^^
This comment should be framed. It would definitely save me time coming up with a response, which will invariably end in some kind of unrelated tangential stuff.

Back before it was DRM and it was just "copy protection", every game I bought that had some lame copy protection (generally requiring one to keep the CD/DVD in the drive), I went and got a crack for it. Why should people who pirate the game get to experience it with less hassle than someone who payed for it?

Which is why GOG was so appealing back then, and still is now - you get the full game in installer format, you can put it wherever, and once installed it will never ask you to jam a shiny disc-shaped object into a badly-designed cup-holder that pops out of your PC. That way, you can use it to hold your cups at just the right height, without having to buy some other weird cup-holding device, or attempt to find a coaster, or not use a coaster and spill coffee and/or beer which messes with your mouse's responsiveness thereby inducing extreme rage and anxiety, which as we all know can potentially lead to violent incidents of mouse vs wall.
Hehe, I remember the Action Replay for the 'ole Amiga. Cheatin good times.

DRM punishes legit buyers, while pirates used cracked games so that crap doesn't affect them.

It'd be like if you bought a car, and in order to open the door you have to prove it's you via the car reading your face by repeatedly slamming the bonnet into your skull, till eventually it matches the skull-print on file and opens the door for you. Meanwhile, thieves just bypass all that crap and steal your car easier than you could ever open and start it legitimately.

How do they check that ? ......
You cant use old IP , cause they change because the provider did so, you switched to another provider, and how about people that use VPN? basically it is impossible to use IP adres.

If you are selling it or put it on the internet: " hey guys i am old ... gonna buy the farm soon" anyone intrested in having this account: name$ contact me at blablabla for details :D
They be more than happy to see that relatives take the account and buy even more games :D

Unless ofcourse the kids are huge Steam fans and love DRm and restrictions , most of our kids are different from us, we are old fashioned want DRM free, the next generation doesnt really care a ...... all they want is easy access and steam does almost everything with a minimum of thinking required....

Anyway i hate automated things and i want to use my brain, i want to install the game and i want to be in control..... :D then again i am an old dinosaur and our kids are not .... :D

How does "FCK DRM" morph into "not listening to its customers"?

One of the criticisms of the page - apart from the whiny gits who have an issue with something that looks like a "cuss word" but isn't really one, and this is somehow "OMG SO IMMATURE" and therefore should be changed - is that it's basically preaching to the converted. In other words, most of GOG's customers hate DRM, and support FCKing it off. Which is the exact opposite of listening to its customers.

Also not sure companies will just blow it off based on the name. Companies know about marketing, the name is clearly aimed at GOG customers and potentially others who hate DRM. It's also aimed at people who don't truly know how evil DRM is, to let them know. It's like religious preaching - most of the people cheering and singing are already followers, but occasionally a new sheep joins the flock. Often sheep that were abused by Uncle EA where he'd force them to connect to his filthy servers, supposedly to "prove" that they deserve his love before he lets them play. So it's like religion, but also much less rapey than a religion. Also less crappy singing, less guilt trips, no listening to boring speeches about ancient stories about sins with metaphores and other pointless stuff that just wastes your time.

And it's definitely memorable and catchy - which are important, because otherwise no one will remember this after 24-48 hours. This way people may talk about it a bit longer. Even whiny people talking about the "OMG! U SWEAR!" aspect are contributing positively in that sense, which is amazing considering such whiners are ordinarily enemies of humanity.

Full agreement on that. If the game can be played via a private server that I can set up myself, then it's DRM-free. Requiring a login and password for player identification isn't DRM, as long as I can freely create such a player account.

Unfortunately GOG sells several games that require Galaxy for multiplier using proprietary servers. Games that don't allow users to set up their own multiplayer servers (or LAN or any other DRM-free option). Therefore these games have to be viewed as DRM-ed. Even if the primary goal is claimed to be convenience and not control, the effects are still the same as DRM. This shows how little GOG actually stands behind their FCK DRM initiative. It they were serious about that, they would start by FCK-ing their own stance on how to handle multiplayer.

