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General discussionGames-as-a-service vs always-online DRM(39 posts)(39 posts)
(39 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted August 29, 2021
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kohlrak: Now that my ban has expired (i'll probably be gone again before this topic is well discussed, but i don't want to give the karens an excuse for this thread since it concerns the community in a more immediate manner), I'd like to discuss an emergent issue i've seen over the past week or so: Games-as-a-service on GOG.

I'm seeing people outright arguing that it's not DRM (and not giving any supporting statements) as well as people apologizing for it on the basis that we shouldn't be concerned about the availability of things we buy here because we need an internet connection in the first place thus must be able to always maintain a stable connection (regardless of the ethics of it).

So, first and foremost, how is this not DRM? One suggests intent, but we know we can't trust "intent." Everyone "intends" to make the best game ever toe exist, for the most part (even if it wasn't their direct intention), but we don't call a game the best game ever simply because that was it's intent, right? So it stands to reason that if something doesn't intend to be DRM, but does so anyway, we would call it DRM, right? So for those whom do not see always-online requirements (especially for single-player content) as DRM, how do you define the separation between DRM and games-as-a-service for single player content?

Of course, it needs to be clear to the community that this question must be handled with utmost seriousness as this is an issue already facing gog.
The only way out of this is to stop asking users and start asking gog what the defition of DRM is.

for those that don't know gogs stance:

storeront: DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play.

blue response: All games available on GOG have offline installers available. We stay in touch with the partners and do our best to keep them up to date. However, video games continue to evolve with many titles offering online modes, cosmetics, and incentives for completing certain actions by players. This might be subjective, but as long as these additional features and rewards do not affect the single-player offline experience in a major way, we believe that the developers and publishers should be free to design and sell their games in a way they choose.

^^in other words, gog considers anything that they deem to be cosmetic or not strictly required to play the base game
is not subject to their own DRM free definition and therefore by my logic, may well contain DRM.

The bridge to DRM has been well and truly crossed. It is actually far too late to try and bash the definition out. It's there for all to see: DRM exists on gog but is deemed not applicable under certain circumstances.

Telika, who I do not believe is active on these forums anymore, predicted this kind of move by gog a long time ago (amongst many others). The move being a gradual erosion of the DRM free policy in stages, designed with the sole intention to retain as many of the old user-base as humanly possible before a total abandonment of the DRM free store wide principle.

It does this community great credit to keep challenging gog on this, but as Telika pointed out repeatedly, each time the backlash against DRM in this forum is less. it is still a valiant effort by gog users to challenge this and shows true character and caring for the store. It is even more valiant when you see moderators expressing that the forum user base is effectively no longer relevant, but still needs to reminded that gogs moves are a benefit to all users.

I know there are many defenders who believe that gog have not yet crossed the line, but since Telikas last post, the line has yet further eroded.

I truly believe that at some point, even the defenders (even some of the strongest defenders in this thread) will have to finally admit that their own lines have been crossed.

It is far too late to discuss the defintion of DRM. It has been breached, it is being breached and it will get worse.

The very best I can see gog achieving now is to label games as DRM or DRM free.
Posted August 29, 2021
low rated
avatar
tyl0413: This thread being downvoted to hell is how you know GOG is fckd.
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kohlrak: Someone paying more attention than me to the downrepping pointed out that certain political affiliations get regularly downrepped, and when certain members of the opposing political faction won't receive it. That is, until, the "argument is lost" then it seems every reply gets downvoted to hell and back as if the whole purpose is to shut down the thread and punish even those on their own side for failing to protect the position or by keeping the thread going instead of it getting buried. I'm assuming that this is to create an illusion that "the community" or "everyone" is "against the very discussion of the topic." Make no mistake, though, it's most likely one or two people with a bunch of spare accounts or a small, very vocal, group of people.

However, this is a bipartisan thread which makes this particular case interesting. It seems whomever was behind all the bot account voting in the political threads really, really doesn't want to talk about always-online DRM in gog games and wants to make it appear as if "everyone" doesn't find this topic appropriate for gog. This is an interesting development indeed.

Yay, parts of my posts are getting edited and even some replies are getting removed. I don't have any evidence that this is GOG staff (they're not home, anyway) so i can only assume this is a database issue. I'm going to try one more time to fix this, and if that doesn't work i'll have my replies saved for a later period.

EDIT: Wow, an edit saying that it appears to have been resolved disappeared.
Interesting, I'm not a very active GOG user myself but there isn't a topic that's more appropriate for GOG than this in my opinion (on most other places I get absolutely destroyed for criticizing DRM) so coming here and seeing everything downvoted is very weird, I found myself upvoting the majority of posts on this thread. I don't wanna derail this thread but I think this topic might deserve it's own thread.

