And so did I

What worries me is the mention of the 'social gaming' aspect. As long as it's only leaderboards, that's fine (and doesn't really count as 'social gaming'. Online highscores have been around as long as the internet). But if these so-called 'social features' allow the exclusive creation or addition of game content, it is easy to make a quasi-DRM out of them. All these social Facebook games rely heavily on the support of 'friends'. It would be easy to implement this in other games as well. Say, some piece of equipment that is only available to players who co-operate on obtaining it. Some ship which has to be built together (and then becomes a 'persistent online feature'). Or some advantages that are only available to 'clans' of players. As soon as something like that is introduced, the 'networkers' have an advantage and that in effect forces you to register to some account. In multiplayer this is especially bad. Because then you only have the choice of either always loosing to the better equipped 'socialites' or to create an account with the developer's service to stay competetive.

So, I would be very vary of any game that advertises 'social features' and 'persistent online features'. And I would prefer if this door to sneaky around-the-back DRM is not opened.

(edit: which means I voted 'no')

I'm not sure if there's any problem here. The game plays fine, both in SP and MP, without any activation. If you want to, you connect to the official servers for rankings and achievements. Either way the game is always there to download, install, make a backup and boot up without activation checks.

There is no issue. It's exactly like UT2K - I played MP without any kind of activation just a moment ago.

The other question would be... how would someone do such a galaxy wide war as multiplayer without accounts? I mean... there has to be some way to connect to this multiplayer mode. And is has to be a bit more secure...

I am perfectly fine with that kind of games. No DRM to play.. no pushing towards Steam or Origin or anything else like this. Optional Accounted Multiplayermode which can be avoided through Lan/Internet Play with own Connections. Sound like any oldschool RPS.

Remember Command and Conquer. If you wanted to play with "matchmaking" online you had to connect to gamespy with an account ;)

I would appreciate it if games that require a CD-key informed you of this on their purchasing page somewhere. UT2k's page doesn't notify you, nor do many other games that require a CD-key one way or another.

I'm fine with it, but I'd like to be informed when it's going to be present, before I purchase.

Me too. NWN2 comes to mind.

I voted No, because this is a test case that will open up all kinds of games with much more nasty "features" than this particular title. I don't want that crap plastered all over GOG. Once the door has been opened, it cannot be shut. That's how these things work, we've seen it often enough.

This. Seriously, you need to get this sorted somehow. Keeping track of "your" key must become easier. And preferably without cross-integration between platforms and services.

Since last year (HoMaM V release), any game requiring a CD-key will display it on your game shelf automatically. Not sure if it's also true for older games bought since then, but the newer ones do it.

That is an improvement, I hadn't noticed NWN2 already lists the keys. They don't seem to have gone back and fixed older titles though (e.g. NWN1).

No, you shouldn't. When you buy a game you are purchasing a license to be used by ONE USER at a time in ONE computer. That's how things have always worked. What you're doing is basically creating 2 copies of the same game to be played by two people: one who paid for the game and one who didn't (unless you're playing multiplayer with yourself, uhhhh). That's piracy, period. It would be the same thing as making a copy of a game you purchased in GOG and distributing it to your friends or seeding it in a torrent, just at different scales.

You can't do it with physical copies, why would you want to do it just because it's digital?

Because with digital copies, you could! I understand why publishers/developers wouldn't want you to, but it *could* be an advantage inherent to the medium, if they let it be (again, there are most certainly reasons why they wouldn't). I don't really care about getting into this debate, but saying `you can't do X with physical, so why would you want to do X with digital' While the transition from physical to digital actually makes X possible is a lousy argument :)

Well to be fair you really couldn't do that with later generation of games on CDs, not unless you have burned them on a second CD and then cracked the game.

This one is right on the line. Keys to access parts of the game are DRM BUT, when it's also to access services outside the game itself it's stupid not to have some kind of gate (if it's not obvious why, look at what happened with Demigod). That said it's still DRM and inches become miles too easily in this day and age.