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low rated
im not entirely against putting games with drm on this platform, i get it that some developers will never release their games here otherwise, but failing to disclose the fact that games like hitman got drm is unacceptable and it makes shopping here completely undesirable, please disclose the fact that games like that have drm (partial or not) and that some features in games like that are locked behind online requirements/gog galaxy launcher requirements in the "game features" tab and remove the "drm free" below the "why buy on gog.com?" simply having a disclamer in the description is not enough. also we should have a feature where we could hide games with drm from the storefront in the settings.

edit:grammar
Post edited September 30, 2021 by JimmySnuggleBear
high rated
This is a DRM Free store, it advertises itself as DRM Free.

In my opinion, DRM shall not be present on a DRM Free store, then no need to disclose. Changing the direction is the road to nowhere (technically Steam does DRM better, sorry), other DRM stores like Uplay have failed. Even putting insane amounts of money didn't made Epic Games' store really rival Steam. Doing a turn in 180 degrees might set it on the same course of being just another Uplay and another annoying launcher on the desktop, I don't think GOG deserves this. Being DRM Free is a good thing: It should be followed unerrorsly, no partial.
Post edited September 30, 2021 by flowerium
high rated
They could do that of course, but then they would be like Steam, but worse, much, much worse!

And it would be against everything "true old" GOG stand for.

E.g. Like a vegan restaurant that servers meat dishes, but marks them with BIG RED FAT letters saying: This dish contains MEAT!
Adding protected or DRM-contaminated games to this store by itself wouldn't be such a big deal, if it wouldn't lead to a fatal problem: Why have company x->sell(DRM) and y->remove(DRM)? Either it's all companies got to remove DRM-measures or everyone is allowed to add and keep however many layers of DRM- and protection measures in and sell their product as is.

Otherwise it is up to we their customers to decide, whether we wish to buy games like Hitman, knowing what we know about its DRM measures. No one is forced to buy such games. In case they don't sell, maybe GOG learns a lesson not trying to covertly add such games.

By now it has become crystal clear what happens when parts of games are locked online. The servers go down? Tough luck! You can no longer progress in your game. Looking at you, Ubisoft, M&M X Legacy, NFS and others. There is also danger with GOG's binding or allowing to bind games to Galaxy. Who is to say how things go? If, in the end, Galaxy ends up dead, what have we then? Lots of games where parts of them one isn't able to use, MP, connection to online single player content and items.

That's why each game not stripped of DRM- or protection measures will potentially lead to a Ubisoft situation. It will also lead to a Hitman situation where IOI decides to shut down, a rather expensive piece of software ends up as demo. This can't be the road GOG will want to take, hoping, that if it doesn't work out for them they will be able to recover. Too many things happened which should not have, in too short an amount of time, for this to be possible.

The only hope is that management will change their minds. In the short term they can do without customers to make their shareholders and investors thrive, but without customers this isn't going to take long for them to be down and out. GOG seems to keep working hard to get there sooner rather than later. In the end we would all lose, that's something management should think about, before making what amounts to bad decisions in the eyes of their customers, the most important people.
low rated
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flowerium: This is a DRM Free store, it advertises itself as DRM Free.

In my opinion, DRM shall not be present on a DRM Free store, then no need to disclose. Changing the direction is the road to nowhere (technically Steam does DRM better, sorry), other DRM stores like Uplay have failed. Even putting insane amounts of money didn't made Epic Games' store really rival Steam. Doing a turn in 180 degrees might set it on the same course of being just another Uplay and another annoying launcher on the desktop, I don't think GOG deserves this. Being DRM Free is a good thing: It should be followed unerrorsly, no partial.
I see that all your games that you own here are all DRM-Free ?. No point making a statement when one doesn't practice what they preach...
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Mori_Yuki: Adding protected or DRM-contaminated games to this store by itself wouldn't be such a big deal, if it wouldn't lead to a fatal problem: Why have company x->sell(DRM) and y->remove(DRM)? Either it's all companies got to remove DRM-measures or everyone is allowed to add and keep however many layers of DRM- and protection measures in and sell their product as is.
Precisely. It's about leverage in negotiation. What's really a black mark is the allowance of DRM/client requirements in their flagship games. What leverage does GOG have to tell a developer/publisher to bring their game here DRM-free, when the dev/pub can then turn around and say: "Why? You yourselves are fine with content being locked behind the client in Cyberpunk". By the way, this is assuming that GOG would in negotiations want to insist on an incoming game being DRM-free, which I am not sure is an assumption we can even make anymore.
Absolutely every product and announcement should disclose that it is DRM-free. And those that can't/aren't/don't or would otherwise require some sort of asterisk, caret, dagger, or alteration of the disclosure should get the hell out of here and not return until they mend their ways.

And the exact same is true about users and their allowances for DRM.
It’s not going to happen. To do so would be to admit that the stance they had before is now gone. With the way things are now, GOG can push anything out, and let their army of bots and fanboys fight all the fires for them, with arguments such as “it’s not drm as you can play the single player throughout”. This has been used over and over again on hitman, cyberpunk, absolver, NMS, goblin inc, and plenty of other games. Gwent is another example, though the excuse there is “it’s free and designed as multiplayer”. There will be excuses for any other type of control.
low rated
avatar
flowerium: This is a DRM Free store, it advertises itself as DRM Free.