Edit: Somebody really sitting on this page refreshing it to downvote everything with 50 accounts as soon as it's posted.
Post edited August 30, 2021 by tyl0413
Posted August 30, 2021
low rated
avatar
lazydog: The only way out of this is to stop asking users and start asking gog what the defition of DRM is.

for those that don't know gogs stance:

storeront: DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play.

blue response: All games available on GOG have offline installers available. We stay in touch with the partners and do our best to keep them up to date. However, video games continue to evolve with many titles offering online modes, cosmetics, and incentives for completing certain actions by players. This might be subjective, but as long as these additional features and rewards do not affect the single-player offline experience in a major way, we believe that the developers and publishers should be free to design and sell their games in a way they choose.

^^in other words, gog considers anything that they deem to be cosmetic or not strictly required to play the base game
is not subject to their own DRM free definition and therefore by my logic, may well contain DRM.

The bridge to DRM has been well and truly crossed. It is actually far too late to try and bash the definition out. It's there for all to see: DRM exists on gog but is deemed not applicable under certain circumstances.

Telika, who I do not believe is active on these forums anymore, predicted this kind of move by gog a long time ago (amongst many others). The move being a gradual erosion of the DRM free policy in stages, designed with the sole intention to retain as many of the old user-base as humanly possible before a total abandonment of the DRM free store wide principle.

It does this community great credit to keep challenging gog on this, but as Telika pointed out repeatedly, each time the backlash against DRM in this forum is less. it is still a valiant effort by gog users to challenge this and shows true character and caring for the store. It is even more valiant when you see moderators expressing that the forum user base is effectively no longer relevant, but still needs to reminded that gogs moves are a benefit to all users.

I know there are many defenders who believe that gog have not yet crossed the line, but since Telikas last post, the line has yet further eroded.

I truly believe that at some point, even the defenders (even some of the strongest defenders in this thread) will have to finally admit that their own lines have been crossed.

It is far too late to discuss the defintion of DRM. It has been breached, it is being breached and it will get worse.

The very best I can see gog achieving now is to label games as DRM or DRM free.
I do absolutely agree with GOG on the fact that games do and have to evolve but saying that always on connections and constant updates and changes are and should be the way forward is dumb, but so is expecting games to be made and played in 2021 the exact same way they were 20 years ago. Lot of the GOG audience I notice tends to fall into that second category.

I totally disagree with GOG on that anything that isn't the "base single player content" (which is a very vague explanation probably intentionally) is totally find to be locked behind multiple layers of DRM.
Some things do have technical limitations which makes certain feature only available with full functionality online but in most cases where DRMed content is on GOG this is not the case

1. Pre-order/deluxe edition/etc bonuses have no reason to be not available to download and fully use offline without any additional verification after the initial download just like the base game for anyone who is allegeable for them (owners of the special editions, prepurchasers)
2. Multiplayer, this is the big one. Multiplayer means playing a game together and/or against other players nothing more nothing less. DRM is a system manually designed with the intent to control how a piece of digital media can be used. (This needs to be clarified, I saw some stupid post once that said video drivers are DRM bc they're required to play games, that would fall under the "unintended technical limitations" category therefor it's not DRM).

This is very important to establish what could be something that restricts your ability to access certain functions to determine if it's DRM or not. Do you have to connect to the internet to play with a friend from the other side of the world or just to even be able to get to the main menu of the game.

You can play games with other people in loads of ways like using multiple controllers on the same system, hooking up multiple systems to each other directly, hooking up multiple systems to a dedicated server which again can be done without any need to connect to any external services like developer servers/Steam/GOG/etc.
Any games that you can only play with other players by connecting to external services is DRMed no ifs and buts. There's no technical reason the game shouldn't offer one or multiple of the ways to play together outlined above. Just because most people play multiplayer online these days is no good reason to force multiplayer to be online only but many developers choose to do so because 1. people don't care anyways 2. they get more control and they like that 3. it's easier?.

Anti-cheat can also be used as DRM so any game that forces all players to install one regardless of the way they intend to play multiplayer is DRMed. Anti-cheat should be optional, only for players that decide to join a server which uses it, bans should only restrict the player from playing on that one specific server not the whole game or their whole account or their whole PC.

