The norwegian gaming site gamer.no has mentioned GOG.com several times in the past, including doing retrospectives of some of the classier releases.
This time, they've compiled a three-page article about digital distribution, named "Why is digital distribution so difficult?". Predictably, they discuss their frustrations with DRM, pricing models, regional availability and pricing, the shortcomings of XBLA and Steam, and so forth.
At the end there's a mention of GOG, and this is what that section reads, translated from norwegian:
Conclusion
A lot of the complaints I have in this article are fairly easy to fix. It depends most of all on the will to fix it - and a certain understanding of what customers actually want, something several of the bigger players in the industry seem to lack completely. Luckily there are companies who get it right. We've earlier mentioned the portal Good Old Games here on gamer.no, and the reason is simple: they understand how digital distribution of games is supposed to work .
Good old games doesn't have an irritating copy protection. They sell games at the same price no matter where you're from, and once you've bought the game from them you're free to download it as much as you want, at your leisure. You can also copy the installation file to a CD, flash pen, or external harddrive, and bring it whereever you want - whether the computer you're installing on has internet access or not. And you can obviously store your files for all future, so that you have them and can still play them when the civilized world breaks down in 2012. I as a customer am treated with respect, and when I've purchased the game is mine.
That's how I want it. Is that really so hard to understand?
Link to the article (norwegian):
http://www.gamer.no/artikler/45005/hvorfor-er-digital-distribusjon-sa-vanskelig/

Apparently it is. Considering that larger distributors seems to have boxed them selves in, and only have a one way communication simply saying "Do what we say, and force feed them shit".

I agree with their conclusion and I learned that I will never, ever be able to read Norwegian . . .=)

While i do agree that GoG probably has one of the best models out there, I disagree with the article('s conclusion) comparing GoG to all the other distributors. What works for older games does not work for newer games.
We all loved how EA released the first few C&C games for free the other week. That is a really nice promo. Doing that with C&C3 (or whatever came out last year) would be a different story.
The reason GoG can get away with the DRM-free stuff is because most of the games here aren't available elsewhere, so it is not like potential piracy can hurt sales. And the games which ARE available elsewhere are usually either old enough that most people who will buy it already have, or have the added bonus of Steam-client integration and the like. But you won't see Fallout 3 here any time soon.

I agree, there is no comparison, GOG is head and shoulders above all the others. And you are right, of course, the newer games need to be pirated heavily to sustain the "Pirates are killing the gaming industry" scenario.
I could not care less what EA does . . .=)
GOG does not "get away" with anything, they provide a quality product at a great price with ownership of the game resting with the purchaser. All games are available to anyone who wants to get them, GOG gives those of us who prefer not to pirate a place to purchase the games without fear of law suits or viruses.
I could not care less about the Steam-client integration (DRM system)
By the time I finish playing my existing GOG games, Fallout 3 will be here. . . =P

Regardless of whether you believe the lack of any conclusive evidence (either way) or not, you cant deny that the current industry mentality is "DRM of some form is needed to fight piracy to some degree". So with that mentality, GoG's model won't be applied to any new releases, and there is no way in hell that any digital distributor is going to be able to consistently get new releases without some degree of DRM (even if it is only at the request of the publisher).
The "truth" is irrelevant. What matters is what the people making the decisions believe. GoG can get away with DRM-free releases because publishers are more willing to throw older games "to the pirates". Not so much with the new releases.
And it is good to see that those two highly specific examples don't apply to you. Thanks for sharing :p

Good point, I hadn't considered that . . .=)
You're welcome . . .

You still fail to grasp the concept that something that is forced down your throat it's not a bonus, it's a leash. Bonuses are optional, you can take them or leave them according to how you feel about their usefulness. Leashes are mandatory, period. See the difference ?
Now, i don't quite get if you're being ironic this time around about the bonus remark, but you do try to casually pass it as an actual bonus or perk every other chance you get, so just in case, i thought i'd make it clear that it isn't a bonus. Not for all of us at least ;)
And about new games and DRM, 5 years ago the notion of 'old games_drm free' would have probably seemed as ludicrous as the notion of 'new games_drm free' still seems today, and yet here we are. So, untill someones grows a pair and puts it to the test somewhere down the road, we won't know for sure i guess.
It depends most of all on the will to fix it
I'd say this guy is probably right but that's just me.
Thing is, when (most) consumers/gamers are willing to put up with just about anything the industry cares to throw at us, there's not much incentive to muster the will to introduce (beneficial) changes.

Not really! Why should I? Ok, apart from Indie and cheap ones I buy like one or two new games a year, but the rest is old games - budget titles and the like. The best game I bought in 2008 was World of Goo, the best in 2009 was Final Fantasy VII (which I actually didn't buy but get for birthday). The best in this year will be Final Fantasy VIII, again for birthday. :-)
I don't see why I should buy new games if old ones are clearly better. Sure, Braid was great, World of Goo was great. But why are independent designers better than many major companies? What has become of games? The answer is, they go for money now - they don't make good games anymore but fill their games with standard stuff and sometimes inappropriate 3D graphics (like in Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 and Railroad Tycoon 3 - nobody needs 3D graphics for games that would look better in 2D isometric like the predecessor). The video game artists have become video game workers, working on the behalf of people that rather create the same old crap again than doing something new or at least unusual. It's no wonder that a whole subgenre - Tower Defense - was not created by video game companies but by amateurs (French for lovers) who built TD levels for StarCraft.
Yes, some smaller developers still are artists - Scribblenauts is bad to play but at its heart has one of the most interesting concepts we've seen for several years. You want something, you get it. Summoning lovecraftesque figures or time machines - it's all possible. And still one needs creativity to play through the levels. I spent a few hours on the title screen (sandbox mode) just creating objects and seeing how they work or what would come out. And yes, you can even create a Scribblenaut.
A good use of 3D for a 2.5D game was in Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project, but there are many more bad ones. Red Alert 3, while being a 2.5D game, also uses 3D in a good way. There's no fiddling with camera perspectives and you see everything. (Ok, I got the latter one on the Steam christmas sales).
Enough rant for now.

