Remember the thousands of 1-star-reviews of Spore on Amazon because of the DRM?

Then they have changed that. I know people who effectively lost their accounts. But that was quite a few years ago...

Oh, yes. That was a shitstorm.

Something else that I think has happened is that with the stupendously low prices most PC games eventually release, it's still a fine value proposition to "rent" a game for $5 for ten or twenty years, if Steam eventually folds and somehow those games are not maintained by the community. I see people on here who refuse to buy a game they would love, even for five bucks, because of DRM... that seems odd to me. Have you never rented a movie?

I have. But I've bought the movies I really liked afterwards. Call it OCD...

Or another perspective would be - why such a disproportionately short expectation of lifespan for treating games "differently" relative to other entertainment media purely for artificial reasons of DRM? Eg, I think nothing of reading / listening to / watching a good book, CD, DVD, 25 years later. Last week I re-played Heretic (1994) and watched "North by Northwest" (1959) for the first time. Felt as normal as picking up any new stuff and in no way, shape or form did either feel "disposable" or "rented". 10 years is absolutely nothing in terms of media ownership lifespan. It's like saying "You know all these epic pre-2008 movies, music & books from Beethoven's 5th Symphony, through to Casablanca, To Kill A Mockingbird, A Brave New World, The Beatles White Album, Terminator 2, The Matrix, etc"? Well treat the whole lot as artificially disposable rentals "because pre-2008 cutoff = rental"". Abnormally short arbitrary cutoff dates that are out of whack with the natural lifespan of the underlying medium they're "protecting" to the tune of decades makes literally the least sense "argument" of all for why people shouldn't "care" about DRM.

Ultimately the whole point of the push for DRM-free games is all about game preservation - and that by definition suggests intent for long-term ownership / reliability of future playback that's not the same as renting a movie for 3-days over the weekend. Sure we've all had 1-3* bad movies that we have no intent of watching again, but DRM-free is about the 4-5* star stuff that we will re-watch / re-listen / replay. It's one thing for something to not work for genuine total obsolescence reasons ("hey, where can I play my Edison wax cylinder phonograph"), but quite something else for a platform's (x86) whose entire strength is backwards compatibility going back 30 years, to be artificially crippled by "middleware" purely for "political" reasons. Especially when that platform has emulators that ironically have no problem playing back 30 year old stuff leaving "10 year expiry dates" looking incredibly fake. (And doubly so when pirated versions of those "10 year lifespan" games continue to work +20-30 years later).

No matter how much or how little you paid for it - even if you only paid $0.01 for it - as long as the core "playback" capability remains, there should be no reason why video games that were sold as owned, purchased products (not time-limited console rental or subscription based streaming services) shouldn't be treated as "owned property for life" by default no different to any other entertainment product in the market.

GOG aint

Ever heard of „sticking to principles“? I know it‘s not very common these days, because nearly everyone needs to it (game, movie, whatever) RIGHT NOW. That‘s the reason Steam and GOG can do anything they want. There will be a little crying if a game cannot be activated on day one and scream8ng that they will never buy a game again, but next game ... same result.

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."
Groucho Marx

Some of CDs, I still own, are now unreadable. Some of games with third party online protection cant be played coz servers went down. Once steam got bugged, while I was in a place without internets, and logged me out - my ~200 titles library became unplayable.

Since all deez protection methods rely on a single thing, that may be broken or shutdown without a replacement - I prefer DRM-free games, when possible. If somebody will develop some sort of DHT-driven key verification with post-quantum cryptography and optional access via radio - I will be one of first people to support such DRM with green presidents.

DRM. I care. But it's not the only, exclusive, thing I care about. I also care about :

1° The game being good.

2° The game allowing me to play in a available language that I select on my own (instead of imposing it based on my OS), and this is something where Steam is more reliable than Gog.

3° My sympathy for the shop, its staff, and its "community", and while Gog had struck me as cool people doing cool stuff for cool people when I first joined, both the shop and its community have rolled pretty far downhill since then. Right now, I don't feel particularly more supportive of Gog than of Steam or any other vending machine anymore.

