But that's not the only type of DRM. If it was 'online verification' based DRM, and the servers had shut down, where would that leave you, and your ability to play said games ?.

whats wrong with a client? also you are comparing disc based drm vs steam drm which you cant. with steam you have no control of the game since valve can take down the servers and you lose those games forever, with the disc drm you can since you got the cd which nobody can take from you. product key isnt drm, you have control of that key that nobody can take away from you. we do own gog games, just because you cant sell them doesn't mean you dont own it. nobody can take away the gog games since you arent relying on internet to keep them.

He seems to be forgetting if GOG goes under, we still have all our games back up. None are tied to some online server to be activated. Now, if steam goes under, we have to believe Valve keeps their word and unlocks everything, which probably won't happen.

Also, I bought Sun age from dev which came with an installer. But the game still needed to be activated with an online key to play. Guess what? His server is down now. I can't activate my game anymore to play.

Not really. "Because disc-based offline copy protection ("Don't Copy That Floppy", code-wheels, serial keys, hardware dongles, colour / symbol charts, "enter the 3rd word on the 2nd line of page 6...", etc) existed prior to Steam, GOG's offline installers are therefore solely about being client-less, have nothing to do with DRM and they are completely separate issues" really doesn't sound convincing at all when people en masse regularly cracked those 'client-less but DRM'd offline disc based games' to achieve the exactly the same DRM-Free for exactly the same reasons they now buy GOG versions for the offline installers. It's very obvious there's always been massive overlap even going back 20-30 years, that it's completely pointless to "separate" two hand-in-hand issues, and certainly the real point of GOG's offline installers for many of us is both DRM-Free and no client, not "pick 1 of 2".

Real-world example - The reason why many who had the foresight to obtain "nocd's" for a lot of legally purchased but now digitally unavailable disc games like Freelancer or Midtown Madness are still enjoying them under W10 with zero issue (whilst many others can't get their Safedisc'd versions even with the disc in the drive whilst vigorously waving a purchase receipt at the screen) is precisely both "offline installer" (on disc locally in a world where many older activation servers get removed over time) and 'DRM-Free' (or made to be). People would hardly clap & cheer at your "an offline installer is fine if it's stuffed full of Securom / SafeDisc / Starforce DRM as long as it didn't need a client" universe where their broken under W10-11 game would still be broken, and this is just one (of many) examples of why offline installers & DRM-Free go hand in hand in practise.

gOg does not make business decision. gotcha

You don't own something if you can't resell it, there is no "Baffling Logic" to that basic fact.

You can keep GOG Games due to the offline installer, but have no right to sell a single one of them.
What's baffling to me is how you, somehow equate that to ownership.
It's a better situation to losing access to your games if the Store Client goes kaput, for sure, but not ownership.

If you think you own your GOG games, how do you sell one, so it gets added to their Library, and removed from yours?
You can't do that so you own bugger all, you only have licensed access to digital products, not ownership rights.

Even with on Disc games, you own the disc, just the physical container, not the software it contains, even the creator of the software doesn't own it, they own the copying rights, and can sell that copyright.

The basic fact is that because digital code is infinitely copy-able, digital code can never be owned.
It's why Piracy is NOT theft, it's just copyright infringement. you can't steal code, only copy it.
You could steal a Master Disc that contains the only known copy of a game, but not the game itself.

Where your logic fails is I was just talking about a singular, and highly restricted hypothetical case.
An imagined deal with Valve to get Offline Installers with offline product key styled DRM, in exchange for removing the Store Client requirement.

I never said I'd accept offline installers with online DRM, that would be pointless, and counter productive.
Reason I would still get GOG games is
1 No Store Client
2 DRM free

Ideal scenario is both, because DRM free is great, but for me No Store Client is the greater reason.

Same dilemma, and not just recently.. I think when I joined, Linux support on GOG was fairly recent (see e.g. 2014: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/gog-landed-linux-5-best-games-can-get-right-now/ ). So I was optimistic about upcoming Linux support but we all know it went downhill. I've been using Linux and BSD exclusively for more than two decades so needless to say, it's quite disappointing. And prior to discovering GOG, I wasn't buying any games at all because I had had enough of DRM (and other things like mandatory clients, console-ification and sloppy pc ports, etc.).

I've concluded that I've got enough games and not enough time to play them, so it doesn't matter really. I can just go back to not buying games. I still browse the store occasionally, and some times I randomly spelunk itch.io, but I'm not really buying much anymore. If there's a game I really want and it's available DRM-free, I might buy it if someone's demonstrated it runs well on wine. Usually well after release, because it's hard to justify spending many bucks on something you don't get any support for. Like, I might buy Cyberpunk 2077 after a few years on a deep discount once it's all patched and done and midrange hardware can run it smoothly on Linux.

Yes, you can. You never bough item you can't resell before?

Edit: I'm not going to argue with you about something your wrong on. Technically you sell all your GOG games if you wanted. People resell old PC games disk all the time as well that have drm on them.

You

Nothing except digital code, name something physical that you can buy, but can't resell.
No such physical object exists. Only digital code is ephemeral like that..

It's the basic legal definition of ownership, and property rights.
You must have the legal right to resell anything you own.
It's the fundamental basis that capitalism is built upon.

You can't legally resell digital goods, because you never own them, you accept (legally sign by clicking) a license for the right to use the code, you do not own the code. That's what the EULA (Electronic User License Agreement) is all about. A legally binding Contract of licensed use, for a product you don't own.

Basic fact, if you own anything, you have the legal right to sell it.
No legal right to sell, you own nothing.

Disks are different, because you own the physical disc, that contains the irremovable license, and digital code in Read only format.
The Disc is what you buy, and can sell, not the licensed code upon the disc.

These are fundamental facts of property law, you can stick your fingers in your ears, and go "La, La", all you want, but you can't change the fundamental fact that the laws of every capitalist country in the world agree with me, not you.
This is the real world, not "La, La, Land".

just to reiterate: No, you cannot legally sell your gOg games. When you bought a game on s disk, you bought the physical disk, but still licensed the software. what happened was that there was the legal doctrine "the license follows the medium". with digital, there is no medium to follow.

Ars Technica: top EU court upholds right to resell downloaded software

I've never read anything about that again since, has anything changed there?

Big, fat NOPE!
You are not (neither "technically" nor otherwise) allowed to re-sell your GOG games.
If you did so, you'd be selling pirated copies.
Aka: illegal copies.

Yes, it's true - people re-sell old RETAIL versions that they have bought ON DISC.

That's allowed. Much to the chagrin of the developers and publishers.

And guess what? The DRM you mention, is/was one way to prevent such second market sales...that's (one of) the reasons why CD keys for online activation became a thing.

Of course GOG makes business decisions, and Linux gaming is not a standard one, it is an extra governed by factors beyond GOG's control. It is not viable for them and most gaming stores, to support Linux. That's a business decision and something you cannot blame them for. It is totally up to those who can make it viable. In other words it is up to DEVs and PUBs but especially Linux Gamers. In short there is not enough Linux Gamers to make it viable for GOG ... so the numbers are to blame, plus maybe also the promotion of Linux or Linux uptake.

The notion that GOG are deliberately avoiding a good DRM-Free avenue for revenue is quite silly ... clearly it is not yet good enough.