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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.
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neonblack: @gog: Great Initiative, however you say: "We strongly believe that if you buy a game, it should be yours...". The games are not mine cause when I die I cannot leave them to my children because of this in your T&C: "Your GOG account and GOG content are personal to you and cannot be shared with, sold, gifted or transferred to anyone else. Your access to and use of them is subject to GOG’s rules which are set out here, as updated or amended when necessary.".

Beside DRM, modify the T&C to make it so that people can transfer their accounts/games to their next of kin.
That's actually possible - I know because I've been through it.
You have to contact support and provide some stuff (like a certificate of death and so on) and then the account can be transferred.
I ended up not transferring the account - it's still here and well... dead. ;-(
You are simply THE BEST!
EDITH says... double post.
FTFY
Post edited August 22, 2018 by toxicTom
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PromZA: The wallet does the talking and so far it has shown DRM to be a tremendous failure.
It has?
"If you're the owner of a 100% DRM-free source and would like to be featured here, please reach out to iwantto@fckdrm.com."

Best email address ever.
low rated
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KP1990: Just remember DRM-free isn't the only reason some of us love GOG

It's also the care for customer service, with fair price package and actually TESTING the games you upload onto your store, and not just selling any old shovelware game. Quality over Quantity.

But yeah, it's great to see GOG wanting to spread some information and awareness to people about what DRM is and how it can effect the customer, as there's alot of misinformation that gets spread around the internet about DRM
Hey, wanna tell that to that Z Steel Soldiers game they have, which is essentially a shitty port of the Iphone version? Or how about that Call of Cthulhu Game which is essentially busted without fan patches, an there's probably some games that are broken in one way or another. Testing games my fuckin' ass. They're about as much about quantity over quality as anyone else.

Yes I don't understand these very vocal people about gog galaxy, as GOG still offer versions of these games without the client.
Yeah, no. Some of these games still function on cloud save stuff, unless yer one of those chumps who believes "well, I should have my safe files on my PC! Nyeh! Nyeh! Nyeh!", to which I can just say "Oh sure, an what if your HD goes kaput? Enjoy losing all your progress asshole."
Post edited August 22, 2018 by Kanashe
Thank you, GOG, for spearheading this conversation. DRM is not only making games run worse, but ensures 10 years from now, they would be unplayable.
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I would like to educate people on DRM and how GOG bounces back and forth between standards for their own gain as a marketing tactic and how GOG/CDPR have proven they cannot be trusted. Don't mistake me for a Valve drone, I do not give money to any of these worse than rent seeking disgusting digital distribution "services" such as Steam, GOG, uplay, origin, etc. I did buy the physical Complete Editions of the Witcher games though.
I find this hilarious considering GOG itself is DRM using GOG's own standard on DRM for old physical copies. GOG is DRM and if you described GOG to me before paid digital distribution took off, I would have immediately considered it to be DRM and still do, and rightfully so.
GOG themselves consider offline CD keys found on old physical copies of PC games to be DRM, and rightfully so. Offline CD keys that I have experienced required the key once before the game is fully installed but do not require an official account nor do they require you to connect to a server for authorization at any point.
GOG requires you to have an official account with them and you have to be authorized by their servers to access the games you paid for. I consider that to be more and worse DRM than offline CD keys which don't require an account or server authentication at any point, yet for some reason GOG gets a pass. GOG should be considered DRM using GOG's own standards which consider offline CD keys to be DRM.
It does not matter if it is only required once before the game is fully installed and it doesn't matter if you can copy and paste it once you get past it, offline CD keys do not get a pass so neither should GOG. Funnily enough, years ago a friend of mine took his laptop into Walmart, opened a Warcraft 3 battlechest then installed it on his laptop. Warcraft 3 uses an offline CD key DRM, (we have never played online but I assume that key might be used if you want to play online, I'm not sure), yet once it was installed he copy and pasted to a flash drive and let me and my other friends install it on our computers, we never had to use the CD key. If someone bought that opened Warcraft 3 battlechest, they would be able to do the same.
It does not matter that it is inherent with paid digital distribution, it should not get a pass. The original source for the games I installed from physical copies is the disc or flash drive, the original source for the games you get from GOG is from their servers.
My argument here is not anti or pro-DRM, I'm just proving that GOG is not DRM free like they falsely advertise.

How about some disgusting things the founders of CDPR did. The founders claim they used to sell pirated games before they founded CDPR, they exonerate themselves by stating that it wasn't illegal.
CDPR sent legals threats to Germans who pirated Witcher 2 to either pay 1000 euro or go to court, but I bet not a single one of those Germans made any money from pirating Witcher 2 unlike the founders of CDPR.
The only reason CDPR gave to pay for the game was to "support the developer" which has nothing to do with the legality of it, but the founders sure weren't supporting the developers when they were selling their pirated games.
They couldn't say to buy the physical copy either, since the vanilla physical copies of Witcher 2 had Securom on it. They intentionally sabotaged the physical copy of Witcher 2 with Securom to get people to pay for it digitally instead so they can make more money which is hypocritical since Marcin said they "beat pirates" by selling nice physical copies with the entire game with them but they haven't done that for any of the Witcher games at release, only when they released the Complete Editions.