This. And with GOG even taking part as well. I applaud GOG's efforts to make an optional client and service which provides many of the things people are used to getting from Steam. I just think they're doing a lousy job when it comes to the optional part, regarding multiplayer.

Let's use this site's own DRM test against any game that requires Galaxy for its multiplayer, and see whether it looks like DRM:

Lose all access, just like that: DRM
Downtime, technical issues, yup. Ownership checks can fail, yup. Just GOG we have to trust to keep things running, instead of <insert publisher, developer, or Steam>,

Backup, copy, use anywhere: DRM
I can't take my DRM-free GOG game purchase and go use someone else's multiplayer API; that's just not something that can be owned. If only there were a way to make developers use a portable API, or a shim layer that could implement such a thing...

Access offline: DRM
"Don't rely on your internet connection. If not in principle, then for stability and convenience." Yes. Please. Let me play multiplayer on a LAN without needing to verify everything over the internet first. On principle, and for stability and convenience.

Keep your consumer rights: ???
With games that only implement Galaxy multiplayer, or that require a unique serial key, it's not at all clear what my rights are. Ditto for games that don't include a server-side component for me to run.

Support digital preservation: DRM
"By choosing the right sources," - I'm assuming this means GOG - "you know that the content you bought will remain with you" - so long as GOG (and whomever is actually running the server) remains in business and continues to provide the service. I mean, it's nice that they do have some kind of a guarantee, but this isn't any stronger of a guarantee than most publishers/developers offer, and Steam's not disappearing any time soon.

Am I being overly picky? Perhaps so; this is only the multiplayer parts that I'm talking about, while all GOG games get the single-player parts right. I still think it's important, though.

What is my suggestion? Make LAN or peer-to-peer play a requirement for games that are going to have the "Multiplayer Support" tag in the GOG store. You've already provided developers and porters with what is (aimed at being) a drop-in replacement for the Steam multiplayer, achievement and authentication APIs, but with all of those things relying on your servers, which you also had to provide. Then there's the question of who's actually hosting the game server, but the fix for that is in the post before mine.
Now imagine if you offered a similar drop-in replacement for even just the multiplayer, implemented by a local LAN-only or internet-connected (at the user's option) client program. One which wasn't reliant on any ongoing services from you, so it would match your above criteria for "DRM-FREE". If you wanted to go the extra mile for game developers, you could use client-created certificates to provide an authentication ("you're the same player I saw last time that had all this progress, right?") mechanism their games could rely on.
This way, purchasers of DRM-free games on GOG could choose whether they wanted to use GOG Galaxy and related services for the increased convenience, or download a separate multiplayer shim that would at the very least provide support for the classic LAN multiplayer on these new Steam-native games that don't offer it even on their current GOG versions.

Although one could of course just pass them on regardless, you make a very good point. While I can understand that you shouldn't be able to re-sell GOG games, you should definitely be able to pass on your game collection to your children. Amending the T&Cs to allow this would demonstrate a clear commitment.

Well if a company wants to sell their multiplayer as a "service" that goes via their third party servers, then that's their business. As long as this is very clearly labelled. I agree it's definitely getting into the same screwed up area - in that account access could be lost, lack of internet could screw you, and most importantly if the 3P servers go, then MP for that game is DEAD and there's nothing you can do about it.

Ideally, all MP games should have an option to connect to each other directly - e.g. via IP addresses or the like. Or come with a built-in server that anyone can easily configure and run. At least it should be doable on a LAN, and it should be possible on the net even without a dedicated matchmaking service.

I like your ideas re: plugins, Galaxy etc. to help simplify this for devs. Should be doable I would think. It somewhat baffles me that many games these days don't have LAN play, when that should be the easiest connectivity to run and test.

When I said itchio has DRM, I mean the Steam keys.

Is ALL the itchio catalogue available for download?..
If yes, then I was wrong and the store is 100% DRMFREE and it must be listed in the FCKDRM site.