I can think of one more i guess which some may use as an excuse for DRM
Leaderboards, Achievements, Statistics, etc
There's absolutely no reason these things should mandate an online connection/account/etc, there's no technical limitation that prevents achievements, statistics and leaderboard entries from being tracked offline in-game or say on a "Galaxy Offline Edition" platform for those that wish to take advantage of such features (currently PC support for cross-game stats like this while offline is literally non existent, most platforms will not track these things unless constantly connected which there's no logical reason for, compare this hypothetical Galaxy Offline to say an offline Xbox 360, you still earn achievements on your offline profile just like you would online)

GOG saying it's okay to DRM lock these feature to an active connection/account is just an excuse to protect their crappy implementation and hoping no one will notice when in fact these are a crucial part of modern games yet they're being locked away for absolutely no reason from those who are not constantly connected.
Most of the excuses behind Games as a service, multiplayer games and "other"/"online" functions are the same that's behind DRM on single player games. Publishers being lazy and wanting to protect their badly coded games and platforms with the same old excuse of "but what about the pirates/cheaters/hackers" etc meanwhile they only hurt legit players.

TLDR: Multiplayer games are games too not to be treated different from any other games, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to play them split-screen/LAN, greedy companies just want you to believe you can't so they can make more money off you.

That was long, probably not very good, thanks for reading though.
Posted August 30, 2021
low rated
avatar
lazydog: The only way out of this is to stop asking users and start asking gog what the defition of DRM is.

for those that don't know gogs stance:

storeront: DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play.

blue response: All games available on GOG have offline installers available. We stay in touch with the partners and do our best to keep them up to date. However, video games continue to evolve with many titles offering online modes, cosmetics, and incentives for completing certain actions by players. This might be subjective, but as long as these additional features and rewards do not affect the single-player offline experience in a major way, we believe that the developers and publishers should be free to design and sell their games in a way they choose.

^^in other words, gog considers anything that they deem to be cosmetic or not strictly required to play the base game
is not subject to their own DRM free definition and therefore by my logic, may well contain DRM.

The bridge to DRM has been well and truly crossed. It is actually far too late to try and bash the definition out. It's there for all to see: DRM exists on gog but is deemed not applicable under certain circumstances.

Telika, who I do not believe is active on these forums anymore, predicted this kind of move by gog a long time ago (amongst many others). The move being a gradual erosion of the DRM free policy in stages, designed with the sole intention to retain as many of the old user-base as humanly possible before a total abandonment of the DRM free store wide principle.

It does this community great credit to keep challenging gog on this, but as Telika pointed out repeatedly, each time the backlash against DRM in this forum is less. it is still a valiant effort by gog users to challenge this and shows true character and caring for the store. It is even more valiant when you see moderators expressing that the forum user base is effectively no longer relevant, but still needs to reminded that gogs moves are a benefit to all users.

I know there are many defenders who believe that gog have not yet crossed the line, but since Telikas last post, the line has yet further eroded.

I truly believe that at some point, even the defenders (even some of the strongest defenders in this thread) will have to finally admit that their own lines have been crossed.

It is far too late to discuss the defintion of DRM. It has been breached, it is being breached and it will get worse.

The very best I can see gog achieving now is to label games as DRM or DRM free.
avatar
tyl0413: I do absolutely agree with GOG on the fact that games do and have to evolve but saying that always on connections and constant updates and changes are and should be the way forward is dumb, but so is expecting games to be made and played in 2021 the exact same way they were 20 years ago. Lot of the GOG audience I notice tends to fall into that second category.

I totally disagree with GOG on that anything that isn't the "base single player content" (which is a very vague explanation probably intentionally) is totally find to be locked behind multiple layers of DRM.
Some things do have technical limitations which makes certain feature only available with full functionality online but in most cases where DRMed content is on GOG this is not the case

1. Pre-order/deluxe edition/etc bonuses have no reason to be not available to download and fully use offline without any additional verification after the initial download just like the base game for anyone who is allegeable for them (owners of the special editions, prepurchasers)
2. Multiplayer, this is the big one. Multiplayer means playing a game together and/or against other players nothing more nothing less. DRM is a system manually designed with the intent to control how a piece of digital media can be used. (This needs to be clarified, I saw some stupid post once that said video drivers are DRM bc they're required to play games, that would fall under the "unintended technical limitations" category therefor it's not DRM).

This is very important to establish what could be something that restricts your ability to access certain functions to determine if it's DRM or not. Do you have to connect to the internet to play with a friend from the other side of the world or just to even be able to get to the main menu of the game.

