Hummn, I've been dealing exclusively with CD Projekt and GOG for well over three years now. I'm feeling no frustration with either??? . . . Ok, maybe a little with their failure to enforce their forum rules but other than that . . . =)

***continues waiting for W2 DRM free release***

GOG knows it as well and have said so multiple times. In fact, it's an argument they use to convince publishers to go DRM free on their old IPs. Those games have already been pirated to hell and back and here we are, buying them off GOG. If the game fails, which I seriously doubt it, piracy might be a factor into it, but at least now (and I think this is a first) a developer will have a tool to gauge the usefulness of DRM. We have two versions of the Witcher 2. A DRMed one being sold retail and on other downloadable websites, and a non-DRMed one. Sales will tell CDP if their DRM-free stance is right or not.


Even if it's easy to pirate a game nowadays, some of us simply don't like doing so and if we were a minority, then the videogame industry would have gone under long ago. The game is rated "M" so a kid with no money is flat out not the target audience for the game. Even if it were an adult with no money, he would still not be the target audience (he has no money). The pirates who really DO damage to a developer's economy are those who can afford it and who would actually PAY for the game if they couldn't pirate it. How do you separate those truly potential customers from those who wouldn't buy the game anyway if they can't pirate it? You can't get those numbers from the amount of times a file has been downloaded from a torrent site, and that's why "We've lost X amount of money to piracy" numbers are always skewed. A pirated game does not always equal a lost sale.

I'm not frustrated. I don't feel I have anything to be frustrated about. Yes, GOG gets a little overexcited sometimes. That doesn't particularly bother me, and I certainly don't feel that I have to avoid reading news announcements for fear of becoming unjustifiably enthusiastic. I just enjoy the ride or ignore it, whichever suits me at the moment.

This would backfire quite a bit. According to the conference, the games require a small download on the day of release to become functional, thus preventing pirates from having the game before legitimate customers. So if they leaked the complete DRM version ahead of time, it would be very obvious it came from them. They are the only ones in control of the additional files needed to make the game run.

Even the boxed versions? So, without internet I cannot start the game? I'm just wondering because people are bitching (often rightfully, sometimes not so) about quite a lot of things with The Witcher 2, but never about this ...

The boxed version requires this from what I understand. It requires a one time connection, and a download no larger than 50MB. They are keeping it as small as possible, but in the end, this prevents pre-release leaks of any form.

Here is part of the conference where they address this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f5Iss2mxSc&p=5977BF64F9D19355&t=5m10s

Personally, this does not bother me in the least, but I can imagine it may frustrate some. I do imagine though a patch will eventually be released with these files, and a connection no longer required upon each install.

How do you think that activation works? It's been pretty well established that if you've got all the data there to have a fully functioning version that cracking it is a piece of cake.

If you have to download a few key components it at least ensures that the game has been released or that somebody has gained access to the server.

I didn't know that it needed to be acticated. Is it already normal to have a game activated? Maybe I'm getting old, but as long as a game wasn't a Gfwl (or the like) game an online activation was not to be normally expected. I've recently travelled through some parts of the world were a constant high speed internet connection is still a luxury (50 mb can be easily more than an hour here).

Heck, one of my collegues can't receive attachments bigger than 200 kb...(which is a pain, I can tell you)

Edit: Profanity disabled ;)

Apart from the ones available here all the other versions are coming with a 5 at a time activation limit. I'm not sure if they specifically said that there would be an activation procedure, but if they didn't say it it was strongly implied.

I don't get too caught up in the hype. I'm always interested to see what the announcement will be, but I don't get too invested in it. That way, you don't get disappointed. I have no issues with the way GOG does their PR. It's just PR. Is there any game that, if pirated, isn't pirated to hell and back? This one will be no different. An interesting note about World of Goo: 2dBoy stated they were disappointed at the numbers of pirated copies, but they also said it was no worse than if they'd included DRM. DRM makes no difference to the piracy numbers. None.

It's becoming more and more common. While it doesn't affect me, as I have an always-on high speed connection, I still find this unacceptable.

@El_Caz: I'm not saying these kids are lost customers, only that the additional number of pirated copies breaks any attempts to make sense of the statistical data. Then those numbers are used against us.

LOL So true!