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DRM-free approach in games has been at the heart of GOG.COM from day one. We strongly believe that if you buy a game, it should be yours, and you can play it the way it’s convenient for you, and not how others want you to use it.

The landscape has changed since 2008, and today many people don’t realize what DRM even means. And still the DRM issue in games remains – you’re never sure when and why you can be blocked from accessing them. And it’s not only games that are affected, but your favourite books, music, movies and apps as well.

To help understand what DRM means, how it influences your games and other digital media, and what benefits come with DRM-free approach, we’re launching the FCK DRM initiative. The goal is to educate people and ignite a discussion about DRM. To learn more visit https://fckdrm.com, and share your opinions and stories about DRM and how it affects you.
One thing I can tell you. I own quite a few unopened boxes with games. I like boxed copies. They are a good memento, a conversation starter and a decoration. But I will not pay for anything that says "requires online activation" on the back.

Recently I almost bought physical copies of Pillars of Eternity 2 and DooM. However, they required online activation, so I'll wait until I actually want to play them right away, buy them on GOG and pay significantly less money.

On the flip side, I just opened a box with Culpa Innata. It didn't install directly off CD for some reason. I copied the files to local harddrive and that worked like a charm. Really enjoying it right now.

If you want your games to last, you will publish them without DRM.
Post edited August 22, 2018 by Gambler.224
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Magmarock: As for what Linus said I don’t really follow him but it wouldn't be the first time a Linux fanboy has lied about something.
Do you also call Bill Gates a "Windows fanboy"?
Wine is not an emulator because emulators don’t traditionally use dll from the system they’re trying to ape. Wine is the worst thing I’ve ever had to deal with. It’s like someone was trying to make an emulator and then gave up half way. I still can’t get Fear, a game from 2007 to work property in it and as I mentioned before when using Wine you’re using guanine Windows DLL files. I though the whole point of Linux was to get away from Windows.
That's not at all what WINE is, but then it's too much to expect Windows fanboys to argue from actual knowledge. It's a clean-room reverse-engineering of Windows, and doesn't use any actual Windows DLL files unless you tell it to. I used it to run FEAR several years ago and it was trivial to get it to work, and I didn't have any noticeable issues. It's likely you're lying or exaggerating your experience.
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kohlrak: Clarify
Tallima mates with DRM.
Name is mixed
Tallima
D replaces T
R replaced lli
M stays M

Tallima + drm = darma

The Darma Initiative is a company/faction in Lost, the TV show. They are sort of the bad guys, at least through part of the show.

So The Darma Initiative is bad. I can't get behind it. I can't support it.

It was a tangled web of late night stupidity. It's what I do! :)

On the point with gog, and culture in general, I wish the word "fuck" want used so much. For me, it always means mating in my head first, so if people say "Fuck this shit," I always have a mental image of a penis going through dog poop.

But it's everywhere. I see the word on tshirts at the mall, and coming from everyone's mouth and writing every day. It's a crass word with limited but also wide, unspecific meaning; unspecific enough to get only an emotional, visceral understanding of someone's thoughts. With just a moment more of thinking or introspection, perhaps a more meaningful word could be used.

What do you do, though?

I'm glad there's a place where drm-free stores can be web-ringed, but I doubt much will change in the overall culture. But maybe it will!
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Kanashe: Uh-huh, sure it doesn't. You keep telling yourself that, trust me when I say a good portion of GoG users are either hipsters or so called "rebels" who consider themselves special snowflakes by buying games on this place.
Why would I trust you? You're obviously not interested in actual facts or reality. I don't have to "tell myself" things that can be independently verified, but that's obviously what you have to do. So go on, keep telling yourself that it's all about hipsters and rebels, maybe you even believe that. It's pretty hilarious.
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Magmarock: Yeah well I’ve used it and .deb files from an older version of Debain-based OS such as Ubuntu or Mint can not be installed without breaking packages.
I don't need to respond to this because your ignorance speaks for itself. The kernel has nothing to do with what you are describing.

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Magmarock: Not true, I myself have two computers running Windows and thus far have no accounts with Microsoft. The second computer is air-gaped meaning it’s not connected to the internet at all. Meanwhile without internet neither the package-manager or the index will be able to download the correct dependencies needed to get programs to work. There is no offline method to do this either.
Not only can you download and install the dependencies offline, you can also create your own repo and push updates through your internal LAN to servers and workstations. Why any home user would do this I'm not sure. How do you install software on windows without copying it to the local machine first?

