Actually read what I typed, rather than just popping out the stock response.
The risk of trying is too great. Believe it or not, businesses need to try and turn a profit. It would be great to do a massive experiment, but not when you are gambling on convincing major publishers to change their mids.
Could easily be argued: We won't know if getting bit by a radioactive spider can make you irresistible to women unless someone is brave enough to try. I mean, the only obstacle (aside from getting a radioactive spider :p) are the people who would be getting bit refusing to even try it.
It is great to think in terms of ideals and the like, but never forget that these are companies with workers. Again, GoG was a very special case because of the relationship CD Projekt already had with the remnants of Interplay and the like.

Again, you make the claim that the risk of trying is too great, but have nothing to back up that claim. This is not a situation of people having the data at hand to make an informed analysis and be able to predict with any level of confidence that the outcome will be bad; it is a case of people being stuck in a mindset and clutching at any justifications they can so that they can continue to believe that mindset is correct. I encounter this too often in my own line of work. A person will be trying to synthesize some compound and will be having trouble with their current route. Myself or someone else will suggest an alternative route, and often the response will be bringing up all the ways the new route could not work and why it shouldn't be tried. Eventually it'll basically come down to "Look, you've been working on this for a while, what you're currently doing hasn't been working, so just give this new method a shot." And more often than not we'll later hear back that the new route actually ended up working quite nicely. Additionally, looking at the amount of resistance put up to trying new approaches, the trait that best seems to track with the amount of resistance isn't insight or experience with the work, but simple stubbornness and ego.
We're not seeing resistance to new distribution approaches because of some big risk involved, we're seeing resistance because people are stuck in their ways and don't want to find out that the approach they've been taking for all these years is actually wrong.

That's just it, you don't need hard data on this. Common sense and simple observation already shows how this will be problematic:
Again, options
Old games, 100% DRM-Free: That is GoG :p
New Games, 100% DRM-Free: Again, do you honestly see Ubi or Activision offering a DRM-free alternative for new releases (where the DRM actually may or may not make a difference)? So this will result in very few releases, which in turn will hurt the bottom line. I am sure that a proper cost-analysis can be performed to determine if said company could stay in business with one or two games a year, but it is unlikely that anyone short of a major publisher could do that.
New Games, some DRM-free and some not: These already exist, and they are of arguable effectiveness. They get the foot in the door, but how can you say "Yo, Activision. We want this new release DRM-free. We'll take the other five games you are releasing this year with DRM, but not this one right here"
As for the whole "someone will suggest a new route, and then be shut down": You ever hear the phrase "why invent the wheel?" or "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"? Or even the simple concept of momentum.
And do you have statistics to show that "more often than not" the new route works? Because I am pretty sure the opposite holds true. You only hear of the successes for the same reason that so many American kids think all Anime and Manga is great and that Japaneses are inherently better at animated media than Western studios. Why? Because we only ever see the stuff that already floated to the top. Same thing here, you aren't going to hear about all the failures. On an unrelated note, I wonder if Japanese people think that the Western world are geniuses at animation. I mean, they only see Fraction's run of Iron Man, and never Fraction's run of Punisher :p
Wait, we ARE going to hear about a failure. Because a person (yourself or someone :p) suggested the DRM-model Ubisoft is using. And we are going to see that fail miserably (hopefully...).
And maybe the idea IS a good one. Hell, maybe it is a perfect idea that has no drawbacks. How do you implement it?
People think hydrogen fuel cells and the like are a good idea for cars. Maybe, maybe not. But the cost of changing the infrastructure is going to be obscene.
People argue that drugs should be legalized, and that once legalized, they will lose their mystique (and they are probably right). But you can bet your bottom dollar in time that someone will actually manage to die of a THC overdose the day that said thing becomes legalized.
People think that going 100% DRM-free is a good solution. And they are probably right (although, I would suspect there might be reasons not to, based upon publishers still using it). But you can bet that there will be a high piracy-rate when a highly anticipated game (think MW2, not PoP 2009 :p) is truly DRM-free (no serials, no nothings). It would probably even out, but would you really want to risk your super-money-maker on that?
But I digress. My main point is, the climate is not right for a major distribution platform to go 100% DRM-free for new releases. And it is really unfair to complain that Steam and Impulse aren't refusing business (that you can be damned sure their competitors would snatch up) for idealism and the like.

Thanks for the translated. was nice to read a something like this. + rep for you.
{uruk has casted darkness] [uruk has left the building]

I haven't been complaining that the likes of Steam and Impulse aren't trying to strongarm the publishers into DRM-free releases; I'm primarily looking at the publishers, who have the power to easily say what form a download release of their product will take. The capability is there, the demand seems to be there, the cited worries are already a reality under the current practices (e.g. a pirated version available nearly as soon as the game is released, even earlier in some cases)... the only obstacle is people being stuck in certain mindsets because they don't want to find out their current practices are wrong. I have little more to say beyond that as I have no wish to dilute that key point with extraneous pontification.

