I guess most "owners of intellectual property", also known as "copyright holders" who are removing games on GOG simply got a issue regarding the "DRM free" rule. Because the owner is changing and as soon as the owner changed, the new owner may have in mind "oh, GOG, DRM free... i have to remove my game else im busted, i need to excessively control the users of my software, no matter what it takes".

So far GOG is DRM free, although some games may need a key in term its played on multiplayer/online mode, but that cant truly be considered "DRM" because every single online-only game got a key or "bind on account" condition. There is no 100% anonymous condition in term someone is connecting to a server., So i think its fair when
publishers demand a online-key. but with multiple use (a key that isnt limited to just a single computer). A limited key would be some kind of DRM, but a unlimited key (in a practical way for own use) isnt a DRM because there is no limitations able to hinder someones ability to play and no real protection.

Even Steam got some possibility for multiple use of certain games because in term there is several accounts its possible to share a game with computers from other family members without the need for buying a game several times. So even Steam isnt having a "hard coded" DRM but of course its way more restrictive compared to GOG offers. Of course, in term someone got a new computer but the old key is bound to a different computer, it can become a issue too in term there is a "limited use DRM".

However, is DRM free condition putting any disadvantage to GOG when it comes to publisher-support? Well, they are less likely to publish a game, thats a fact. But in real circumstances its foolish to think that way because in most industrial or highly developed countrys such as US, EU Japan, the sharing of copyrighted material is forbidden. The only exception is in term the *owner of the intellectual property" is allowing it (the license is setting the rules), thats very rare and usualy applies to "free to play games" only (games without the need to buy them). It does not matter if there is a DRM attached or not, the rule is same for every single game because every user of a software is using a license and a license got terms of use backed up by law. Every user will have to be strict to the condition of the license attached to a software and there is no need to use a DRM in order to tell a user "hey its forbidden", everyone knows the deal. So, indeed its true that prehaps 1/3 of all games are shared on the net illegally, people just download them and wont pay. But firstly: That issue is mainly happening in underdeveloped countrys without a clear law, and secondly: A DRM wont be able to protect the sharing at all. In just a few days almost every single DRM will be cracked and the only users truly suffering from DRM are the users WHO PAY, not the users that dont pay. ;) So anyway., most publishers still fully trust on the "effective use of DRM" but in reality its very questionable. Ultimately, DRM isnt setting the rule, the license is the rule and everyone will have to follow, because the license (term of use) is protected by law. not the DRM. DRM is just a tool in order to control someone (useless too). Not talking about the bad side effects of DRM, i guess every person with proper intellect may know the risk, for example when a rootkit is applied to a PC and many DRMs got such mechanisms, because it will offer the best protection, nothing is a higher nuisance than a rootkit.

So i very much appreciate the GOG mentality and i hope they will continue to be successful. Its not easy to ride a new wave of mentality and most "old school thinkers" may not understand the new mentality.. Innovations always have to be hard earned but its simply worth it. I hope the new "copyright holder" apparently Bethesda, may read those text and may understand what it is all about.

Anyway, its not about DRM conditions here, but its probably the main reason why some publishers are drawing back theyr GOG offers, so i had to bring it up and doing some explanations regarding my view and why the "fear of DRM free" is just a foolish illusion".

I assume so too but not because it would be difficult in the sense of sending GOG a file and saying, please sell it, but because Bethesda is just a .... .. ... ...

Bethesda...I bought their games, but Fallout 3, NV, Oblivion, Skyrim...the reign of bore.

I won't buy any other games from them, at least not a rpg.

They must have done something with the Steam versions, because they don't require the old tinkering to work any longer. I also find it very interesting that they include sfall etc.. in a product. And then patch it with Steam DRM? So when sfall upgrades you'll still have to use the official patch, and use community patches to make the new sfall work. At which point it will be DRM free again. So why even bother with Steam DRM then? I don't get it. And before someone blows a gasket, yes that is legal to do. As you're using official patches. And you *have* to do it for the upgrade to work.

Reminds me of the Fallout Mod Manager for Fallout 3, which also makes the game DRM-free and you definitely need it to make the game less "broken by design".
They should just leave it be altogether, nothing good is coming from DRM and I'll probably never buy a Bethesda game again (Oblivion and Fallout 3 are the only ones I got afaik).

