Yes and CDPR with their AAA Witcher series.

Another factor is - IMO - that in most of the big companies the decisions are made by drones in suits that have no emotional investment in the actual product.
As a developer myself I can understand to a point not wanting people to "get my work for free". But the reality is that DRM does not stop people from pirating. And if I would be developing games - that I see as a part of culture - I would be glad if as many people as possible have access to my work. And even more important - that my work stands the test of time and will still be played in 20 years and beyond. But those making the decisions are not interested in seeing the products as part of the cultural heritage. For them they are expendable toys that have to make as much money now, and are forgotten by them when they reach the bargain bins after half a year.
It's this short term thinking without no love for the products (they could as well be selling groceries) that leads to license messes and dumping barely working classics on Steam (just because GOG has proven they can sell).

Clients don't HAVE to gather any data much less report it to anyone.

On that I agree but the question is how can you be sure that they won't. The same suspicions I have with gog's downloader - Why does it need any login data if it is just a downloader. That just does not seem right to me but that's my opinion.

Precisely - AAA games have become the equivalent of blockbuster films. They have to make virtually all their money in the initial release period, with very little concern as to whether they are making an enduring product or not. It becomes all about the wow factor rather than substance. It doesn't help that both products have the same primary target demographic - teenage males, a group not renown as a whole for their powers of discernment and their love of depth.

Given this "opening weekend" mentality, perhaps some companies think DRM is good enough if it slows piracy long enough to grab the big first wave of profits. But of course we know this is flawed thinking as well, since many games are hacked on the day of release, with some actually hitting the torrents even before they hit the shelves.

You'd think that companies would realise that they might make more money if they didn't consider the holy grail of consumers a group known for poor impulse control and poorer ethics. But then chasing other markets would mean actual work, as opposed to just churning out this year's iteration of a sports franchise title and the newest game about a guy killing a bunch of people in awesome ways.

The question I'd ask is: why does a publisher make a DRM version of their game? Even early access games can be found without any difficulties. The usual answer is that it protects the first days when most of the sales are done but that's bulls*** because most of the cracks are 0-day one.

So DRM costs money, is useless and has the double effect of annoying the legit user and losing sales from the people (a minority I agree but additional sales anyway) who do not want DRM with their game. The only "positive" effect is that it calms the worries of the shareholders who, in the wonderful world we are living in, are a lot more important than the people who buy your product.

To know/verify which games you own. So that people actually have to buy the games from GOG in order to download them from your server. Same reason you have to be logged in to download them from your website. If you are that distrustfull of GOG you may as well not buy anything from them. Client or not. Because with your distrust who is to say that they haven't hidden DRM and/or spyware and/or malware in their games and/or installers? That is just silly IMO. I trust GOG to develop a client that won't do anything intrusive like that.

My bet for tomorrow's news : GOG will use Raptr or Curse client .

I always wonder how the porn industry does it. They churn out titles by the thousands, make billions every year and all the while half of the internet is full of free stuff. Nobody with an internet connection is forced to pay for porn, still the industry works, and from what I gather - pretty well. It's hard to get up to date figures but there was almost exponential growth from the 90s to about 2004/5 (one release on average every 39 minutes alone in the US, ~13,000 per year, revenue some 10 billion). And when I entered the net in 1995 half of it was free porn already.

Ok, this industry has always been state of the art in terms of service and convenience. And although there is quite a lot of fucking involved, they usually don't fuck their customers.
Still they compete with pirates, amateurs, their own free promo material and their old stuff that they upload themselves to the likes of Redtube & co. If I was some manager in some other media industry I would take a closer look how they do it.

Huh, I had nearly forgotten about GOG's partnership with Curse. I have no clue how that worked out for them, since I don't use Curse (though I do use curses).

Anyone here gone the Curse route? If so, what was your experience?

In the porn industry they have an open mind. Most in the game industry are run by PR and DRM scum who are in power over the publishers.

click

Thanks for the link. Question is, are they really struggling or is this just the usual campaigning in the likes of "Copying kills music"? One would need hard, valid numbers from the bigger players (Hustler, Private, Kink network, DDF and co).

Am I the only person who thinks GOG Client would be a good thing? I pretty much exclusively use the downloader for everything here anyway, throw in automatic patch downloading and an easy way to keep track of games and I'd be all set.

And why would they be? The big guys all want their own platform. So that can get the full cut. As it is they can add their own DRM or use steam and set the price however they want. Adding regional pricing is not going to make them give up DRM.