In that case, I fully agree. It is entirely up to the publishers, although I would argue that we likely don't have all the data. Also, while I don't want to get into a DRM debate, I will just say that DRM is not meant to stop ALL piracy, but instead to stop the "casual" pirates. Whether or not it can do that is arguable, but trends indicate that the people with access to the data think it is doing something.
I am sure you can understand how I thought you were ranting against Steam and Impulse and the like (what the article ranted against and what the thread has been ranting against) as opposed to just presenting a generic anti-DRM sentiment :p

That said, there are a couple of cases (notably Demigod and World Of Goo) where the DRM-free approach resulted in stupid amounts of piracy. I'm not convinced that DRM will ever go away.
What I do want to see less of is silly amounts of DRM. For example, GTAIV had GfWL (DRM), and SecuROM (DRM) and Rockstar Social Club (DRM) and Steam DRM if you bought it from Steam. Which, frankly, is a bit much. Likewise, Dawn Of War 2 had Steamworks (requiring Steam DRM) and GfWL DRM. Plus, fewer uses of activation limits.

No one ever has all the data. One can look at what's already been done and whether it has or hasn't worked, one can look for similar things that have been done in other areas and try to guess if the results would be analogous, one can speculate about what might happen (for all the good that usually does), but if one is moving into new territory because all the things tried previously aren't having the desired effects, well you just have to accept that there are going to be unknowns involved. However, it doesn't matter how much data people do or don't have if they are stuck in a certain mindset; until they manage to pull themselves out of the rut then any data (or lack of data) will just be interpreted to support the status quo, no matter how much it has to be twisted in order to do so.
However, I believe in both cases the developers also stated that they were quite happy with the number of sales they got. How much a game is pirated and how many copies it sells seem to be two independent variables, and it is the latter one that's actually important.

Many developers, most notably Stardock, have stated as such. That they are trying to maximize sales, not minimize piracy, and that the two do not necessarily correlate.
I also want to mention that two years ago people said that major label music would never be DRM free, and there was even a pretty vicious "us vs them" rant by Rick Rubin (CEO of Columbia music) about how the evil techies were trying to get him to release music DRM free and he was never going to do it. Well, we see how that turned out. What happened with music does not definitely extend to video games, but it does show that things can change over time. Also, sales of digital music most definitely went up without DRM rather than down.
What I would be OK with is if games got a DRM free release 6 months or so after their first release. Then the publishers could feel the warm fuzzies of having DRM in the critical early adopter period (though still arguable practical effect), but those of us who ride 6 months behind the curve could still get our games DRM free.
As far as anecdotal evidence with small sample sizes: Sales to me are infinitely higher without DRM than with it. My DRM game purchases have been exactly zero over the last 5 years.

If the folks in the industry were happy with the current trends then we wouldn't be hearing all the rhetoric about how piracy is a problem and needs to be combated. Or how they the quarterly earnings they had projected didn't materialize (yet again). Obviously many in the industry feel that the current state of things is most definitely non-ideal, yet their solution is just more of what they've been doing. As for the anti-DRM group being stuck in their ways, that's certainly a possibility, although the criticism that a major new release going DRM isn't a viable suggestion just takes us full circle to where this conversation started in the first place. Although a good way to shut up folks with new ideas is to try those ideas and find out they don't work, and as was pretty central to my entire argument that just hasn't been tried (to my knowledge) with online distribution platforms (the danger to this process, of course, is trying out those new ideas and finding out they do work).
And as an aside with regards to Ubi, their latest u-turn on DRM strikes more as a new director or VP out to make a name for himself as opposed to a decision made based on actual sale data and market analysis. But as this is purely in the realm of speculation it's not really worth going into.

