"Just a publicity stunt."

That's their moto for years and years now. And gamers lap it up everytime.

Fantastic idea GoG good on you.

I had so many problems with DRM in the past I refused to support anything with it.
GoG saved my life :)

Thank you thank you thank you GoG

You're on a roll, dewd!

Which actually wouldn't be a bad idea.

Some years ago, there was an anti-drugs campaign that featured drug dealers expressing their contempt for users. Actually, they used actors because the actual footage from actual dealers was too over the top to be "believable".

So, in 2008 we had the dissidents who eschewed the customer-unfriendly practice of DRM

in 2018 we find ourselves with this contrarian's contrarian--just for the sake of being contrary...

everyone wants to be a rebel, eh?

(but, isn't a rebel who rebels against rebellion simply establishing the status quo?)

It may surprise you to learn that I don't consider myself to be a 'hipster' or a 'rebel' in any shape or form. What I simply do is vote with my wallet, when considering purchases of any product. Be that a computer game, a kettle, or anything else.

Insofar as my purchasing of PC games is concerned, I made a conscious decision to only buy from GOG back in 2015. Why? Simple really, I wasn't happy with the quality or service provided elsewhere. I had a Steam account and wasn't happy with the 'service' they provided, principally due to problems accessing what I'd paid for offline. Their customer service, to use the term loosely, was also atrocious and uncaring.

I can buy games that interest me from GOG without any hassle whatsoever. They accept my preferred online payment method and whenever I have encountered any issues, customer support has always been friendly, helpful and responsive.

I can honestly tell you that prior to 2015, all the problems I had with games not working or installing properly were directly related to DRM. Repeated bad luck perhaps, but they are personal experiences that led me change how I purchase games. Indeed, I still have boxed games that didn't work because of DRM problems, which still haven't been resolved to this day. No refunds were offered by either the stores or the developers/publishers.

For sure, I could quite easily pirate games I might fancy playing, but I choose not to. I choose to support a company that provides me with a quality level of service I'm happy with, and developers who also offer their products DRM free via GOG. I have backups of all the games I own - and that's the operative word here.

I trust them, they trust me. It's a win-win situation I'm entirely happy with.

I have always been geared towards archiving media as young as I can remember. I had no idea what DRM stood for at the time but I knew that if it was possible to have books, movies, shows, games etc. potentially be deleted then I knew that I had to collect what I could whether it be physical or digital as in the end the next generation should be able to enjoy what we have all loved in our life times. It really, really sucks that "AAA" companies like EA, Activision and the like can do shitty things like sell the crap they do and people love them. Bethesda can release buggy, broken games (Fallout 4 was total crap) and because of the modding community people love them. Nintendo makes awesome games but total shits on their fans when they pull fan made games that are not insulting but giving much praise to Nintendo. The only reason that Nintendo made a remake to Metroid 2 was with the wonderful fan game AM2R. All I am saying is that these companies care far more about profit then what they are selling so when the game disappears they will not bat an eyelid. I am incredibly grateful for GOG.com and all of CD Projekt for what they stand for and even though I do not have as many games as you guys do I am very happy with my 253+ gaming library as I know that as long as the internet stays intact and we can still play games because my GOG games are DRM free I have no fear of losing them.

P.S. I do wish I would have bought the Duke Nukem collection before they were taken off of GOG (thanks gearbox >:( )

I agree.

Nothing new... :P


PS: Yeah, I guess that Gaben jab/joke/meme went over many heads.

I'm a little confused here... If I wanted to FCK DRM, should I use protection? Or could that be considered a form of DRM? Is it OK to FCK DRM with DRM? Does it mean you're basically FCKing DRM, while you're FCKing DRM? Yo dawg, we heard you like FCKing DRM...

I don't have time for a vastly detailed comment at this time, but just wanted to say THANK YOU GOG for taking a vocal stand against DRM and advancing this battle further! It is also a very nice and welcome touch to point out DRM-free avenues of music and books. Also, while I am an avid Galaxy NON-user, and agree with some earlier points raised in this topic that Gwent and some other examples stretch the definition of "DRM-free", I am appreciative a vocal stance against DRM is being made nonetheless. It is sorely needed now more than ever. Mobile gaming apps, games as service, music and movie-streaming as service, comics-as-service...I have seen it all get so much worse in the last decade. All hail "convenience!", at the expense of ownership and the true convenience of having control over what you're paying for. Of course there are some people who can't be reached and for whom this message falls on deaf ears. So be it. The question "why" needs to be encouraged to people at large. For many it will begin to not fall on deaf ears. Currently, not enough people are asking why Scheme is the way it is. Let alone, "why on earth would anyone want to accept that as the standard"?

Until you're like me and you buy a game on GOG and find that it's missing key patches that included fixing game breaking bugs and you reach out to the developers and publishers and hear nothing but silence... this problem is rampant on GOG and nothing ever seems to be done about it... GOG has really been a Catch 22 for me in one too many instances... got me some no-DRM and at the same time got me some outdated, unsupported garbage


Agree with all of that, but the fact is... GOG still has a problem getting developers to fully commit to their releases here and see all the necessary patches through to the last one, not cut out halfway or nothing at all... so many games in my GOG library I still have to play the Steam versions because the GOG versions are wildly out of date

Good on GOG for this, I fully support it. DRM is a factor when I decide how to spend my money, I only only extremely reluctantly purchase a game if it includes intrusive always-on DRM.

There has yet to be DRM invented that stops piracy. It's anti-consumer nonsense that objectively lowers the quality and value of a game.

It isn't though. At a LAN with friends, can't play a game together in the same room as we need to log into an online account first and this is rural Australia. Blackout? Can't boot up a laptop and play a game without signing in to Steam/UPlay/etc. Out in an area that simply doesn't have internet? No game. These days I have access to a reasonably stable connection so that particular problem matters less, but blackouts are still a thing in summer (everyone turns on the air con at once, there goes the grid) so that will still cause a hassle.

I've even been at LANs with an internet connection but because I signed in from a different location I was kicked out of Steam. Couldn't access the games so we ended up using cracked versions. Literally right now my Steam is all screwy after I disabled an authenticator on an old phone and then got a new phone. Naturally Steam waited till the old phone service was cut before it then re-added the authenticator and demanded I use the old phone number to verify.

So now I need to find the serial number for the first game I bought which had a Steam key, take a picture of the physical copy, send it to their help desk, and then they'll allow my use my account again. For a screw up on their end.

And the absurd part Is that I like strategy games, a lot of which don't even have multiplayer, yet Steam will still screw with me even when I don't need a connection. It may be a marketing stunt (they've left a few sites out) but it isn't juvenile as I will literally go out of my way to acquire a DRM free copy, even at a higher price, simply to be able to access the product on my own terms. Or I'll buy the game and then use a cracked version. An old RPG, Two Worlds II, was really fun to play. Unfortunately it came with DRM that would require authorising a computer in a set configuration. Change a graphics card? New configuration. Change a network card? New configuration. Fresh install of Windows? Oops, out of configurations, if only you'd de-authorised them before the graphics card caught fire, or the network card was fried, or Windows got a virus bad enough to just format.

It's fine, they did have a way of getting those authorisations back, all I had to do was email information, wait, send emails back and forth, more information, more waiting, more correspondence... Never did get them back.

My copy of Morrowind didn't have that sort of rubbish though so I ended up playing that instead and haven't bought another game from the dev or publisher that made Two Worlds II (Earth 2150 is on GOG but it's the principle of the thing).

If I hand over money in order to play a game then I want to be able to play the bloody game. Anything less is theft.