This topic abt whether DRM-free games causes piracy has been discussed to death already, simple ans is a big NO. Those that pirate games likely wun even be buying it in the 1st place so there is no real losses to a developer.

As many mentioned already, almost all games that had DRM will be cracked sooner rather than later as well so in fact it's DRM that's causing the piracy.

Personally, GOG is a blessing & i hv been buying most of my games here rather than on Steam since i found that i could buy DRM-free games. In fact, i wld even go to the extent of saying GOG stopped pirating partially. Not saying myself as an example but i dun c y i shd pirate a game when i can get a clean version here w/o worrying if a pirated copy is safe to use.

As long as a game is priced reasonably i wld rather buy it & support the developer. That's provided it's DRM-free of cos for me as DRM puts me off from buying it instead so we all (if i may speak for most of us) hv a lot to thk GOG (& other sites selling DRM-free games) for.

End of the day, i feel it's really all abt pricing the games reasonably & the users' moral rather than any company selling DRM-free games causing piracy. GOG may hv made it easier for ppl distribute DRM-free games illegally but it definitely doesn't cause piracy which has & will always be around. Enough said.

The moment you put a game on sale in any kind of store, you open it up for pirating. It doesn't matter if it is GOG, Steam, Humble, Epic or even a physical media, the moment it hits the stores it is open for pirating. On some cases, even before that. So anyone thinking that using only DRM venues to prevent pirates is just deluded.

Depends.

I used to pirate a lot of games cos its expensive and difficult to get them in my country legally. Then steam happened and I got a lot of games legally but still pirated on occasion cos I was a "poorfag".

Now that GoG has DRM-Free games, only game I obtained via torrent in last 5 years was Civilization VI (cos I am still waiting for sale, I am not giving more than $40 for a complete edition). I still give a copy of my downloaded games to my poorer friends on occasion, so if you gonna present that as piracy than fine - it contributes to a "localized" form of piracy in my case, but it also gives more money to game developers than it would happen previously.

no, i can easily find any game on any platform in pirated form. not that i do it, but it's available for anyone, even origin games. gog removes the punishment of drm for legit owners. pirates will pirate no matter what drm, it only gets more intrusive and punishes the actual purchasers of the game while the pirates will always have a drm free game. its a gamers and consumers rights issue

Is GoG a cause of necromancy?

Please no.

If anything, I bought at very reasonable prices some games I could get through less than orthodox means. So, GOG made piracy unattractive for me.

I also was able to get other games I've owned even in physical media. I already had a license for those but the convenience offered by GOG was better than hunting down those CDs, patching them up so that they could run with modern systems, and so on. So I not only did not "pirate", but even paid twice for several games.

Even more so, I was able to get some great games which were new to me at very attractive prices. Right now Witcher III GOTY is on sale (Made in Poland) at about USD 5.5. This is a highly convenient price for a top quality game, and this is just one example.

Finally, the DRM free condition of the games gives me peace of mind.

No business is perfect but I find GOG's proposition to be fair, interesting and convenient.

In conclusion, if anything, I could say that GOG is a huge discouragement for piracy in my opinion. Getting a legit game in GOG is easier, safer and more convenient than getting a pirated version. It's that simple.

Now if they only could get Far Cry >= 3 in their catalog I'd be even happier...

What about consoles? Why haven't they decided to get rid of the used game market?

You can also hope for tech support, and that the game will be kept up to date with modern OS.

The second a game is released on GOG its uploaded to torrents, sometimes they don't even repack them.
The second a game is released on steam its repacked and uploaded to torrents with emulators
The second a game is released on EPIC its uploaded on torrents. most are DRM free
itch.io isnt a focus nore a target since its indy games, but once they get big you'll find them on torrents

Exceptions: Denovo titles, Recently there was a dry spell but now 4 groups have a solid grasp on the new Denuvo and can pop it petty well. They have also popped ADEROW which is Denovos little brother.