The only sites that fckdrm gave for DRM free media that are actually DRM free are project gutenberg, openlibra, and moving image archive, which all offer public domain works and don't charge for it which is completely different from the others. Conveniently enough, the website doesn't mention you can always buy a physical book or a physical CD which are truly DRM free and let you actually get something in return for your money, which makes sense since physical products goes against GOG's business model and some people might question the double standards on promoting physical copies of other forms of media but not games. GOG twitter blocked me for calling them out on posting a picture of old big box physical games and me telling them that giving money to GOG is a vote against physical games, so why post a picture of them?

Cue the GOG/CDPR drones stepping in and trying (and failing) to defend their favorite company. by providing no counter arguments and grasping for straws You aren't bad people for doing it, you are just too kind and nice to the point of being altruistic and I feel bad for you for letting yourself get manipulated by GOG and other companies.

If GOG were serious about this then they would be promoting truly DRM free media such as physical books or truly DRM free games such as the physical Complete Editions of the Witcher games that is not only truly DRM free, but lets you actually get something in return for your money. But that doesn't make as much money as people giving money to GOG so they don't do that.
Post edited August 22, 2018 by DontPay4Digital
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DontPay4Digital: GOG requires you to have an official account with them and you have to be authorized by their servers to access the games you paid for. I consider that to be more and worse DRM than offline CD keys which don't require an account or server authentication at any point, yet for some reason GOG gets a pass. GOG should be considered DRM using GOG's own standards which consider offline CD keys to be DRM.
You need an account to purchase a game(most online stores these days do require you have an account to do purchases, even for physical goods, this is not new). As long as you have the account(and GOG service is up and going) you can access and download all your games. However, you can download all the games you've purchased, put them on some form of storage(DVDs, Harddrives, whatever) and not have to access GoGs service ever again. That is what they mean by DRM free, the ability to store it away yourself, on physical media and not requiring authentication to reinstall and replay said games.

In contrast say Origin. Origin requires you to have acess to it to both play your games, install your games, and keep your games. If Origin was shut down, your access to the games(even if installed) would be voided, and unplayable(without a crack). With GoG, that is not an issue, and you can continue using the games your entire life-span(with or without internet), granted that you have downloaded and stored away all the installation files(which is reasonable). Some games do require you to have an active account for multiplayer component(which is disclosed, as others have said), which has to do with convinience, and is fair. Though I do feel it should be mandatory to have lan functionality in the games.


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what your post seems like is that you confuse DRM with Digital Distribution, and that you are against digital distribution of video games, and that everything should rather only be physical copies(which is insane, considering the size of games... I'd rather not need 2+ bluray disks to install something, which is what'll happen sooner than later).
Post edited August 23, 2018 by snykaas
Edit because someone totally beat me to the punch. Cheers snykaas.
Post edited August 23, 2018 by jcaton7df
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snykaas: Some games do require you to have an active account for multiplayer component(which is disclosed, as others have said), which has to do with convinience, and is fair. Though I do feel it should be mandatory to have lan functionality in the games.
If it walks like a DRM, and talks like a DRM, is it a DRM?

The disclosure of 3ps requirements hasn't always been there, and still isn't always up-front. Progress has been made on that front for sure, and there's yet to be made, which I'm sure GOG will do.

But I agree with you, that doesn't mean the mission is accomplished - if I can't play my game at all without Origin's ongoing say-so, but can't play my game with friends without GOG's ongoing say-so, GOG is only better by degree than Origin, rather than different in kind.
Acknowledged, they do provide a value-added service (to a far greater degree than Origin can claim, rather than being pure DRM), but there are ways to provide multiplayer (such as LAN, or user-configurable servers) that don't walk like DRM or talk like DRM. Making any of those multiplayer options a requirement for calling something DRM-free doesn't seem like a huge leap. When you market something as being "free of <x>", it's up to you to prove that nothing it includes actually is <x>.
Post edited August 23, 2018 by mactrent
Is this really called fuck DRM? Is GOG run by 12 year olds?
A follow up, since I mentioned sending messages to Fireflower and Zoom Platform about being included on the list on the site, just got this from Zoom:

"Thanks for sharing! While we very much appreciate you thinking of us, we have other more serious issues with GOG, besides simple competition. Therefore, I’m afraid we must decline. Thank you again though for the thought."

So they won't be listed because they specifically don't want to be associated with GOG, not because GOG skipped over them. Wondering what those issues are now though.

Let's see about FF.

And a note about the above conversation, about needing an account to download your games being seen as DRM, technically they COULD provide you with an unique link for the downloads and not require an account at all, some sites even do that. Taking it in the strictest sense, there is something to be said about that.
Now if links would remain valid, there is the issue of the bandwidth, since it doesn't cost them anything if someone takes a downloaded installer and shares it, but if somebody posts such a link and a bunch of people goes on to download a 40 Gb game right away, the extra bandwidth may cause a tiny increase in costs, and their servers may even momentarily crash, which can cause worse issues. So I guess they could be single-use links, and somebody who'd want to redownload something would need to get another, after proving they actually purchased it, which would be a pain on both sides without accounts.
Still technically possible though. Not that I'm supporting DontPay4Digital's stance otherwise (and I for one would much rather stick to digital only for anything bar books thank you very much, and feeling pretty darn guilty for using up paper and the transportation costs for those too), but just for the sake of argument.
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DontPay4Digital: GOG requires you to have an official account with them and you have to be authorized by their servers to access the games you paid for.
An account is required to use the shop on GoGs website. It's not required to use their games. For example you could get the installers from someone else (while this would violate GoGs terms of use, there is no technical restriction in place to prevent it)
Hell yeah!