Give this (German) blog entry a read.
https://www.gamestar.de/community/user/vainamoinen,506761/blog/quo-vadis-gog,506761,17878.html
The author rambles a fair bit, but has their shit together in this particular issue (wink wink :) ).

To attempt a TL;DR: The copy protection mechanisms that irked the shit out of us were still very much around in 2008, when GOG launched (and Steam only introduced their own DRM scheme). Back then, "intrusive DRM" meant directly noticeable, uncomfortable restraints in gaming: The bugs and incompatibility that came with Starforce and SecuROM, the limited activations of Mass Effect and Bioshock, lost code wheels and product keys, the barrage of obsolete games every time Microsoft rolled out a new OS, etc. No one was talking about today's swift online verification that doesn't go on your nerves.

Going by strict definition, GOG is still selling "DRM free" games, but you're not feeling the values any more that you once did. And that's the interesting thing, as "DRM" today means a fairly different thing than "DRM" did in 2008, we could have been wrong about those assumed values all along.

Today, "DRM free" is cumbersome and uncomfortable, and "DRM" is smooth and unintrusive. GOG clearly attempted to sell comfort back in the day. The introduction of a client and user profiles may be in line with that idea (!).

On the face of it, using "DRM free" as a statement can not work as well as it did 10 years ago, because it doesn't mean the same thing as 10 years ago.

Social media schemes like profiles or achievements factually are the most effective piracy prevention mechanism ever devised. At the same time, online verifiction becomes more and more obsolete. Valve could abandon those traditional DRM schemes tomorrow, and literally nothing would change for Newell & Cie.

I'd love to have a good talk with GOG getting into the nitty gritty of where they stand on a lot of those issues. I don't at all think they're screwing their customers over (four years of regional pricing compensation? Fuck yeah). But they evidently do not act according to some crucial values I myself have, that are very important to me.

Many people don't care about DRM until they're hit with an issue that directly affects them:-

- "Someone please help me, a bunch of much loved old disc based games have stopped working in Windows 10. I'm told it's due to the OS now blocking stuff like Safedisc & SecuROM and that the solution is to use "no-CD" cracks".

- "That's correct. They're usually replacement .exe's with the DRM stripped out that should continue to work. Apply the ones for your games and you should be OK"

- "But I don't have them and can't find them anywhere!"

- "Why didn't you download them before when they were more prevalent?"

- "Because I didn't care about DRM and assumed it would never affect me..."

^ Saw a conversation like that literally the other day. The difference between old vs new DRM is about control. All the time it relied on something local (a serial key, a CD check, a code wheel, etc), it could continue to work for as long as you took care of your stuff. Serial key stickers can be stored as a text file in case they get worn away, no-CD cracks's can be backed up and CD's can be ripped to ISO's and mounted as virtual drives to save wear and tear. Text files with answers to "enter the 3rd word on the 4th page" permutations or Leisure Suit Larry's amusing "age quiz" have long been available. Even though there is a DRM process, it's you that retains control over it.

But when things went online and account locked, install limits, OS technical changes, etc, control was removed and it's basically in someone else's hands. Best case, you experience a temporary glitch (eg, Christmas Day DDOS of Steam) and it gets sorted. Worst case is this happens at the flip of a switch:-
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/ea-bans-out-of-nowhere-an-entire-country-from-origin-without-offering-refunds-or-compensations/

^ The above link alone is why "I didn't care about old DRM why should I care about new" is naively missing the point. All DRM is about control, the difference is whether that control is local or remote determines whether or not you "own" it in a practical, tangible sense.

Other problems with DRM are as other people explained:-

1. Forced Steam updates (with offline GOG installers you retain version control).

2. DRM overhead. "Denuvo doesn't affect performance" has long been debunked. Even Syberia 3 (a simple point & click) starts up 40s faster without it.

3. "Slippery slope". Many people 'didn't care' about early micro-transactions or loot-boxes either "because I'll never buy them personally and so they'll never affect me". Now look at the state of the gaming industry where gameplay itself is dictated by MT's even if you don't buy them (eg, shooters made more grindy / bullet-spongy to encourage pay2degrind MT's). Same with "software as a service" trend, or the push for locking formerly free Skyrim mods behind paywalls, etc.

Best way to keep gaming healthy is to push-back against anti-consumer stuff as a loud collective group in general and nip problems in at the root before they grow. The enemy of this is "if it doesn't affect me today, I won't say anything, just hope I'll remain immune" gamer apathy. Problem with that is, what you may not care about today, may very well affect you in 5 years time for unforeseen reason (eg, Microsoft changes how Windows works again), and if there's one thing the AAA gaming industry is notorious for, it's "give them an inch and they'll take a mile".

