Bethesda is one of the worst companies in the world, what would you expect.

That's my POV as well. There are enough games already existing to entertain me for the rest of my life.

No DRM freaks whining "BUT MUH SKYRIM I WANT TO PLAY IT ON MY DISHWASHER" are just pathetic.

If I don't like sometihng in game A, whatever it is (like always on in Diablo 3), I fucking play something else.

Yeah, Zenimax (the company that owns Bethesda, Id Software & others) created their own problem by assuming everyone was the same. It still news to many but not all gamers are a hive mind.

I'm not sure how much of a 'problem' it is, it seems they are doing rather well at the moment. I am sure it was a well calculated risk - saving monies on focusing on one outlet for PC vs. the loss of customers not using that outlet.

I see quite a lot in this forum the assumption that AAA developers are just kind of lost souls that do not know what DRM free is, and that there is a market for it. They do, they just do not see it cost-efficient enough to focus on it, when the outlets they already have, who have a policy they can resonate with, are already sufficient.

But what about Fallout New Vegas and Bioshock Infinite? Can't we whine about those too?

The problem with quietly playing something else is that the developers never get to see the adverse consequences of their actions. Steam will say "Wow! Look how many sales you made through us". But they can't say "Oops! Look how many sales you lost because of us!".

We're counting on developers going out there and visiting different forums to read what people say.

And from what the OP said, it's rather shocking that regular people out there apparently have such a poor view of GOG and what it stands for, because it means things are even worse than I thought in my most negative state.

I think you exagerate so tremendously that your argument has no real value because it doesn't apply to the real world situation. There are more than one game being a Steam exclusive and the alternative games do not live up to them. But that's just my impression. Maybe you can compile a list of alternative games for each Steam exclusive, then we can discuss really how much of an issue it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_using_Steam_authentication

Think of how DOS games, Playstation games, NES games, Amiga games etc. are played today on today's hardware. Yep, emulators. The only real obstacle in doing that has been the DRM/copy protection/media dependency on the games themselves, something that obviously the DRM-free versions of those games don't have.

That seems to be the main argument of Steam-believers: it will be around forever.

However, seeing how Valve is fully dependent on the PC gaming market, _and_ at the same time seeing the gradual shift from x86 PCs and Windows to completely different architectures and OSes (iOS and Android devices, for example), it is silly to think that x86 Steam/Valve will be around forever.

Claiming that Steam will be around forever is similarly silly as thinking that Amiga will remain as a viable computer forever. It didn't.

You are completely wrong with your belief. If it was very easy to turn Steam games DRM-free, I would have already done that to all my 200+ Steam games. In reality, cracking most of them is a real bitch, especially Steam games with also 3rd party DRM.

Nope, emulators and virtual machines work fine even after the compatible hardware ceases to work. That's how I play Amiga games today. Must be magic!

The only obstacle in running your games with the emulators will be copy protection or DRM in your games. And before you claim that all DRM can be easily removed afterwards, tell that to Diablo 3.

I disagree. Steam provides some kind of unified infrastructure for game developers. And they love it, as this was missing for too long. Developers are interested in one API to address as much as possible customers (Windows, Mac, Linux and growing now to mobile and living room) with additional benefits... they will use it. And Infrastructure tends to converge (not to provide variety) we already see that developers only address the Steam API and are annoyed if asked for additional builds ("extra superfluous work removing the steam stuff") for non-steam platforms.

If desura, dotemu and GOG not team up and bring a alternative with an additional benefit in contrast to steam, like being a real open market place, they (and we, the non-DRM crowd) will get in trouble.

Not really. EA is quite happy with their origin, Ubisoft with uPlay. When Activision finally wakes up, they will found their own platform as well.

Why? Because it's better to get 100% of the money instead of 70.
Some of you seem to be slaves of your consumptionism. "But I want THAT toy, mommy!" - this is how it looks like. When something is unavaible for me for any reasons, or has qualities I don't like or disagree with, I just do something else.

There are so many great console exclusives? Do you whine about them as well? Or you just swallow up, buy a console or maybe do something else?

Seriously, NOT buying a game is the only message you can send them. Vocal minorities will never win with corporations. As long as their strategy is working, they will not change it.

I will not accept always online DRM in singleplayer games. If every game is going to be always on, I will just stick to playing games that were released prior and find something extra to do. I am a man of many hobbies. Lucky me, I guess.