I meant paying vs. pirating. Naturally, there's lots of cheapasses here. :P

I see this claim made a lot, but I've never seen any support offered for it. Has anyone ever tried a setup similar to GOG for new games and observed that it didn't work well? Also, the folks involved in distribution (e.g. publishers) refusing to make it work is not the same as it being unable to work. I see many players in the industry complaining about piracy, lack of sales, etc, then continuing to try the exact same thing under slightly different guises while claiming that doing things differently just won't work. It's awfully easy to fail when you refuse to even try.

Going to disregard the rant about Steam, for obvious reasons
And yeah, that is just it. There are no studies, either way. There are unofficial trends, but those tend to favor DRM, if anything. Ubi released PoP (was it 2009?) DRM-free, and now they have a DRM model that everyone thinks is insane and extreme. While there aren't enough details to draw proper conclusions, it DOES suggest unfortunate (for us) things regarding DRM.
Maybe it would help if I elaborate on what "works" and the like:
Let's say GoG is talking to Ubi about getting M&M 1-6 on GoG. They can basically say "Look, you guys aren't really selling it anywhere else, so you are going to get a good bit of profit. And with all the 'abandonware' sites, it is already pirated to hell and back. So what say we sell it, DRM-free, and give people incentives, like all the promo art and manuals that most users can't find?"
Now let's say the imaginary distributor "Haze" is trying to do the same, but for Assasin's Creed 2 or something similar. "Look, you guys are still selling this at major distributors and are probably told on a daily basis about how your DRM model has been cracked nine times over. So what say we just give up on that and sell it here? We'll give them incentives like all the promo art and manuals that are already digitized for the Steam collector's edition and the like."
One of two things can happen
Case A: "Hell no. I mean, really. Just no. Even if we were okay with ditching DRM, this would piss off Steam and Impulse to no end, thus hurting our relations with them in the future."
Case B: "Who are you? Someone call security!" :p
Can you see how the former works and the latter doesn't? :p It is obviously not that cut and dry, but still. I think the point gets across.
GoG was a VERY special case. A lot of the early publishers already had long-term relationships with CD Projekt and "trusted" them. And CD Projekt also had those discount releases that they used to fight piracy in Eastern Europe or whatever the interview said. This showed that fixed prices for older games sell very well. And they used those contacts to get started. When Ubi saw how well the Interplay titles sold, they gave it a chance. Same with Activision (likely seeing Ubi's stuff).
Now we have someone trying to go DRM-free and "minimal hassle" with modern games. Aside from the obscenely large download sizes, how are they going to get their foot in the door?
You can release a select few games DRM free (and, generally, the DRM-free games tend to be from publishers and devs with lower production values than, well, Activision and EA), but still sell DRM'd games to turn a profit. Can we all agree that this approach would fail (imagine a crazy ginger in a latex mask talking about compromise)?
Or you can try to refuse to stock anything with DRM, yet still attempt to get new releases. This would be a MASSIVE risk, economically, and would be pretty irresponsible for your company. So the only people who can really afford such a gamble are (gasp) EA and (maybe) Activision or Ubi.
It sucks, but that is just the case. That is why I feel that it is really unfair to complain that Steam and Impulse don't have the newest releases DRM free. It has nothing to do with one's views on DRM, the "effectiveness" of DRM, or even morality. It has to do with trying to make a profit. Hopefully GoG will get the foot in the door for the concept, but to expect Steam or Impulse to turn down their new-releases is just naive idealism, at best.
It is like complaining that a small Mom and Pop store can't match the same prices as big super-stores, or that a three person company doesn't donate anywhere near as large a percentage of their profits to charity as Apple or something. Just, you know, the other way around. :p

At the same time, that could've just not sold well cause people didn't want it. Though that would be odd...the game was $30 or less everywhere I looked.

This seems to be what happens whenever this topic comes up: lots and lots of useless pontificating about why some different approach won't work, will fail, can't be done, etc. And yet in response to the direct question of "Well, has it actually been tried?" all that can be offered is a sheepish "Well, no, but..." As I said earlier, it's quite easy to fail if you don't even try. I'm sure their were plenty of folks of your mindset when GOG was proposed, with plenty of reasons why it wouldn't work, yet fortunately the views of more forward-thinking individuals prevailed and here we are. Additionally, it doesn't even require a new distributor to move things forward for hassle-free, DRM-free downloads; publishers themselves could very well simply choose to release their games DRM free. I know both Direct2Drive and Gamersgate already offer stand-alone, DRM free installers for some games, or the publisher could offer such installers through their own sites (much like many indie devs already do). Again, it's not unworkable if the only obstacle is the people who'd be implementing it refusing to even try it.