The main problem with this argument is that I heard this exact same argument 10 years ago, and it still does not affect me.

so, meh. apathy - here I come.

No, I jumped ship in the early 90s, and being amazed how (IIRC) my original Wing Commander 2, Red Baron, Leisure Suit Larry 5, Space Quest 4 etc. didn't have any copy protection at all, or even manual keyword searching. They were completely DRM-free as far as I could tell, you didn't need even the original installation diskettes after installing the game the first time (ie. the installation was and is completely portable, just zip it and copy to another PC).

Same goes to many many other PC games that I recall, including e.g. Doom and Duke3D. Some PC games from that era had some sort of manual check, like Monkey Island 2 and the first Wing Commander game, but even with those there was no physical copy protection IIRC, meaning you could at least make backup copies of your original installation diskettes (something that wasn't possible with e.g. the Amiga version of Gunship; it had both a physical copy protection, and TWO different manual look-up checks, one when you started the game, and another when you were returning to your base after a successful mission).

And to make matters worse, Amiga Gunship required you to keep the write protection disabled (it would write something to your original game diskette, maybe it was your mission status or high scores or something), which made the diskette vulnerable to simple boot sector viruses, which would overwrite the game diskette's modified boot sector, hence breaking the game diskette. And since you couldn't make a backup copy of that diskette...

Yet, DRM are not alone in making games non working.
Nowdays many games are just simply broken.
Look at Kingdom Come: deliverance.

What about it?

That's why, if possible, the same strategy was applied then and now by people: buy (copy protected) game*, play with the *arrrr* version...

* And this boxed copy was actually worth something... Think of the wonderfully detailed manual MicroProse & co provided...
That's an interesting thought, and there's some truth to that. On the other hand not all gamers value profiles and achievements ("bragging rights") that much. I'm not even sure it's the majority, at least when it comes to the "big spenders" with huge libraries.

One thing I'm pretty sure off though: If they dropped DRM altogether the drop of revenue wouldn't be as big as companies think. Witcher 3 pretty much proved this. And they would save millions they currently spend on the race between crackers and DRM-devs. Let alone that some die-hard DRM enemies like me would actually start to give them money.

Btw... IMO the shitstorm about the public you described on that GameStar page a) wasn't as bad as you made it out to be and b) was well deserved.

Do I really care? Yes, Because old games DRM isn't support by current platforms. Also for newer gog games I shouldn't need to be connected to play single player games online just because of DRM. I want to enjoy a game I payed for legaly offline, without any intrusive code or third party client. I've been cracking my games since the 80s and I will continue cracking games for my personal use in 2080 when I'm old and moldy.

Gog has made it easier so I don't have to crack my games. DRM free means I can install and play games. No worries. No headaches. life is good for me.

Forced online gaming, registration and activation at each install, phone home...

I don't focus on performance, if DRM or DRM-lite even didn't have performance issues or archiving issues, even if servers would last for ever, it's no matter for me. It's just like online advertisement, the whole industry has gone too far by the past to be reliable nowadays even if they are now honest. Just like I won't prevent myself to use an adblock, I just don't want any kind of thing used to "prove" that games or software I have are genuinely paid. I have already paid them, past the bill it's none of business but mine.

I'm no guilty of thieving, but here I should have to prove my innocence?
In that way, publishers should have to prove they aren't crooks, shouldn't they?

Pity that I have to prevent few gog games reaching web for telemetry. So convenience is a bit gone.
A bit bitter.

Sure, but we are splitting hairs here. The point I was trying to make is that the OP's premise - that the Steam DRM is non-invasive, harmless, and a vast improvement over other forms of DRM/copy protection - is false.

in your opinion...

You made some solid points here, but drm are against my principles. Besides, it's hard enough to keep a computer healthy without installing an umpteenth 3rd party application.

How did you know that no one complained or cared? Is it because they didn't call you on the phone about it? Nobody is forcing you to care. Actually the majority of people don't care. Are you sad because some people do? Actually, what is your point exactly?

Good point. Plenty of people cared when BoiShock launched and they couldn't authenticate their games because the servers were down. There were a lot of complaints about that. And then when the 2 activation limit locked people out of their game, there were plenty of complaints about that too. And then when the deauthorization tool was released so you could get an activation back... and that didn't work for many people, there were plenty of complaints about that as well.