Unfortunately, at the same time there are boatloads of other old games which don't get a similar treatment from the community, but at best exist as inferior CD-rips where no official updates have been applied to them.

I'd rather play my original full DRM-free version (with relevant official updates that I already have backed up), than an inferior CD rip (or with newer games, a version which is maybe missing some DLCs on top of the possibly missing updates). Sure there may be some obstacles, like if I don't have an old system where it runs without problems, but those obstacles don't make potential additional (DRM) obstacles irrelevant.

Disclaimer before starting to respond. We don't say that DRM'd Games are better than DRM-Free. We say that the time and effort required to find a crack is negligible towards the rest of the effort. A game that is out now and you can run with current hardware has a crack that's less than 5 minutes away. A game that was out 20 years ago and requires quite a bit of fiddling also has a crack less than 5 minutes away (15 minutes if it's a really obscure one).
So the DRM part of the game isn't the bigger hassle, getting it to run is.

At least you changed your mind, since last time you were of the opinion that skeleton keys didn't exist. And I haven't had the need to look for such skeleton keys in the last 5 years or so, thus I haven't kept current with the developments. But considering the time from release to crack, it is a skeleton key. Individual cracks require much more time, as evidenced by Starforce.

Good for you. If you already have a DRM-Free copy of the game, you don't need to spend any time at all. If you have a DRM'd version of the game, you need to go looking. First time you need to spend some time finding a proper source, after that it requires ~5 minutes. Getting my Monkey Island disks to work takes me longer than that, assuming I can read them.

I have some lovely VHS tapes. I cannot access those anymore, due to lack of VCR. There is no technological means preventing me from watching them, other than lack of hardware.
You do have access to the DRM-Free installers, thus you want need to spend any time looking for cracks. You may need to spend time looking for solutions on how to play them (16-bit installers, weird timing issues, expecting a specific keyboard layout etc). If you have a DRM'd installer, the time spent on solutions would be the same, plus an extra 5 minutes for the crack.
If you don't have the installers, you will also need to get the game.
So, as I've been telling you in other threads as well.
1) Have the game files? If yes, 5 minutes for crack, if needed
2) Don't have the game files? Find the game files, plus 5 minutes for crack, if not included with them.

Sorry, you are mistaken. You install the legit game. Then you install the update. Then you go to crack it.
If the update process requires authorization (cd-key, account, steam), then and only then do you need to look for the updates themselves. Official patches work fine on non-cracked games, even if the games themselves don't run.

1) Most of the recent releases also included any day-1 DLCs. Hell, Bonetown was released with the pre-order DLC.
2) Music, FMVs etc was also released, as add-ons, from the DOX divisions. That was done that way due to bandwidth (and HDD) limitations, which do appear to have been removed.

What about a preservation community? Is ResidualVM a pirate community, for trying to get Grim Fandango running on modern systems? Is System Shock Portable the result of pirates or not? Would you feel shame for being part of such a community?

If you do have the DRM-Free installer, you don't need to download anything. I said it time and time again.
With DRM'd releases, you are still unlikely to have to download anything, if you already have the installer (or iso). You just need the latest crack.

If it is steam, then it's the latest one. You don't care if the latest version is 1.0.47 or 1.0.48, you see the time of the last crack. If your game got updated today, you may not be able to find it. But we are not talking about cracking current games, but the effort needed to get cracks for older games.

Again, language/country specific cracks have been going out of style. Unlikely to encounter this.

And again, good for you. Having DRM-Free installers available is the optimum, but finding a crack isn't the big problem you assume it is.

Love how you cut the quotes.
Equivalent =/= equal.

Yeap. Wanting to watch Robocop and not having it is the same as wanting to play System Shock and not having it.

Because any idiot can use a torrent.
FTP servers require you to look for them, BBS sites required you to find the needed phone, Usenet requires your ISP to support them. Usenet is still used, FTP servers are also used, BBS are less likely, due to modem decline.
And P2P does offer an increase in transfer speed, but as you keep saying, only for recent items. FTP/BBS/Usenet don't suffer from that. Speed is the same no matter the age of the release.

No. I'm trying to convince you that finding a crack for a game isn't that big of an effort. You compare it to climbing mount Everest with no gear, I compare it to changing a lightbulb. If you know what you are doing, it's a 5 minutes job. If you don't know what you are doing, you risk electrocuting yourself.
Examples? Or examples of your steam games you can't find cracks for?

Precisely, and this is why pressure needs to be put on the companies to stop using DRM. The more hurdles there are, the more difficult it becomes to preserve a game, and the less likely it is to actually be preserved.

Sure, today's DRM can be circumvented with 'relative' ease (I say relative because the average person can't crack a game - when you say it's easy, what you mean is that ready-made cracks are readily available for the time being), but companies are going to extreme lengths to prevent their games from being preserved. They don't want you playing your old stuff - they want you buying the latest stuff for $60 and spending hundreds of dollars on microtransactions and cosmetic DLC.