And yet, one could also argue that with Ubi doing this, Blizzard doing something similar with Starcraft 2, and EA apparently doing something with Command & Conquer, that it really IS a well-thought out approach (that will hopefully fail miserably). And, you know, the best way to test an idea is to execute it and completely ignore the potential damage to revenue.
Seriously, it is all fine and dandy to try out new ideas. But look at the people who made Darwinia and Uplink. They outright admitted that Microsoft basically called their game garbage and made them remake the 360 version (and that it was a good move...). I remember back when the fans of that dev team/company would invade other forums to essentially beg people to buy the game so that said company wouldn't go out of business. They had really interesting ideas for games (I, for one, loved Uplink. Hated Darwinia though :p), but they didn't think things through. They tried to market indie/niche games as mainstream releases. And that failed miserably.
Same thing with what the article complained about. Steam and Impulse already offer publishers the option to sell their game DRM free (after that, it becomes an argument as to how much Steam or Impulse (or even GoG) count as DRM, in and of themselves). A lot of publishers go with that, but some still tack on another layer. Then you have Rockstar who tack on four or five more layers :p.
But what the article complained about was that Steam and Impulse and the like aren't offering everything DRM-free and "hassle" free, like GoG. And that is just unfair, simply because it would have a very good chance of them going out of business.
Don't get me wrong, you present a fun argument.
But imagine that you have a company and you are going to digitally distribute games. You have a bunch of friends (or, at least, people with very nice figures and loose morals who believe in sleeping their way to the top) who work for you. You want to do 100% DRM-free. So you talk to the publishers.
Gasp, shock, and amazement. Ubi is okay with you selling Splinter Cell: Conviction. Holy crap, you might actually stand a chance. But that is all they are going to let you sell. And Activision refuses to let you sell anything. And EA is willing to open their back-catalogue to you (so you can sell every PC version of Madden :p). They seem to argue that Steam, D2D, and Impulse don't have a problem with the model they want to use. So why should they give you a special version that might very well cause problems with Steam and Impulse in the future (Impulse and D2D are already screaming and whining that Steam is being shown unfair favoritism for having additional features that are actually worth using from the consumer's perspective...)?
So your options are: Risk your company, your employees (and their families/illegitimate children), and your reputation on a venture that is likely to fail (well, maybe SC:C will sell REALLY well :p). Or you can compromise and only offer a few titles DRM-free (isn't that what Stardock/Impulse effectively did?)
But if you do the latter (which is, economically, the best thing you can do at this point), you are going to run into even more problems in the future. "Well, you were willing to sell Silent Hunters 5 with DRM, so why won't you sell Starcraft 2 with DRM? Do you favor Ubi over us?"
And let's keep this in mind: the chance of even getting that one game is pretty slim, especially now that digital distribution is making distributors a lot less important.
So, as I think we both agree, it is up to the publishers to decide to go DRM-free. GoG is a good example that you don't need DRM to turn a profit. And every few months, someone sells a bottom-shelf game with no DRM that tends to do somewhat well (at least, as far as the company says :p).
But, at the same time, the people who actually have the sales figures (the publishers...) seem to think DRM is a good idea. How they determined this, who knows? But it would be pretty foolish to think they didn't perform some studies and research into this (especially with the economy the way it is).

While I can't take the posted part of the article in context of the rest of it (as I'm unable to read Norwegian), it struck me mostly as saying "here are some things I, as a customer, don't currently like about online distribution, here's a company who's doing things in a way I like much better, and given the choice this is the kind of model I'd prefer to buy from." It basically strikes me as calling out both online distributors and publishers: if you want to get me to buy from you as opposed to all those other guys, here's how to do it. Is there risk involved? Of course. If the companies involved are satisfied with the status quo then they can keep doing what they're doing. They won't grab any extra marketshare that way, but if it's still making them money then go for it. However, if some of the players are seeing themselves slowly hemorrhaging money and are looking for a way to set themselves apart from the competition: well, here's a way to do it.
One would also have thought that bankers would know how to handle money well enough not to send the entire economy into a tailspin. People operating in some organizational structures can make some very stupid decisions, even if the individuals involved should know better. That's why you shouldn't simply assume that such folks know what they're doing.

While it is true that some corporations and companies are grossly incompetent, you also can't assume that of everyone. Plus, most of the particularly bad choices of the banks (giving massively large loans to people who have been on unemployment since they were 18...) WERE things that people noticed leading up to it and were pretty obviously "bad moves". Plus, in many ways, we did have the data (to some degree).
DRM isn't. This isn't a case of saying "Uhm, how the hell are you not going to go bankrupt?". This is a case of saying "Uhm, does this actually work?". And since we don't have the data, we can't draw a conclusion. They have the data and they seem to have drawn a conclusion. Is it right or is it wrong? Who knows. But since every major publisher seems to be on the same page (to some degree), it would be a safe bet to assume that the answer is more complicated than "It doesn't work"
Personally, from my (very limited) experience, it looks like DRM DOES work to some degree. Just go look at all the idiots who don't know how to download a crack (hell, I think this thread even had someone who played the "I might get a virus" card, which we all know is horse-hockey :p). Those people basically get forced to buy the game (if they wanted to play it). So it then just becomes a question of how stupid the potential piracy demographic is. :p
But, again, I digress. The main point I was going for was just that it really isn't fair to complain that Steam and Impulse don't have the same model as GoG (technically, Impulse on its own is pretty damned close, if you consider that you probably wouldn't want to download a 7 gig game through your browser anyway :p). Yeah, in an ideal world they might (again, I think that a service like Steam would probably still be around, if only because it actually DOES offer a lot of benefits to the user. Same model GoG uses (win them over with goodies), just for DRM instead of price), but in an ideal world I would be able to buy a military-grade humvee for the same price as a scooter. You aren't going to see me mention that in any articles I might write :p

Thanks for this one . . =)
I apologize, I was under the impression that you could get a virus from a pirated game download . . . my bad . . .misinformed I guess . . .=)