As far as multiplayer goes, while I prefer LAN play to be an option, if the offline single player campaign works without an internet connection or account I still consider it DRM-Free.

It's Denuvo-like BS that locks me out of games I paid for if I'm NOT online that tick me straight the **** off.

This initiative is starting off by shooting itself in the foot by being too puritanical about DRM.

This reminds me of when Richard Stallman went off on a religious crusade against non open source software. It wasn't enough for him for open source software to exist and flourish, he needed to control what everyone else did and force his righteous views on the unbelievers! His original GPL was so draconian that open source software was getting banned from almost every organization. His own people had to sideline him and replace his fanatical posturing with a friendly collaboration with the rest of the world -- starting with a sane version of the GPL -- and THAT's when open source software took off, even encouraging closed source software shops to release some of their code as open source.

It's fine to encourage DRM free games, but when you start to vilify those who sell (or use!) both DRM free games and non DRM free ones and tell them that they can't be part of the club of the righteous until they're 100% pure of soul, you'll turn into Richard Stallman and start the countdown to your own irrelevance. You'd basically be creating ideological DRM that you'd be enforcing through intimidation and vilification!

If you want this initiative to work, make it positive. Reward, encourage, and include instead of condemning and excluding even those who are taking steps in the right direction.

Unless this is just a front for marketing and the goal is just to position GOG.com as the only viable option. Nah. No one could be that slimy, deceptive, and manipulative. :)

Nice fairy tale. According to you who was he replaced with? FYI GPL3 is widely considered more strict than GPL2 because of the patent and anti-tivoization clauses. Stallman has always been just one voice in a diverse movement. But your version of events would make great a Hollywood screen play.

I know that card, never had it cause it wasn't available in our local stores.
C64 had 3 cards that sold well in the stores, if i remember correctly

a RED one with a nasty small white reset button

a weird name: i think it was : Kat or Cat and Kosh or Korsh very strange name.
a blue one i think it had a black or red resut button

and a brown hardplastic card with a switch , one that was like an old audio up down flip status, the previous 2 cards had a tiny plastic pin you had to push down , but it came right back it didnt stay down like on of switches.

Anyway they were quite expensive around 100 bucks and the last one with the real on off switch was >119 bucks
all sold in Dutch stores :D ofcourse all the cards are long gone now, disappeared during moving.

Yes i remember the good old coasters, called onderzetters in Dutch, they were used for almost anything , first cd burner very expensive up to 300 or 400 guilders and a ridiculous slow speed , awfull..... when burning , hands of... dont touch anything dont use the PC or .... coaster time, today we burn a cd or dvd while browing the internet.


HD very expensive , relatively fragile, awful slow speed, extreme low capacity, today we have USB3.x 1 GIGAbyte and faster then our first HD i guess and cheaper, 50 - 70 euros sometimes cheaper.

just out of curiosity: do you go to vaccination centers to tell everyone there how stupid they are for getting a tetanus vaccine that won't keep them safe from developing cancer? * Because nobody ever said that DRM-free was meant to make piracy disappear.

* It's not a perfect analogy, mind you. DRM is a problem at least as bad as piracy.

You are right about that vaccination thing, some people are dumb or dont know better and dont want to get any kind of vaccination.

DRM is not to stop piracy, its a solution to the people willing to buy games and pay with money for a game thats DRM free , instead of geting cracked versions, usually full with virus / trojans and more crapware, but if they want to take the risk, ....... :D

DRM is bad cause all the copyproctection on cds are the cause many DVD go bad cause it scratches and you cant make a backup for personal use so i you have to buy it again because its damages by frequent use.

DRM might be a far larger problem then piracy............ there are more consumers/users then companies that adore DRM
even if it is only 1 percent of all people ( possible customers) thats rougly 4 billion people / 100 = 40 million
even if you divide that by 10 its still 4.000.000 people, i wonder if we have > 4.000.000 companies that love drm, real big companies, no tiny ones with 20 - 30 employees but big boys like apple, google, microsoft.