Indeed, Classic Doom IMHO wouldn't have been able adapt to changing tech if it had the same restrictions placed on it as say "Doom 3 BFG"

And on Diablo 3 a lot of that game is coded server-side so one could say the game -is- DRM

That is once again the same old argument "using a safety belt doesn't make your driving any safer". It does, actually.

I was taught that if I can disprove a stronger, more elaborate statement, the simpler one will fall, while preventing the other person from moving the goalposts. In other words - if I show you the most elaborate restrictions I can think of STILL failing to ruin PC gaming, then it logically follows that you are mistaken.

This is still pretty reasonable. After all - we don't know. Nobody knows. I don't know where I will live in 20 years, you might die in a car accident, a meteor may wipe out all life as we know it, what we call reality may turn out to be an elaborate experiment... We don't know. As long as ALL you say is "I don't know", I can pat you on back, say "Don't worry about it, kiddo. Carry on." and go on my merry way. However...

This is where you cross the line. This is precisely what argumentum ad ignorantiam is all about - "We don't know, THEREFORE (...)".
No: "We don't know.". That's it. You can't really extract information out of not knowing (otherwise known as "ignorance").
"We don't know" is the end of the line, it's where you leave the train of thought and go home on foot.

Why so pissed? :D

As someone working in a business with customers and all that I would be really interested why one who buys stuff every week from me suddenly stopped buying. If he would have your "Be a man, don't whine and just stop buying" stance I would have no foundation of how to make it better next time or how I would have alienated my customer. I would just know he did stop. In my case I would simply call and ask if everythings ok and we'd work out what went wrong (aka make them "whine" or "complain and suggest improvement" as I would prefer it be called), but we are not talking about a small scale customer base but tens of thousands ppl here.

Companys live on such information. They need to know that ppl are interested in their products but do not spend money for reasons X,Y & Z. They don't always just get it, they don't always have a functional common sense which tells them how/why they fucked up. And the bigger they are the more cloudy it gets. If everybody just shuts his face and does "not tell mommy which toy you wants" mommy thinks you are ok with the toys you have. And since mommy has 20 million kids you could acutally be happy if mommy knows your name, much less your toy preferences.

Have you bought your DVD movies again in Bluray format because you can't play your DVD movies on your Bluray player?

The main attraction of buying movies again in a new format is because the newer version is of higher quality. This was true from VHS to DVD, and also from DVD to Bluray. So you are not actually paying for the exact same movie several times, but you are buying a better version of it in better quality.

If Bluray movies were of similar quality as VHS movies, and there was an easy way to simply move your VHS tapes to Bluray format, I think many would choose that instead of rebuying all their old VHS movies as Bluray movies.

Let's take for example the music I have in mp3 format. I don't know about you, but I am not looking forward to buy all my music again and again every time I buy a new device able to play music, like a smartphone, tablet or car stereo. I expect to be able to play my old mp3 music on all of them, also the future devices.

If some future smartphone refuses to play my mp3 music and says I'd have to buy them again just for that device, I'd tell them to phuck off. The only reason I would rebuy my music in some other format is because that new format is of considerably higher quality.

Yes, it is possible that future electronic devices meant for playing music will not support mp3 format anymore... but that will probably happen later than music services like Nokia Music closing their doors.

Do you like the option to buy a hires remake of a game (or play your older lores version)? Being forced to rebuy your old games several times is not something people like, even if they'd like to have the option.

I am not forced to buy GOG games of old retail PC games, but I can choose to do that. And frankly, quite often I am doing that in order to beat the copy protection (DRM!) on the original retail version. If the retail version has no copy protection whatsoever, I have much less reason to buy the same game also from GOG. But I still have the _option_.

And let's not forget all the games that are not sold on GOG (or Steam). Like my retail Grim Fandango. I can still play it even though LucasArts/Disney doesn't seem to have any interest to keep that game playable today. or even resell a remake of it.

So you are fine with having to rebuy all your music again and again, just because your new car stereo or smartphone refuses to play your earlier mp3 music collection, or because you bought the music from some earlier DRM-service that is incompatible with your new device?

Good for you, but many people still prefer that rebuying your media over and over and over again is optional, not forced. I have an option to buy a game from GOG that I already have as a retail version, but luckily I am not forced to do that.