DontPay4Digital: 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.
You do realise, that you only need the GOG account to PURCHASE, and thereafter DOWNLOAD, the game you paid for, right?
Once you've downloaded it, that game IS YOURS FOREVER. You can make thousands of backups and stash them in secret bunkers throughout the world, so that when the apocalypse hits and your gaming rig is caught in the initial nuclear blasts that wipe out humanity (including GOG's servers and personnel and even the Internet itself), you can reinstall your game to any other compatible computer (if you can find any after all the nuking).
And why the hell would I want to order physical copies of stuff? I then have to put them somewhere. The CDs/DVSs will eventually die (possibly faster than HDs, especially if you move your stuff around when you upgrade HDs, or you have a cloud storage for your stuff, or any other solutions). Someone then has to expend resources to produce the media, copy to the media, ship the media - all that is passed on to the customer, it's more of a pain in the ass for everyone involved, and to top it off even with my really inferior third-world Internet, it's still faster to download almost anything than it is to get it shipped via premium express post.
Wow and I thought that Kanashe was retarded, but you have just taken it up a notch. Actually you've taken it up so many notches, that I'm not sure when the Universe will manage to generate someone as amazingly retarded. If it wasn't a total pain in the ass, I would personally design, produce and ship a Retarded Moron of the Year statue to you. Well done.
clayborn902: I have always held the belief that the only thing that should keep you from playing a game is it's rating, hardware and having enough money to buy the game.
gamesfreak64: i dont do ratings , i always decide for myself so ratings are down the drain for me.
My main issues are money................. cashflow is extremely low (never been high tbh) and hardware is quite expensive
when 400 to 600 guilders were enough ( yuo could reuse old windows on new hardware) today it will cost > 600 euros ,
exchange rate of 2.20371 guilders = 1 Euro , so the new setup will be 2.2 times as expensive.
Unaffordable unless your willing to wait and save 2 years or more .....
Kanashe: Oh, I'd say GOG is run by elitist assholes, who have their heads really far up their own asses. While the community is mostly made of people who consider themselves special or part of some "movement" by buying games from GoG or supporting them.
gamesfreak64: I like the movement thing you mentioned :D a nice green shirt with GOG on it would be nice, then again i'm too old for that, but 20 years ago it would have been fun to have.
That's actually a great (albeit potentially cheesy and cringeworthy) idea - FCK DRM T-SHIRTS!
People will do a triple-take for these. First because FCK, then they'll go "French Connection - people still wearing those?", then they'll look again for the third time.
Probably needs some subtitle or something on the back - website address will probably suffice. Keep it mysterious enough that people will feel compelled to look into it.
