So? Steam is a much, MUCH bigger service than GOG. It's not surprising that a digital distribution platform with a market share of 70+% is selling more units than its competitor.

And you can't even take these number as a vote for or against DRM as the DRM free (as of v1.1) retail versions are not accounted for. In August 2011 retail had outsold digital distribution 4:1 (940,000 copies total, 200,000 online)...

Naturally, and that's what we were talking about. When it comes to the 'safety belt' of backing up your stuff, I prefer to leave it in the cloud. It's a hassle I don't want to deal with anymore, and I don't feel I have to. It's spending time *now* worrying about and managing/preparing for something that may or my not come in the future. I hold no illusions that I'm spending money over the decades to keep the games I want to keep, the games I'm really feel fond of around and uptodate/working for the latest and greatest. The success of GOG and the score of classics/remakes/digital versions I've bought show that I'm fine with that, and I expect I'll be fine with it in the future as well.
Ah, in that case it would certainly be a problem with either Steam or the game yes. I haven't run into it myself yet with the GF but I'm also not really sure which versions of Steam matchmaking I've used in the past. SRIII, SRIV, IronClad Tactics, Borderlands 1/2 etc. Not even sure which of those use it if any >.<

What game was it?

It's definitely Steam, not the game. The second person to launch it doesn't even get to log in.

Guns of Icarus Online

I'm assuming you're talking about 2 people on a local network?

I've done this myself too. When a game costs just a few euros, it's easy to justify a re-purchase if it'll save you some time and trouble.

The problem is games that are no longer available for purchase in any form. This would be the case with most old games. With some D&D games it seems like you should buy them whenever you get the chance, before some legal problems get them pulled from the stores again... :-\

Certainly true this, although it appears thanks to GOG repopularizing classics in a digital format, this won't be a problem for much longer. More and more of the classic games are being put back on sale, easier to get than ever. And they won't ever run out either (apart from licensing issues like with the D&D's yeah ^^).

So now you are arguing that people are silly for choosing not to purchase and play games with DRM? Your choice is the only rational one? You admitted before that you have chosen not to play Diablo 3 due to its DRM. You have a case of severe double-standarditis.

Some people also choose to play games on only e.g. PC, or XBox360, or PS3, even if that means they'll miss many great games that way. Or have to wait a year or more for GTA V PC.

Choices, choices, everywhere... As long as people have the choices. Like the choice of buying a DRM-free version of a game instead, or a PC version of GTA V.

But by migrating to a new OS or different architecture, they would eventually cut the support for the old system (e.g. a x86 PC running the older Windows Steam games, that are not converted to the new system, e.g. Steambox running SteamOS, or some future Android device).

That's what happened when Steam stopped supporting Windows 2000. I originally bought Half-life 2 for my Windows 2000 system, and played it (and TFC) on it. But suddenly Steam decided to revoke my ability to play them on the system for which I bought them, by stopping support for the Steam client in Windows 2000.

Suddenly I would just get a note on my screen that Steam client is not supported on Windows 2000 anymore, hence I will be unable to play any of my games on Win2000 anymore, just because of Steam. Without Steam, they would have still worked fine on that system, at least the single-player parts.

And that exactly will happen later too in your suggested future. So if Steam has migrated completely to some future system with only a small subset of its older Windows games, at some point they would cut your ability to continue playing your older Steam Windows games on your original Windows system (or Windows running in a virtual machine, like VMWare).

That's similar if Sony had suddenly revoked my ability to play my PS2 games on my original PS2 console. Fortunately they didn't, I can still play my PS2 games just fine. My choice.

If some other major operating system allowed you to still run your existing Android apps not bought from GooglePlay, then I guess there would be less outrage. The people who'd want to run their older Android apps, would then migrate to that other operating system, most likely. Many of them would probably still be disgruntled, if that was the only reason they'd want to migrate.

But your scenario suggested there would be no open alternatives, but all systems out there would be console-like closed systems where you can't run and install any of your own stuff.

But it does, because it is one less potential obstacle to run your games in the future.