You can play games with other people in loads of ways like using multiple controllers on the same system, hooking up multiple systems to each other directly, hooking up multiple systems to a dedicated server which again can be done without any need to connect to any external services like developer servers/Steam/GOG/etc.
Any games that you can only play with other players by connecting to external services is DRMed no ifs and buts. There's no technical reason the game shouldn't offer one or multiple of the ways to play together outlined above. Just because most people play multiplayer online these days is no good reason to force multiplayer to be online only but many developers choose to do so because 1. people don't care anyways 2. they get more control and they like that 3. it's easier?.

Anti-cheat can also be used as DRM so any game that forces all players to install one regardless of the way they intend to play multiplayer is DRMed. Anti-cheat should be optional, only for players that decide to join a server which uses it, bans should only restrict the player from playing on that one specific server not the whole game or their whole account or their whole PC.

I can think of one more i guess which some may use as an excuse for DRM
Leaderboards, Achievements, Statistics, etc
There's absolutely no reason these things should mandate an online connection/account/etc, there's no technical limitation that prevents achievements, statistics and leaderboard entries from being tracked offline in-game or say on a "Galaxy Offline Edition" platform for those that wish to take advantage of such features (currently PC support for cross-game stats like this while offline is literally non existent, most platforms will not track these things unless constantly connected which there's no logical reason for, compare this hypothetical Galaxy Offline to say an offline Xbox 360, you still earn achievements on your offline profile just like you would online)

GOG saying it's okay to DRM lock these feature to an active connection/account is just an excuse to protect their crappy implementation and hoping no one will notice when in fact these are a crucial part of modern games yet they're being locked away for absolutely no reason from those who are not constantly connected.
Most of the excuses behind Games as a service, multiplayer games and "other"/"online" functions are the same that's behind DRM on single player games. Publishers being lazy and wanting to protect their badly coded games and platforms with the same old excuse of "but what about the pirates/cheaters/hackers" etc meanwhile they only hurt legit players.

TLDR: Multiplayer games are games too not to be treated different from any other games, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to play them split-screen/LAN, greedy companies just want you to believe you can't so they can make more money off you.

That was long, probably not very good, thanks for reading though.
Hi

I am not really sure what you are trying to say, but as you have quoted me directly I assume you are looking for a response from me directly.

I'm not interested in rep, pre-order, multiplayer, anti-cheat or achievements.
Posted August 30, 2021
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avatar
lazydog: Hi

I am not really sure what you are trying to say, but as you have quoted me directly I assume you are looking for a response from me directly.

I'm not interested in rep, pre-order, multiplayer, anti-cheat or achievements.
Quoted your post because it had GOGs explanation of what they mean by DRM-free, that's what I was "replying to" could've removed the rest I guess.
Posted August 30, 2021
low rated
avatar
lazydog: Hi

I am not really sure what you are trying to say, but as you have quoted me directly I assume you are looking for a response from me directly.

I'm not interested in rep, pre-order, multiplayer, anti-cheat or achievements.
avatar
tyl0413: Quoted your post because it had GOGs explanation of what they mean by DRM-free, that's what I was "replying to" could've removed the rest I guess.
No problem at all, please excuse my confusion.
Posted August 30, 2021
low rated
avatar
lazydog: The only way out of this is to stop asking users and start asking gog what the defition of DRM is.

for those that don't know gogs stance:

storeront: DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play.

blue response: All games available on GOG have offline installers available. We stay in touch with the partners and do our best to keep them up to date. However, video games continue to evolve with many titles offering online modes, cosmetics, and incentives for completing certain actions by players. This might be subjective, but as long as these additional features and rewards do not affect the single-player offline experience in a major way, we believe that the developers and publishers should be free to design and sell their games in a way they choose.

^^in other words, gog considers anything that they deem to be cosmetic or not strictly required to play the base game
is not subject to their own DRM free definition and therefore by my logic, may well contain DRM.

The bridge to DRM has been well and truly crossed. It is actually far too late to try and bash the definition out. It's there for all to see: DRM exists on gog but is deemed not applicable under certain circumstances.

Telika, who I do not believe is active on these forums anymore, predicted this kind of move by gog a long time ago (amongst many others). The move being a gradual erosion of the DRM free policy in stages, designed with the sole intention to retain as many of the old user-base as humanly possible before a total abandonment of the DRM free store wide principle.

It does this community great credit to keep challenging gog on this, but as Telika pointed out repeatedly, each time the backlash against DRM in this forum is less. it is still a valiant effort by gog users to challenge this and shows true character and caring for the store. It is even more valiant when you see moderators expressing that the forum user base is effectively no longer relevant, but still needs to reminded that gogs moves are a benefit to all users.

I know there are many defenders who believe that gog have not yet crossed the line, but since Telikas last post, the line has yet further eroded.