4° Autonomy. Let's call this autonomy.I tend to conflate it with DRM issue, but apparently you can sell DRM-free games while still embedding them more and more into your shop's version of facebook. So yeah, cyber-social gadgets irk me as much as DRM, even when presented as their own unrelated thing.

So, DRM matter, but my acquisition of a game depends on several factors that balance each others. The balance used to tilt largely towards Gog, as DRM-free games were sold in the sympathetic shop with the sympathetic crowd and the refreshing lack of social networking goo (and I used to know in advance in which language I would be able to play the game). Now, things have changed, and DRM alone, while I curse when it's present, is merely one element weighting amongst others, more evenly distributed.

I started caring when one DRM bricked my cddrive another bricked 2 r/w drives. While another messed up my disk info so bad that my hard drive had to be formatted.

Because of that, and Steams TOS I do not do DRM. Its a bad drug if you ask me.

And now some old CD won't work on newer OS. DRM's drivers just won't run properly. But if you download pirated or DRM-free version of the game - it will run nice without any serious problems. I had collection of such CD's. And guess what? I had to buy this games AGAIN from GOG because shitty DRM stopped working on Windows 7!

You don't care that you should buy same game twice because of bad DRM, not game's problems? Really? Because:

1. You might lose Internet connection for some time and will be unable to launch your game. For example, troubles with ISP provider or you moving to a place where it is unavailable or bad quality. And no, backups of your games installers from HDD won't help you.

2. DRM company might go bankrupt. I hope you know that companies like Denuvo have their own servers and if this service at some point - you can't launch your games.

3. At some point DRM might cause problems with your PC. Like setting a breach in security of your PC or taking it functionality partially away. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal

And many, many other reasons.

gog's rise was partly because of the Valve hate meme. the Valve hate meme has largely receded after the writers stopped feeding it when they wised up after Valve did things to affirm that they were good for everybody.

DRM is still a major fucking problem not just because of the state of its current implementation standards but because of what it represents as a running influence on the individual. it's become less of a problem because the aging DRM schemes that started breaking shit left and right are beginning to move even farther out of relevance and use to the point that even those problems are starting to disappear with them. denuvo is somewhat more professionally executed and doesn't currently have as many problems, but it did earlier. developers have gotten better at integrating it gracefully and denuvo keep patching it to be less noticeable as a massive clusterfuck-machine wedged into the game. who is to say how Denuvo will hold up over time? it's possible it could be Starforce or Safedisc all over again once it ages or something changes at Irdeto or whoever owns it whenver or Microsoft or whoever.

games do shit right now that doesn't get done in any other industry. Microtransactions, day 1 patches, preorders, multiple day 1 editions with haphazard feature tiering. and this is software. it's completely fucking mental. people like to talk about how games are bigger than other big industries but when $40-$80 more can get tacked on for what is essentially bullshit, it isn't really all that surprising.

gog rose in part because their image was in contrast to all that. as they become more like Steam, and Valve continues to affirm what they always were, this aspect of gog is diminished and they need to be careful not to poke too many holes in the balloon and let the air out of it too quickly.

I still think gog is valuable. the market should have more than just Steam despite Steam's quality and integrity, and I think it's pretty good if that's gog. I despise uplay and origin and I personally will not playing anything exclusively requiring origin. if gog eventually slides a little too far in the direction of Activision or EA or the like, then it will be affected by that.

if somebody at gog is reading I wanna say this. gog's major problem right now, well, from an external viewpoint anyway; is its patching situation. that is a huge problem because it erodes confidence in the platform holistically and systemically. you're talking about a curated, niche store that lives on its reputation of treating the individual better and conducting itself with a higher standard. that is completely undermined by the games being haphazard in their maintenance and deployment. it makes gog look bad, it makes developers look bad, it completely moves a more neutral prospective buyer completely off the fence, it essentially reduces the overall value of everything.

now, I'm not saying that gog needs to become Steam or match Steam from an operation capacity standpoint. I think that's a nice goal but being Steam isn't easy. you need to set a line and maintain that line. you need to draw a hard line somewhere and go this is what we require. now I don't know how loose gog can can accept to run things and not every developer is alike but it's something that I hope gog understands the meaning of.