Just been a story posted up on Gamespy, hopefully more developers will actually decide to follow suit as they have a good argument with regards to how it affects legit users and the fact games are usually cracked within hours of release :

"Every subsequent game we will never use any DRM anymore, it's just over-complicating things... DRM does not protect your game. If there are examples that it does, then people maybe should consider it, but then there are complications with legit users."

Link :

http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/the-witcher-2/1220450p1.html

Well, having to go to court to assert their right to remove the DRM for verifiable, paying customers experiencing severe problems can have that effect.

At any rate, "Good news everyone!"

Compelling online features seem to be the only DRM that works from what I can see.

So I bought Witcher 2 a couple weeks ago, but haven't installed it yet. It's got a sticker on it claiming Ver 2.0 (available for download on 9/29/11). Am I getting hit with bad DRM or what? Or does the v2 remove anything on it?

Version 2.0 added a ton of content and basically removed the DRM. So just install it, patch it, and you're done.

""Every subsequent game we will never use any DRM anymore, it's just over-complicating things... DRM does not protect your game. If there are examples that it does, then people maybe should consider it, but then there are complications with legit users."
"We release the game. It's cracked in two hours, it was no time for Witcher 2. What really surprised me is that the pirates didn't use the GOG version, which was not protected. They took the SecuROM retail version, cracked it and said 'we cracked it' -- meanwhile there's a non-secure version with a simultaneous release. You'd think the GOG version would be the one floating around.""

Interesting how the retail one was the one cracked.Pirates making a point?.

This basically. Stardocks no DRM turned out to be a no-DRM base game with CD-key based 'online features' which included basic patching... which can be quite required to have a stable game in some cases.

Not to say they'll do that, and they did no-DRM their Witcher 2 quicker than expected (elsewhere), although that was in no small part because it was adversely affecting the game more than it should have from what I read I think.

No, not really.

The calling executables are silenced, but you might have an entry in there (perhaps one of many from other things you have loaded), but can trace startup modules loaded, what called them, and delete if you want.

The registry is a garbage dump of things, and no need to worry about what is not executed.

"What really surprised me is that the pirates didn't use the GOG version, which was not protected. They took the SecuROM retail version, cracked it and said 'we cracked it' -- meanwhile there's a non-secure version with a simultaneous release. You'd think the GOG version would be the one floating around."

Aha! So it seems the best protection against pirates actually is to go DRM-free? Those spoilsports from GOG didn't even offer them anything to play with (beside the game, that is, but apparantly that didn't interest them enough). ;)

It's a valiant stand. I hope they can make it stick.

The biggest problem they will have in trying to make good on this is distributors. Unfortunately, you don't sell games direct to end users (unless you own a distributor, such as GOG). You have to deal with middlemen. These middlemen are powerful and can dictate terms, standards, and practices when they are as big as Namco Bandai or Warner.

Does the retail copy of Witcher 2 v2.0 have all the trinkets that come in v1.0?

I've actually been looking to fnd the GOG version of Hostile Waters. Guess which one I found, the original one. For just about every game, it is more easy to find the original version than GOGs. The scene likes GOG and gamers like GOG, that makes a difference.

I can find every game on Gog out there on trackers, they're certainly out there.

That said, it makes far more sense tofind a cracked release of the version that actually uses DRM, firstly because most of them are already out there long before they appeared on Gog, but also because no-CD/no-DRM patches are just as wanted. So it makes sense to focus on the version that wasn't DRM free.

I've seen a few GOG torrents that got bombed with bogus Virus warnings, it made my heart warm seeing there were no lechers.