The scenario you outline would seriously ruin the game for me. Personally I am glad they kept PvP to certain areas so I can avoid it. Blizzard is my friend at least, and makes games I think is fun. (By the way - I played WoW on and off since the beta until now)

obviously it is

You're both wrong. Noone would play it, simply because we all detest WoW for the pointless waste of time that it is.

You're right, generalization is fun :-D

But the doctor doesn't provide the pills, only the access to them. Just as a distributor does not make the games (in most cases) they just provide access. If doctor A writes a prescription for me and I transfer to Doctor B then Doc B will look over my files and do the exam and can rewrite the exact same prescription. It is still the pharmaceutical company that gets the money for the pills, the doctor only gets paid for future access. Likewise if I paid for accessfrom to a game from Distributor A and I can get my purchase records over to Distributor B they can verify that I did indeed pay for and am entitled to legal access to the games. The developer still keeps their money from my initial purchase and Distributor B gets the money from my future purchases.

If I purchase a game from a brick & mortar store I can link it to my Steam account without having to pay Steam. If I purchase some games from GamersGate I may be required to transfer the game to my Origin or Steam account, but the developer still only gets paid for the one copy. If I purchase The Witcher bundle in a Steam summer sale for 99.9% off I can transfer them to my GOG account where they are still full price without having to pay the difference. The mechanisms that allow transferring are already in place and being used, the only difference is that the power is in the hands of the distributors instead of the customers, which is what sets it apart from every other servicing business model.

If games are truly a product then they need to be treated like products in the same way books, movies and music is treated as a product. If games are truly a service then they need to meet the same customer expectations every other service does. This in between state where they are not really one or the other is what keeps threads like this alive on every gaming site in existence.

Okay. Let's try to flesh this out with an example.

Let's say doc A prescribes you 100 pills, that last for 100 days. You pay 100 bucks. 60 bucks go to the producer of those pills, 40 bucks remain with the doc for his prescription service. After 100 days you go to doc B, that prescribes another 100 pills for another 100 days you pay another 100 bucks, 60 go to the producer, 40 remain with the doc and so on. All is fine. That works.

Now you buy a game at distributor A. You pay 100 bucks. 60 bucks go to the producer of the game, 40 bucks remain with the distributor for his distribution service. After 100 days you decide to switch to distributor B. The producer of the game already has his 60 bucks, but where is distributor B gonna get his 40 bucks from?

Distributor B gets no money whatsoever. But does this really mean a net loss for them? How much do you suppose it costs a digital distributor to push the button that adds a title to your account? The publisher already got their money so they don't have anything to complain about and the distributor has to host the files for all the other customers who may or may not purchase the title, so what do they really lose? What they gain however, namley your patronage, does have practical value to them. If I were to purchase a physical copy of Skyrim right now then the money I paid would be split between the store and Bethesda, but when I install the game it gets automatically added to my Steam account without Valve getting any money at all. Steam doesn't care because they just got a new customer, in fact this has been Steams business model for nearly a decade. This is the reason they are the number one digital distributor of games despite having never purchased ad space anywhere. Right now customers are tied to several services because they purchased the wrong variety of games, if they were allowed to consolidate all their games in one service I have a feeling that the chosen service with find it well worth their time to accommodate that customer.

Probably just the contracts between publishers and distributors are not that flexible.

If GOG adds a game to a game shelf of a customer it is obliged to pay something to the publisher of the game because that's the contract. When making these contracts they didn't foresee neither cared much about people wanting to jump from one distributor to the next. And it's mainly the publisher that has to agree, because he delivers the things to sell, so he decides under which conditions to sell them. The distributor should be fine with other customers coming to him, maybe for a small fee to cover the costs of checking that you really bought that game, adding a game and downloading it and support ... but otherwise it increases the audience for example marketing events, ... more really sales become likely.

So I think, switching is just a legal problem.

+1
Thanks for the heads-up.

This is more than enough reason for me to stay clear of that company, just as with Valve, EA, et cetera.

If it's not already in this thread...

The Gamersgate installer for a game creates a temporary download directory. A file in the Gamersgate temp files directory called "start" or something should be downloaded most times (sometimes it is the installer.exe or setup.exe). But, if you quit the installer, opt to save the temp files. Check the directory (it helps to sort by date to find the newest download, because GG names directories with a number... e.g., 1054).

However, while the Gamersgate installer is open, the "start" file or something similar is changed (unencrypted?) to the setup.exe or install.exe. You need to leave the installer open, and copy all the files in the temp directory to a new directory. Now you have a DRM free copy, assuming the game is listed as DRM. I think the Securom games (maybe others) can be copied too. You're essentially removing the GG DRM.

I know this, but that is legally and practically the same as cracking a game. I also consider it rather strange that GG is calling some of their games DRM free.

For me, the GOG way is the only true DRM free way. (Not that I care about DRM, but if you use it for marketing, use it right!).

So its only for what all drm is allegedly for, but just like steam it doesn't make it any less drm just because it doesn't harass you as much as most others and punish you for buying a game.

If I have to be online to install then my game won't exist anymore if something happens to the gamersgate installers. if gamersgate went under my "drm free" backup won't work because there are no servers for it to talk to before it lets me install if I understand correctly. This is not DRM free if true.

This has been covered time and time again. You download the game with the downloader and then you back up the install files while they're unencrypted. You never need to connect to GamersGate's servers again.

SirPrimalform speaks the truth. Once you download the game from GamersGate it is an un-encrypted .exe or .zip folder. Plug in the key on your shelf page and wallah, installed and playable.
One thing I don't care for about GOG's installers...is GOG's installers. The GOG icon on every installer just irks me a little. I'd prefer to see the original game icons you know?

I don't need to be reminded I bought it from GOG every time.

Without GOG being able to completely own your computer with DRM, how else is it going to market itself? ;)