In my opinion, DRM shall not be present on a DRM Free store, then no need to disclose. Changing the direction is the road to nowhere (technically Steam does DRM better, sorry), other DRM stores like Uplay have failed. Even putting insane amounts of money didn't made Epic Games' store really rival Steam. Doing a turn in 180 degrees might set it on the same course of being just another Uplay and another annoying launcher on the desktop, I don't think GOG deserves this. Being DRM Free is a good thing: It should be followed unerrorsly, no partial.
What it claims to be and what it actually is aren't necessarily the same thing.
avatar
Mori_Yuki: Adding protected or DRM-contaminated games to this store by itself wouldn't be such a big deal, if it wouldn't lead to a fatal problem: Why have company x->sell(DRM) and y->remove(DRM)? Either it's all companies got to remove DRM-measures or everyone is allowed to add and keep however many layers of DRM- and protection measures in and sell their product as is.

Otherwise it is up to we their customers to decide, whether we wish to buy games like Hitman, knowing what we know about its DRM measures. No one is forced to buy such games. In case they don't sell, maybe GOG learns a lesson not trying to covertly add such games.

By now it has become crystal clear what happens when parts of games are locked online. The servers go down? Tough luck! You can no longer progress in your game. Looking at you, Ubisoft, M&M X Legacy, NFS and others. There is also danger with GOG's binding or allowing to bind games to Galaxy. Who is to say how things go? If, in the end, Galaxy ends up dead, what have we then? Lots of games where parts of them one isn't able to use, MP, connection to online single player content and items.

That's why each game not stripped of DRM- or protection measures will potentially lead to a Ubisoft situation. It will also lead to a Hitman situation where IOI decides to shut down, a rather expensive piece of software ends up as demo. This can't be the road GOG will want to take, hoping, that if it doesn't work out for them they will be able to recover. Too many things happened which should not have, in too short an amount of time, for this to be possible.

The only hope is that management will change their minds. In the short term they can do without customers to make their shareholders and investors thrive, but without customers this isn't going to take long for them to be down and out. GOG seems to keep working hard to get there sooner rather than later. In the end we would all lose, that's something management should think about, before making what amounts to bad decisions in the eyes of their customers, the most important people.
I think it would work as long as they didn't do what they just did with Hitman, as it clearly is not a "DRM-FREE" product. That GOG doesn't appreciate the significance of that is a pretty good indication that it's incapable of communicating in good faith.
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nightcraw1er.488: It’s not going to happen. To do so would be to admit that the stance they had before is now gone. With the way things are now, GOG can push anything out, and let their army of bots and fanboys fight all the fires for them, with arguments such as “it’s not drm as you can play the single player throughout”. This has been used over and over again on hitman, cyberpunk, absolver, NMS, goblin inc, and plenty of other games. Gwent is another example, though the excuse there is “it’s free and designed as multiplayer”. There will be excuses for any other type of control.
Don't you just love that "it's how the game is designed" excuse? Yes, it is how the game is designed. It's bad design! Some would say "defective" design! It's especially bad if one believes curation is supposedly to filter out poorly made, low effort titles. What could fit that description better than a game riddled with DRM and online requirements!
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rjbuffchix: Don't you just love that "it's how the game is designed" excuse? Yes, it is how the game is designed. It's bad design! Some would say "defective" design! It's especially bad if one believes curation is supposedly to filter out poorly made, low effort titles. What could fit that description better than a game riddled with DRM and online requirements!
*cough* https://www.defectivebydesign.org/
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rjbuffchix: Don't you just love that "it's how the game is designed" excuse? Yes, it is how the game is designed. It's bad design! Some would say "defective" design! It's especially bad if one believes curation is supposedly to filter out poorly made, low effort titles. What could fit that description better than a game riddled with DRM and online requirements!
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mqstout: *cough* https://www.defectivebydesign.org/
Alley-oop! I hadn't checked out that site in a while. I see they also link to the FSF tech gift giving guide which seems like a very handy too (for both gift givers and gift recipients).
low rated
their idea of drm-free is strange.
1. because they label funimation with their streaming only (so always online) service drm-free just because it does not use EME (the same thing can be said about many other streaming service like crunchyroll, that is also in more countries than funimation (that I need a vpn to use in italy once in a while), youtube etc...).
2. because one of the worst offender is amazon for ebook and music... while it's true that they got a DRM for ebooks they don't enforce it like microsoft store (for example) do for everything (I know I'm selling a drm-free book on amazon and it's great compared to the alternative, while I was not able to decide to don't use the drm on the microsoft store for one of my app (that I also sell on my website drm-free of course)), their drm even when it's used is not even that difficult to remove (much better than the adobe alternative where you need an old version of ADE and there is no way to remove it for newer version, at least not right now). Music on amazon is also drm-free if you buy it.

I don't think a streaming only service qualify as a drm-free service and I also don't think a store that sell you both drm and drm-free content based on the author decision qualify as a "worst offender".
I think a worst offender is a store that don't let the developer/author/publisher decide to publish drm-free or that only got drm stuff (that's a streaming service only too even if it does not use EME, like they say even if you can remove drm it still limit the user so why streaming only always online even if does not use EME is drm-free for them?).
Post edited September 30, 2021 by LiefLayer
I really don't want games with DRM here.

But if that is going to happen, then yes, they should openly and clearly indicate what elements etc are DRM, and at the very least, be priced as befits a game that is limited in DRM-Free play-ability.