The optimum for them is for you to spend all your money on stuff you don't enjoy and then feel the urge to spend more money on similarly useless stuff by giving you the vague sense that you will enjoy it if you do. And sadly, people are actually pathetically stupid enough to fall for this. When I see the success of such business models, I can only hang my head in shame that I actually engage in the same hobby as those people.

The flaw with your argument regarding system obsolescence being as much a danger as DRM is that, 20-30 years down the line, a game without DRM will still work on the same system it was designed for. I have a Commodore 64, that, with the care I have given it, still works 25 years later, as do the games. The duty of care in that regard falls upon me. Heck, I've even gone into a computer museum near where I come from and played Colossal Cave Adventure on a PDP-10 terminal, and that thing was older than I am. It still works because everything needed to run it is there, not on some remote server that I have no control over.

If, on the other hand, I take a game from Steam 25 years down the line, either as a Steam backup on a hard disk or DVD-R or a boxed retail copy (which essentially amounts to the same thing, except DVD-Rs are less reliable than a proper pressing, hard disks are even less reliable still), and try to play it on its contemporary PC (much in the same way that people keep old DOS/Win95 machines for old games today), the chances are very high that it will not work, regardless of the care and attention lavished upon preventing its failure, because it is dependent on the services of a third-party provider that will probably no longer exist.

We're already seeing signs of this - the DLC for Need for Speed 3: Hot Pursuit from the late 1990s, for example, is irrevocably lost, because it was only downloadable through the game itself. There are numerous games from the 2000s that can no longer be patched because they used proprietary delta updaters.

Now as I said, I agree that circumventing the DRM of some of these games is easy at this time, but that presupposes that the relevant crack is available. If it's not, you're pretty much fucked. And we're seeing an increasing number of games with 'intrinsic' DRM - Diablo 3, (formerly) Sim City, Destiny, Titanfall - that, when their servers go offline, will be lost to history, simply because their respective publishers were greedy cunts whose sole interest was money.

You say Hollywood can't be arsed to preserve films, and that's very true. But if you look at the countless amounts of 35mm stock out there that various institutions have archived and restored, there's nothing preventing other people from taking on that task. Hollywood, unlike the gaming industry, at least doesn't make a concerted effort to prevent such preservation, even if they're rather lazy in enabling it.

To me DRM is that thing that lowers enjoyability of normal users, and have totally no impact on pirated games as pirates can always surpass DRM systems.

Where the heck to people get the idea that you can find a malware free, fully functional crack for any arbitrary game in 5 minutes?

Specific sites that do supply them?

Edit: How long do you think it takes?

Well you are making the claim for any and all games without exception. Personally I would expect to spend a couple of hours on it depending on the game and even failing entirely to do so.

The 5 minutes is average time. There may be a few games that require a bit longer, but those are fringe cases.
And if you can't find a working malware-free crack within 2 hours, you really aren't looking.

I have spent a lot longer than that on similar tasks and still failed.

I said similar tasks. I am not sure I am comfortable mentioning potentially illegal things like that out in the open. I can PM you if interested more details.

I am interested, even though similar tasks do quite probably require more time. It is similar to looking for a joint or a crate of .50 BMG rounds. Both sold by similar people, but while the first ones are easy to find, the second ones aren't.

DRM-free means that I get an installer when I purchase the game. I can install, reinstall or patch the game without using a platform, website or "service". That means GOG, GamersGate and Humble are my main choices.

My definition of DRM free is similar to the OP's in most respects, but the following: one time activation/unlocking of installer by use of a cd key, and having cloud storage of data being available upon registering the game but optional like with desktop dungeons are not true DRM in my book.

The Cd key thing can be a bitch if you want to reinstall the game if you lose the key but some companies such as Blizzard addressed this via optional (at least for the older games) registration of keys to their online services such as battle.net so if you lose your disk or keys you can just install a simple installer with your key already uploaded. This also removes the disk requirement.

I realize that the cd key thing is a little bit of a stretch for some, but since it is only one time, at point of installation and could be bypassed to an extent via the method above of by finding a key dump online I see it as less of a hassle then learning the combo for a locker at school or work and having to use it every time you want in. The use of cd keys also predates the internet and, for the older games at least, could still be installed and played on internet free computers as the key was more or less a password to access a file.

Most games and programs that had CD keys also required you to have the Disc in the drive at the time to play. Although not horrible, it makes it annoying when you don't want to use the original disc (to keep it from scratching or something). Ones that take that as DRM hide special codes in the CD/DVD that can't be replicated using (At that time) virtual drives, like drive/crc errors. The ones that assume files are on the disc due to the data was too large to copy will quietly be happy and work as long as the files are accessible. (Tomb Raider 1 was like this, a very simple virtual CD/Redirection TSR program could get it to work)

A lot of the protection methods predate the internet, which means online activation for some software like M$ Windows would give you a phone number and you had to enter a special code they tell you to unlock the system. Having it 'internet ready' just meant it was seemingly less hassle while in the background it was no different.

But i think i've talked about about DRM for now...