Its all about demand and desire... Witcher 3 was on torrents form day 1 and that game single handily made CDP a bigger company then Ubisoft. So I don't see how GOG alone is causing piracy when its always been around.

Yeeah, about that... Saw that stat on Reddit before i got perma suspended and i call BS

Ubisoft own AC, WD, Rainbow Six...

Guys there's 1 game that Piracy made the standard quality of life of every Cybercafe around the globe. Warcraft 3 lol

Microsoft tried, they wanted to bind games to accounts like Steam did.

Thankfully there's competition and Sony didn't follow suit, and used MS attempt to remove consumer rights as a selling point for their own console.

There's nothing they'd like more in the longer run. The new optical drive-less XBox S is merely 'testing the waters'. If it's successful, give them another generation and it'll be gone from the main one too with all games either account locked like Steam or subscription based.

It cannot be a cause of piracy when piracy by a massive margin has precedence of existing well before it.
What you are instead actually inferring is that GOG exacerbates piracy; to which there is no scientifically and objective proof.

-Just my reply based on the title.


The knee jerk reaction by anyone who creates anything is to say if someone can simply photocopy my rembrandt then I will never sell a rembrandt.
It is a logically shallow argument from a defeatist perspective.
A holistic perspective is to say 'if I gave away my work for free could I still make money from it? and if I made it clear that my work is something i expect to get paid for and asked for it's value how many would pay me?

It reminds me a little about a game designer who listened to people who did sales through steam when and how they needed to place their product with numbers based around how many wishlist potential customers result in transfers to actual paying customers.
The product from what I could tell well fair enough, but the end result of the story was as much as he 'did the maths' reality didn't pan out; his work lost it's limelight and he failed to get enough traction in the marketplace to move even a tenth of what he planned to split the income he wanted over.

Essentially he gambled on statistics rather than really holistically try to understand and embrace the market forces that would make his game a success first and a money spinner second.

You have got to think as a developer mine is not the only game in this over saturated market and what people are going to pay for is value they can tangibly perceive; my biggest problem therefore is how i help them to be exposed to and then translate their experience into a positive perception of value.

I just bought rise to ruin.
It's not even a properly functional game at the moment (not that it's 'broken') and unlike most products not only did i break my rule of no pre-order/in devs (once bitten twice shy GOG) I paid the release price.
Would I be asked by a developer why I went all in or would they prefer their own judgement on whether their game can be considered in the same vane as and therefore get the same numbers as another game?

The data may be solid and simply put though one might think it the opposite be completely unapplicable.
There are plenty examples in the wild of games doing well even with people paying 'what they think it's worth' with no obligation system in place (for example dwarf fortress something I myself have given to and not a small sum).
The real issue is does your product have real value at what the market rate is.
Plenty of games are free these days and most people won't pay for something that's basically a browser game any kid can make up for his high school year 12 project; like it or lump it most likely capitalism has undercut your value and saddled you with such a high cost of living you are going to really have to engage and think outside the box.

Is it though? I use to play left 4 dead using a cracked steam version even without multiplayer because i simply was not going to buy it on steam/ As a consumer that was my choice. You know steam that marketplace that has no doubt 70% of the gaming market place.

I've been around a fair wicket, and watched as games devolved into servered always online crapshoots of toxic wankers and high texture size rather than gameplay.
Kids just want to play whatever their friends play; their friends with no money, who no doubt play fortnight and league of legends (free games).
Occasionally a developer will strike gold csgo & minecraft being examples, but by large the ones who approve purchases are parents that just want to shut their kids up.
Adults are far more discerning in their digital purchases if for no other reason than what developers would 'like' to sell is an idea and what it's essentially in exchange for is hard labor and real world goods (being that money is essentially a global value exchanger on ye olde barter system).
No ones going to listen to a snake oil salesman about that diet pill dream; they are going to research to find solid evidence of what the product is going to do for them, which is objectively hard with a product that has no real physical presence in a free capitalist market place where value is based on perception not a relation to the work that went in or the base cost of resources applied.

As some might say 'hate the game, not the player'.