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Magmarock: Most games on GOG run through Windows nativity with only pre-98 stuff using emulators. Some other stuff uses wrappers and this was all before Direct X came into the fold which is understandable. Wine is not an emulator because emulators don’t traditionally use dll from the system they’re trying to ape. Wine is the worst thing I’ve ever had to deal with. It’s like someone was trying to make an emulator and then gave up half way. I still can’t get Fear, a game from 2007 to work property in it and as I mentioned before when using Wine you’re using guanine Windows DLL files. I though the whole point of Linux was to get away from Windows.
FEAR is marked platinum support on the winehq appdb and you couldn't get it to run. Somehow that doesn't surprise me. I am away from windows; and I am also playing games on my linux box that were "deprecated" by windows.

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Magmarock: This comment was a response to the fact that FCK-DRM has affiliate links to GNU/Linux. I bet you’ve never heard of, or used these distributions. https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html
And my point was that GOG does not support or affiliate with those distros in any meaningful way. So don't worry your monopolistic DRM-laden OS is in no danger.
Post edited August 22, 2018 by maxRunnr
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GOG.com: We strongly believe that if you buy a game, it should be yours, and you can play it the way it’s convenient for you, and not how others want you to use it.
That's great, until I update my system and a required library is no longer available. Users are left to scarmble for themselves and search deep in archived threads on obscure forums for a workaround. I don't even believe developers are always aware of every dependency their binaries have and they can't make that information available, when they want to, which is extremely rare.
I'd rather GoG start a FCK SJW initiative.
Awesome, this will come in handy next time I get into a conversation with someone about DRM (or get another "hurr durr what even is GOG" comment)

There are several other gaming store vendors that would be great to see on the list, since the majority of their titles are DRM-free. But if the criteria is that all titles must be DRM-free, then I can see why they aren't on there (maybe have a "has some DRM titles" warning label?)
Post edited December 21, 2018 by personthingy
What does FCK stand for?
You should also mention other DRM-free gaming stores like itch.io to be fair.
Also, you should somehow indicate support for Day against DRM (September 18):
https://www.defectivebydesign.org/dayagainstdrm
May be make a special sale or something.

And @Magmarock is here again complaining about Linux. If you want DRM-free - use it. Otherwise you are in the wrong store.
Post edited August 22, 2018 by shmerl
low rated
The main reason GOG wants DRM-Free is so they can refuse to refund games that are functional, because there is no way to disable access to games still installed on the local hard drive. I've been burned by GOG on a few occasions, never burned by Steam.. I used to love GOG, but they have been brought down a few pegs with refusals...
high rated
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personthingy: Awesome, this will come in handy next time I get into a conversation with someone about DRM (or get another "hurr durr what even is GOG" comment)

There are several other gaming store vendors that would be great to see on the list, since the majority of their titles are DRM-free. But if the criteria is that all titles must be DRM-free, then I can see why they aren't on there (maybe have a "has some DRM titles" warning label?)

The list:
itch.io
Humble Store
MangaGamer (NSFW)
JAST USA (NSFW)
Denpasoft (NSFW)
For Humble Store, out of 6610 games, 6114 Steam, 1358 DRM-Free currently.
For new releases (their filter definition, whatever that is), out of 320 games, 257 Steam, 21 DRM-Free currently.
Not a majority in any sense of the word. 20.5% of total, 6.6% of new releases. The trend seems down-hill to me. And probably only going to get worse.
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shmerl: You should also mention other DRM-free gaming stores like itch.io to be fair.
Also, you should somehow indicate support for Day against DRM (September 18):
https://www.defectivebydesign.org/dayagainstdrm
May be make a special sale or something.

And @Magmarock is here again complaining about Linux. If you want DRM-free - use it. Otherwise you are in the wrong store.
It must be 100% DRMFREE.. itch.io isn't
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GamingGod81: The main reason GOG wants DRM-Free is so they can refuse to refund games that are functional, because there is no way to disable access to games still installed on the local hard drive. I've been burned by GOG on a few occasions, never burned by Steam.. I used to love GOG, but they have been brought down a few pegs with refusals...
There are always trade offs. I seriously doubt the entire motivation for DRM free is just to refuse refunds. I would imagine if they allowed DRM they would probably make more money as they'd have an easier time convincing publisher to sell their lastest game through GOG.
Steam blocks my owned bug full ea games on offline computer.

I want to be possible to download ps4 purchased games disks to pc. because many of them don't work keyboard, mouse. and there are many limitations.