you find out that your games with Starforce only run on Windows XP.

- when you reach your 3x installationlimit of Need For Speed Shift.

- when you can't play Safedisc protected games on Windows 10.

- when Games For Windows Live dies and you can't play anything that uses it.

- when Desura shut down their servers, goodbye gamelibrary.

- when Steam/2K decides to remove content from GTA San Andreas because of expired licenses even for buyers who bought it before the expiration.

etc.

If someone across the world and flick a switch or push a button and your game stops working... you might not like the DRM much more.

Getting bitch-slapped by DRM restrictions several times and you'll change your mind. Even if you have the game, you need permission to play it.

And some companies don't want you to have the disc at all, where the game is streamed to you so every second is under someone else's control. So you couldn't hack or crack it at a later date.

Let's move this to a car. Automated/self-driving cars are being pushed right now, and they want to take away the steering wheel AND the petals. It might take you from A to B, or maybe it will decide to drive you straight into a brick wall... Who's in control of the car? Not you.

you do realise that many (if not most) games on Desura were DRM free?

I suspected such as I never used Desura, but I arrest my case that something like this can (and will) happen to a online provider such as Steam, Origin, uPlay and GFWL is already on lifesupport.

Kidnapp Bill Gates's dog and hold it hostage.

Ok so you jumped directly from BBC to MS-DOS PC.

I know people had their share of problems with copy protections of many Commodore 64 games, like a game on tape recorded so badly that even the original copy would often fail to load (it was done in order to make any pirate copies useless), or all kinds of lenslock shit or whatever.

I was bitten right into arse by copy protection with the Amiga version of Gunship (Microsoft). It had several layers or copy protection and one of them, the modified boot sector on the game diskette, got overwritten and I couldn't play the original game anymore. Maybe that was the first time I really started hating these copy protection/DRM schemes.

PC/MS-DOS gaming had much less of that as far as I can tell. When I moved to PC gaming, I was quite surprised that quite often PC games didn't have much of, or any, copy protections or even "look up a word in the manual". It was quite different from e.g. Amiga.


As for modern DRM, I am kinda miffed now that I can't play my original copies of Plants vs Zombies or Peggle anymore, because the online DRM in them doesn't work anymore. The validation servers have apparently been closed down, I can't get past the part where the games try to validate the installation online. Fjuck DRM.

DRM causes multible issus:

- A publisher is able to put already existing contend behind a paywall via patch. (Destiny 2)
- A publisher can patch in new gamebreaking bugs and abandon the game shortly after. This is only an issue with DRM, because you cannot undo anything. (PS3-version of Fallout New Vegas)
- DRM often leads to much higher hardware requirements (Assassins Creed Origins)
- Some games won't play if your internet connection bugs out or there is a server issue, so all your progress is iost if this happens during gameplay.
- DRM makes games more expensive.

So yes, I still care about DRM. ;)

- Or the game you bought and payed good money for is region locked. Happened to two friends of mine. They bought Manhunt 2 (box!) in the UK - it requires Steam. Impossible to activate/play with a German IP address. Activated it masking IP address - got caught and lost their accounts, one of them had about ~80 games in them, mostly bought full-price (that was before the "there's always a sale" craziness took off).

- Or the game you bought and played for years suddenly becomes the "low violence version", with no way back. Happened to German owners of Half-Life 1+2, including TFC.

The only reason I care about DRM is because I do not view games as a service. I view them as property that I should own when I purchase the right to play them. That means I should have the right to copy the game, install it wherever and whenever I want, and not have to phone home if I exchange my RAM sticks or GPU.

DRM has evolved to the point where it no longer typically breaks people's machines like it used to (See StarForce and early Securom) so it's really a non issue in most people's minds.

The only reason to buy from GOG these days is to have a personal backup copy of your games, and not have to rely on an internet connection to install/reinstall them. Other than that, GOG is now basically as others have said, a poor man's Steam.

Maybe they changed because they had to to survive, or maybe they changed to increase revenue for their game projects which those of us who've been around a while, know tend to take almost as long as 3D Realms' projects (Two zingers against 3DR in one day oh my)

Whatever the case, they decided to compromise their ideals to make more money, and I doubt that most new users on this site care what DRM even is, or even know what it means. GOG only became popular because of certain reasons, and those reasons are no longer in play.

Do I care about DRM? Yes. But not nearly like I used to.

There's a LOT of misconception out there about this in my experience, mostly because the interface is crap. You can make an offline local profile and play GFWL games singleplayer just fine. It's the multiplayer that's dead, unless it's fixed somehow.

There are patches to get around Win Live, at least for GTA.