What's your definition of DRM? It certainly falls under mine. It not only fits the definition of Digital Rights Management, but also uses precisely the same tools: attaching something to the content and forcing it to be used in a specific manner. It also has the same effect as other online game DRM, forcing you to have a client in order to play, not allowing the download on one PC and use on another, that kind of stuff.

What you perhaps mean is that you're fine with short-term DRM that's only needed if you want a refund. It's still DRM though.

Look, DRM is what companies use when they expect that users will try to "create copies" of their content without their permission. DRM is meant to make this more difficult. What you're saying is that GOG users can be trusted not to spread copies of games, but they can't be trusted not to play a game and then ask for a refund. That's not as bad as not trusting them completely, but it still falls within the same category of punishing honest gamers (by forcing them to play only through a client on a PC with an internet connection) for assumed potential wrong acts.

In my books this is not DRM or only so minor, minor DRM that it doesn't count. The game will run fine without any check. It's simply that a runtime library is attached at every start that times how long you play the game. This is already the case with GOG and it is no DRM since it doesn't pose a limit on anything you can do. So it cannot be DRM. It may be seen as behavioral tracking (withing sharing this information of course) but it is no digital rights management because no rights are inhibited (as long as you say that there is no general right for a refund at any time).

Here you really do not need DRM and still can have a two hour trial period and I think it is important that people realize it. Just have a look how it would work:

- You start the game and the game tracks how long it was executed. This is not DRM, this is behavioral tracking.
- At some point you want a refund. That is fine because GOG may have this time limited offer.
- You go to Galaxy. Galaxy reads from the game how long it was executed. This is not DRM, just a readout.
- Galaxy offers you a refund if the game time was below 2 hours. This is not DRM, nothing is forced on you, you can as well continue using the game.
- Galaxy de-installs the game if you take the refund. Well that is what you wanted, so no reason to complain.

For me all this is not DRM because noone checks if you cheat and continue to use the programm. You don't need the client in order to play. Galaxy does not need to run, it just reads the play time from the game and de-installs the game in case of a refund. The authentification is necessary to use the function in the Galaxy client but it doesn't affect that you can use the programm without Galaxy just fine all time long. And for a refund offer you have to authenticate anyway. I see no problems there and for me this is no DRM at all.

You may see it as DRM but then already now the whole Galaxy client should be full of DRM? Already now the game time is tracked.

Also I still think it makes sense to restrict the refund/demo/trial time to a certain length. GOG should give a right to refund within a certain amount of time without asking for any reason. If the time is up and they choose not to offer you this right anymore, it's not really DRM.

Ah, maybe it is, but in this case it would be so incredibly mild, that I would not care anyway, whether it is or it isn't.

Are you sure that's the case? I'm not a Galaxy user, but I would think that a normal implementation would be for Galaxy to check that the process is running and calculate time based on that, which would mean that Galaxy won't time if it's not running.

I'd agree that if the executable itself is doing the time tracking, then that would allow most scenarios, including downloading the game outside of Galaxy. However, that would mean something is attached to all games, and I'm sure that could have side effects, causing problems in some cases.

The bottom line is still the same though, it's taking technical steps due to lack of trust. It's still saying: "the Steam example has shown that most gamers don't take advantage of refunds for 2 hour games, but just wait and see what these nefarious gamers would do if they weren't restricted to 2 hours."

I'm not completely sure but I know that more and more installations have certain Galaxy related libraries shipping with them. GOG refits the games so they allow achievments, multiplayer capabilities, easier recognition by Galaxy and probably (although I'm not sure) time tracking. And this indeed resulted in several complications, there are threads about it. The advantage is that you can track the time even if Galaxy is not running. That's also a way how one could find out. Just download a game freshly and play without Galaxy, then check if Galaxy knows the playing time.

Surely, the trust is not complete. 2 hours trial period is a compromise. My proposal is mostly for the case where GOG wants to match the functionality of Steam but without using DRM (or only with extremely mild DRM). Maybe they want even more hours. I would leave it up to them.

I just want to make the point that it is easily possible to offer a refund like Steam has here on GOG without having DRM (or only very, very mild one).

Okay, sorry for derailing your point. I agree that it's better to offer general refunds than not offer them, I just think that it's better to assume up front that most people are honest and only try to detect and deal with abusers if there's need (for example based on behavioral patterns).

Wislist entry exists and quite well voted on:
http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/demos