With the advent of GOG Galaxy gog provided the potential for an online platform for games developers to use and gog has been pushing Galaxy pretty hard since it's release. The online game modes of a lot of games being released on gog now require GOG Galaxy to play and they also require you to be logged in with your account.

Gog has always advertised their strong drm free stance and galaxy's status as 'optional' but in these cases it seems to be neither if you wish to play online.

My personal opinion is that I don't mind unobtrusive drm when it's a simple username/password check but I dislike having to download an external program such as galaxy as well. I also wish gog was more upfront about this as they advertise galaxy as being drm free and optional.



What's your opinion? Is GOG Galaxy stealth DRM? Does it matter to you? Are you happy with the way gog presents it?



N.B I touched on this discussion in another thread regarding my annoyance at having to use Galaxy to play Shadow Warrior 2 online. I'm making a new thread because I think it's an interesting topic that deserves larger discussion and less of me rambling angrily (thanks Goodaltgamer ;) ).

"stealth DRM" ?

I don't have anything that can top that. Sorry. XD

Are you serious?

Tell me again where Galaxy is required to access single player and I'll agree with you.

It's just required for some multiplayer gaming, because modern devs\publishers hate LAN and custom servers : (

ill break out the tin foil hats and faraday cages !

I haven't used GOG Galaxy yet. Not a problem for me.

Because gog doesn't advertise the fact that some games require an online account check to play. Some people would consider that DRM just as some people consider needing a unique code (e.g: Neverwinter Nights) to be DRM or the issues with Defcon.

That's why I said it'd make an interesting wider discussion. If your opinion is no then that's fine and feel free to embellish if you want, or not.

DRM being a singleplayer thing is a GOG concoction though, and while I understand their stance on it it doesn't change that what they are doing with Galaxy is (in my opinion) DRM. I'll repeat what I posted in the other thread:

Using GOG Galaxy matchmaking requires using it with a GOG account that *owns* the game.

There is no legitimate (technical) reason for that to be a requirement for the whole system to work. They could have simply made it so every GOG account has it's own unique ID within the Galaxy matchmaking environment without checking whether or not you own that game. This would allow family members to play the game with you for instance without the need to buy a copy for each of them just to play within your own home with them.

Forcing it to only work if you own the game makes it into a form of DRM.

I think that's the kind of DRM Romulans use.

i was thinking klingons

No. For online only! I would not mind Galaxy being mandatory. I would not even mind Steam for an online only game.

Anything mandatory online for single-player games? All responsible should burn in the deepest pits of hell, forced to... Ok I know here is no real censorship but just assume the worst and crank it up to 11; no need to write stuff that would make me want to go puke by myself.

Well I could think of one technical reason, there are valid reasons for this that don't have to do with DRM. One being the possibility that GOG wants to implement some form of anti-cheat system in the future. If any account can play said game then banning the account would accomplish nothing as one would just open a new account and cheat from that account. The only other solution is an IP ban which is very easy to bypass.

Most people won't cheat if they know they can get banned and would have to re-buy the game to play online. Also if GOG wants to have any hope of a legit MP community building on GOG, then they will sooner or later need some from of a anti-cheat system. This could be a simple case of planning for the future as Galaxy is still is in beta.

Depends on your definition of DRM. Considering my definition of DRM only applies to the single player portion of a game, Galaxy is not DRM, stealth or not.
But then again, I don't consider Lenslok DRM either.

Those are indeed very good reasons why there are benefits to *having* DRM on your games, but they don't negate what it is.

Mind you, I fully understand why restricting access to multiplayer is seen as a good thing to be better able to limit cheaters, or probably more importantly, so it does not become the gateway for pirates to get into multiplayer where in most pirated games they'd be locked out of multiplayer entirely. (They could mitigate this by, for instance, making a distinction between accounts that own it and those that don't, making them play separately and allowing owners to join non-owners but not the other way around)

However, if it's about whether or not it is DRM, that's just a reason why it's good that it is.