DOSBox is available also for Linux and Android, and e.g. console emulators are for various different systems, including handlhelds. So far the OS itself doesn't seem to pose a problem to emulators, but controls may become tricky to emulate. But that is expecting that future systems, none of them, will not have any kind of keyboard-like input device, or buttons, or a pointing device.

You are now completely mixing up things.

GOG is talking about getting old Windows 95 games running on Windows 7 and Windows 8 systems, without emulators for the most part (nGlide is one emulator though, making it much easier for GOG to get 3Dfx Glide games to work on modern systems). That is indeed quite tricky in many cases, because they have to rely on the backwards compatibility of new Windows versions, and PC hardware.

However, the GOG games that are emulated, e.g. games running in DOSBox or ScummVM... those should be quite easy for GOG to get to work on modern systems, simply because then they don't have to rely on backwards compatibility. That's what emulators and virtual machines are for, to make the emulated system hardware/OS _independent_.

DOSBox and ScummVM games are hence quite easy to get to run also on non-Windows and even non-x86 systems.

Eh, my game backups are done without extra effort with all the other backups I do for my photos etc. I hope you are making backups of those, right?

So all the power to you not caring whether you can play your presently bought games also in the future. I am not trying to convince you that you should care more about your games.

But at the same time, you are saying it is silly for others not to do exactly like you, e.g. when someone waits for a DRM-free release, or even skipping games if they are Steam-only. While at the same time, proclaiming that you are skipping Diablo 3 due to its DRM.

I've made a choice of not buying GTA V, at least until a PC version emerges. Am I being silly? Are you silly for skipping Diablo 3? Maybe you should buy a console version of Diablo 3, as it doesn't have always-online DRM?

Overall, I don't see why having some principles (related to customer rights), and holding to them, is considered "silly". You are practicing the same by avoiding Diablo 3. It is only good that you have some principles, and don't give up on Diablo 3's temptation.

It's 2 people, with different accounts (both Steam and OS) on the same machine.

The error message is right in that a Steam instance is already running, but it's wrong in the sense that such a situation is an error situation.

I'm under no illusion that mutli-seat isn't an unusual setup[1] and I know why Steam is designed that way (trying to prevent people from farming hats or whatever) but once again, the legit user gets shafted due to ineffective attempts to stop the bad guys because if I ran Windows, apparently you can just use Sandboxie to run multiple Steam instances, but then I couldn't multiseat anyway (without shelling out even more).

[1] And required, because I don't have enough money to replace her own machine which is severely broken.

Ummm... you seem a bit confused. Since the pirates have disabled or completely removed the DRM, how does the DRM help catching them? Active DRM in games is used to _prevent_ people from misusing a product, not for tracking them down in case of misuse, in order to prosecute them.

It is up to the prosecutor and the court to decide, whether IP address is enough to identify a person in order to prosecute him/her. In some cases (and countries) it is, in some it is not.

I know you didn't mean it as a blanket generalization, but I teach, and a lot of other people that I know in the teaching profession do their utmost to promote critical thinking and debate in the classroom (that's not to say they're aren't, I've known a lot of other teachers who were a big waste of space).

In one class, I was talking to some of my students about indie games/the HIB, and I introduced them to GOG, and told them about Steam and DRM, and told them to decide for themselves about what was right for them. I think one of them told me they made a GOG account a few days later, so I guess I was doing something right...

...

I know that piracy circumvents DRM, but the point being is that then at least there is control over legitimate users, which is again what the publishers want. With a DRM then it is at least possible to say "I am playing a legit version". And it is first set in place to prevent, yes. However, if you want to track versions you need it to somehow verify itself, and that is only possible through some sort of DRM. Part of the trouble CDPR got into is that there was no easy way to verify whether the user was playing a legitimate Witcher 3 or not, if they had some confirmation thingy built in, that debacle would not have happened.

And yes, as long as there is piracy, there will be more and more tighter or inventive DRM models (like Diablo 3 and Sim City, these experiments with DRM models will continue). For many these is seen as protecting their investments. Which is a reason why I get annoyed when is sees some of the so-called pro-DRM free people here claiming "I will just pirate the game" as it is something to be proud of. No, you are just perpetuating the system and legitimizing the use of DRM in the first placer. that was a side-note... but it annoys me.