OutOfTimer: I'm also concerned about their planned release of The Witcher 2. Judging by the way they handle PR, the whole situation might backfire. It's obvious people will pirate it like hell just like they did with World of Goo.

bansama: I see this as an interesting experiment if nothing else. The game is going to be pirated anyhow, but I hope somehow this sheds some light in to how and where the game gets pirated, i.e., is it going to be the GOG version that ends up on trackers, or is it going to be a "cracked" version that included DRM (for the record, I'll be buying the game eventually, but almost certainly not from GOG).

El_Caz: I think the subject is worth a little discussion, namely the "game getting pirated as hell". What's the really big difference between a DRMed game hitting torrent sites and a not DRMed one?

OutOfTimer: I'm also concerned about their planned release of The Witcher 2. Judging by the way they handle PR, the whole situation might backfire. It's obvious people will pirate it like hell just like they did with World of Goo. This might significantly hinder GOG's efforts to sign any publishers already opposed to DRM-free games. I, for one, believe GOG will make a joke of itself - especially if they think it's possible to seek compensation through extorting money from old ladies and children using the court system. They're not the first company to attempt that.

Any thoughts on avoiding frustration?

Kurina: I really do no foresee any sort of major blunder with all this. To me, I could care less about piracy. It is going to get pirated with DRM or without. I feel the more important focus is how many people are willing to purchase into this model and support it. Does offering a DRM free alternative, with a ton of extras, make for a massive difference in sales? If so, this will be fantastic for the PC industry and gamers. If not, we will just go back to more of the same with DRM loaded titles.

As for avoiding frustration, we just need to tame our wild imaginations rather than avoid the main page. They teased us, we dreamed big, and we did not quite get what we were after. A big publisher is signed though and a few dozen more games are on the way, so that is all I care about. Can't wait to see which ones.

The broken English comment is uncalled for though. GOG and CD Projekt are Polish companies, and their English is definitely better than my Polish. I will gladly overlook some minor errors. If we want to get nitpicky, maybe can look at Valve, an American company who their own Steam Guard error message during the reveal presentation. Or how about the previous [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEB0H90lt_M&feature=player_embedded]Call of Duty trailer that cannot even spell the word intelligence? I am more concerned about that than a non-English company making a few errors.

bansama: The problem though is with the fact that GOG are also offering up extras not available elsewhere. As such, it's no longer possible to ascertain whether any potential difference was down to the DRM decision or simply due to people wanting those extras.

It would have been better if the only difference between each version had been the inclusion of DRM. That would have made the whole situation far more interesting as far as I'm concerned. So as it is, I'm only really interested in which version is going to be pirated and not which version sells the most (I think it's a safe bet that as far as digital is concerned, that'll be Steam anyway).

bansama: The problem though is with the fact that GOG are also offering up extras not available elsewhere. As such, it's no longer possible to ascertain whether any potential difference was down to the DRM decision or simply due to people wanting those extras.

It would have been better if the only difference between each version had been the inclusion of DRM. That would have made the whole situation far more interesting as far as I'm concerned. So as it is, I'm only really interested in which version is going to be pirated and not which version sells the most (I think it's a safe bet that as far as digital is concerned, that'll be Steam anyway).

hedwards: I agree with you about this being an interesting experiment. My suspicion is that it's going to depend upon what gets leaked first, given the size of the GOG staff, I think it'll be the DRM version.

As to which version will be the primary copy pirated, I don't know.

Poulscath: An interesting possibility would be if they deliberately leaked the DRM version first to skew the numbers.

OutOfTimer: One thing I learned over the years is that it's much more efficient not to read too much about the upcoming releases of any entertainment media. They're still there long after release and if anything, they cost a lot less. I hate it when a company teases a product for months and then delivers a half-baked piece of trash (or like in our case, makes an announcement of an announcement). No company, however, takes this overhyped rhetoric to the appalling level used by GOG. The broken English they deliver it in is the icing on the cake.

I thought about all this for the past two days and decided that the only way to avoid GOG's tactics is to stop reading the front page news for a couple of months. I wonder if anyone else came to a similar conclusion.

I'm also concerned about their planned release of The Witcher 2. Judging by the way they handle PR, the whole situation might backfire. It's obvious people will pirate it like hell just like they did with World of Goo. This might significantly hinder GOG's efforts to sign any publishers already opposed to DRM-free games. I, for one, believe GOG will make a joke of itself - especially if they think it's possible to seek compensation through extorting money from old ladies and children using the court system. They're not the first company to attempt that.

Any thoughts on avoiding frustration?

OutOfTimer: I'm also concerned about their planned release of The Witcher 2. Judging by the way they handle PR, the whole situation might backfire. It's obvious people will pirate it like hell just like they did with World of Goo. This might significantly hinder GOG's efforts to sign any publishers already opposed to DRM-free games. I, for one, believe GOG will make a joke of itself - especially if they think it's possible to seek compensation through extorting money from old ladies and children using the court system. They're not the first company to attempt that.

Damuna: I think you'll find that has something to do with being abandoned by their allies after World War II despite contributing significantly to the war effort, allowing them to be handed from a genocidal state that decimated their population to one that wasn't a whole lot better, denying them the democracy they helped fight for for more than four decades. Not very funny, really.