I truly believe that at some point, even the defenders (even some of the strongest defenders in this thread) will have to finally admit that their own lines have been crossed.

It is far too late to discuss the defintion of DRM. It has been breached, it is being breached and it will get worse.
Well that's where we are: the point where we ask the community how much further we'll put up with the line eroding.
The very best I can see gog achieving now is to label games as DRM or DRM free.
I doubt it. GOG seems to be having trouble doing that.

avatar
kohlrak: Someone paying more attention than me to the downrepping pointed out that certain political affiliations get regularly downrepped, and when certain members of the opposing political faction won't receive it. That is, until, the "argument is lost" then it seems every reply gets downvoted to hell and back as if the whole purpose is to shut down the thread and punish even those on their own side for failing to protect the position or by keeping the thread going instead of it getting buried. I'm assuming that this is to create an illusion that "the community" or "everyone" is "against the very discussion of the topic." Make no mistake, though, it's most likely one or two people with a bunch of spare accounts or a small, very vocal, group of people.

However, this is a bipartisan thread which makes this particular case interesting. It seems whomever was behind all the bot account voting in the political threads really, really doesn't want to talk about always-online DRM in gog games and wants to make it appear as if "everyone" doesn't find this topic appropriate for gog. This is an interesting development indeed.

Yay, parts of my posts are getting edited and even some replies are getting removed. I don't have any evidence that this is GOG staff (they're not home, anyway) so i can only assume this is a database issue. I'm going to try one more time to fix this, and if that doesn't work i'll have my replies saved for a later period.

EDIT: Wow, an edit saying that it appears to have been resolved disappeared.
avatar
tyl0413: Interesting, I'm not a very active GOG user myself but there isn't a topic that's more appropriate for GOG than this in my opinion (on most other places I get absolutely destroyed for criticizing DRM) so coming here and seeing everything downvoted is very weird, I found myself upvoting the majority of posts on this thread. I don't wanna derail this thread but I think this topic might deserve it's own thread.

Edit: Somebody really sitting on this page refreshing it to downvote everything with 50 accounts as soon as it's posted.
Well I already addressed it earlier in the thread why this is happening. It's sort of on topic, and in a weird way it is indeed an answer to the question in it's own right. Obviously to the one behind it this is not a topic we're supposed to discuss. They clearly aren't trying to defend their position with words, so in their view the line was crossed as well, but they're laso more on GOG's side than they are DRM-free. And this is totally relevant to the topic.
Posted August 30, 2021
low rated
avatar
tyl0413: I can think of one more i guess which some may use as an excuse for DRM
Leaderboards, Achievements, Statistics, etc
There's absolutely no reason these things should mandate an online connection/account/etc, there's no technical limitation that prevents achievements, statistics and leaderboard entries from being tracked offline in-game or say on a "Galaxy Offline Edition" platform for those that wish to take advantage of such features (currently PC support for cross-game stats like this while offline is literally non existent, most platforms will not track these things unless constantly connected which there's no logical reason for, compare this hypothetical Galaxy Offline to say an offline Xbox 360, you still earn achievements on your offline profile just like you would online)

GOG saying it's okay to DRM lock these feature to an active connection/account is just an excuse to protect their crappy implementation and hoping no one will notice when in fact these are a crucial part of modern games yet they're being locked away for absolutely no reason from those who are not constantly connected.
Most of the excuses behind Games as a service, multiplayer games and "other"/"online" functions are the same that's behind DRM on single player games. Publishers being lazy and wanting to protect their badly coded games and platforms with the same old excuse of "but what about the pirates/cheaters/hackers" etc meanwhile they only hurt legit players.
I think you hit on something intereting here, and it's worth having it aired out: there's the good reason something happens, then the real reason. The social media gaming thing has been pushed for a long time, because it's free advertising for a product if Friend#882 is playing game X constantly every day. And the achievements setup is crucial to that, because why is Friend#882 still playing this single-player game for the 3rd week in a row when they don't have a job? Achievements make single-player into multiplayer, as do social media features.
Posted August 30, 2021
low rated
avatar
tyl0413: Multiplayer games are games too not to be treated different from any other games, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to play them split-screen/LAN, greedy companies just want you to believe you can't so they can make more money off you.
Very well put and thanks for mentioning this. I have been discussing this for a long time on here too. DRM-free to me means DRM-free singleplayer AND multiplayer. There should always be DRM-free modes, at minimum, in games that have multiplayer.

Also, hi to the downvoter(s)/their script!
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionGames-as-a-service vs always-online DRM(39 posts)(39 posts)
(39 posts)