Couldn't have said it better myself :)

Sadly most of the big boys and even smaller ones think that way pretty much by default and it is cultural in the industry. Many of them are so big that they just don't have the incentive to consider DRM-free or they perceive it to be a risky thing to do when what they're already doing is highly successful. Look at Rockstar Games for example and Grand Theft Auto 5. That game released for consoles last fall and grossed more revenue in 3 days than GOG has probably made selling all the games they have available here since the company started years ago. GTA5 grossed over 1 billion dollars in 3 days, setting new world records. If they can make that much money on a proprietary platform and people will pay it and accept what they get whether it contains DRM or not, and outselling every other game in history more or less, then any risks they perceive which are real or even just unjustified fear or whatever are risks they will simply decide they do not even need to consider taking lest it rock their already ultra-successful boat. Rockstar is a top shelf example especially with GTA 5, but even lesser selling games from other big companies probably have the same logic behind them and look at the sales volume and profit potential of a distributor like GOG as small peanuts and for a perceived high risk (whether the risk is real or not).

DRM-free is most likely the biggest rock to swallow for most titles that do not exist here right now, but there are other big reasons that are becoming increasingly relevant year after year in the world of digitally distributed games also. One of them is that developers and publishers want to make their games as widely available as they can under the constraints of the resources they have (manpower and time), and every OS and platform they decide to support consumes some of those resources to develop and maintain and handle OS specific and hardware specific designs, development and support.

In the digital distribution model they also have to consider DRM and DRM-free and if they're using DRM in some places and not others they have to ensure that both work properly. Aside from this however there are distributor/retailer specific development, maintenance and support issues that they need to address too. The majority of modern games coming on the market for PC now will tend to strongly favour release on Steam and that is a pretty sane business goal considering Steam has the largest reach and largest PC (and probably Mac and Linux) customer base for video games too. If I were writing a video game I'd target it towards Steam first too because well... $$$ however I'd also target GOG as well because I don't believe DRM serves consumers nor companies best interests personally. Many if not most modern games and/or popular game distribution platforms now provide in-game achievements, trading cards, voice chat, multiplayer matchmaking, and a number of other features which are in high popular demand and game developers embrace those features and consider them to be "the standard" now. Some or even many of us here on GOG.com might be opposed to such features or even despise them, but the point is that the industry has adopted them as a whole, the top major distribution platforms have adopted them and provide these back end services and APIs to access/use them to game developers, the game developers want to include this stuff in their games, and the majority of gamers out there seem to want all of these features (whether or not there are people who don't want them or don't care either way).

So game developers in general want these features available and incorporate them into their games. In some cases they might be willing to make multiple versions of their game for different distribution platforms and include certain features on say Steam that Steam supports and not have those features on GOG lets say because GOG doesn't have the backend system to handle achievements and all that other stuff. So they make a custom version of the game conditionalized to GOG.com and/or other DRM-free shops and they now have to spend extra resources on doing that. They might have those resources and be willing to do so and so... we see their games here. Another developer might not have the resources to do that and/or they don't want people who buy their game to have a totally different experience with the game depending on what store they bought it from. So they might tell GOG something like "Our game uses Steam achievements, trading cards, matchmaking and other services provided by Steamworks. We're ok with DRM-free, but we rely on these other services that are provided by free to us through Steam APIs and that has allowed us to put the game on the market more quickly than if we wrote all of that code ourselves. We would consider a GOG version of the game if you had achievements, matchmaking, voice chat, <insert huge list of Steam features here> but at the moment you don't have those features and we would have to spend a lot of resources to implement that ourselves which we don't wish to do, or remove such features from our game and give people a different game experience depending on where they buy the game from and we don't want that.

So, there's no question a lot of games are not here simply because to date GOG doesn't have all of the things available to developers that a modern platform like Steam has. DRM is irrelevant either way with this particular aspect too, they might be fully cool with DRM-free, but they go to Steam because it has a whole bunch of things they can use that they don't have to code up themselves and they consider a mandatory thing they're not willing to do without much in the same way GOG is not willing to do without DRM-free.

Regional pricing was another one of the issues also and may still be partially perhaps, hard to say.

Now that GOG has announced the Galaxy platform though and made it an optional feature, if they implement it all correctly then it should be possible to provide all of the features that make Steam attractive to developers on GOG, but do it in a much better way that is both optional and does not require being connected to the Steam cloud 24/7. For example, an achievement system can be completely local and not require any cloud connection, but also have the ability to synchronize data in the cloud if the user wants it to and opts into using the online features of Galaxy that are available. Likewise other features could work like this also. (We don't know if it has these particular features or how they work, I'm just speculating about what is actually possible to do rather than what GOG is specifically doing.)

So once Galaxy is available at least, some more of the reasons that separate Steam and GOG vanish to some degree and it becomes much easier for a developer to consider both Steam and GOG, and so more are likely to give GOG a shot IMHO. We wont see a huge exodus from Steam overnight, but if Galaxy causes a visible measurable growth rate here then it is a good thing and it makes more doors open to the GOG platform in the end. If those games do as well as most of us would like to think they will, then we may see developers bring more and more of their games here, and the statistics from all of that can be used to convince bigger and bigger fish to come here too.

The way I see things changing if they ever change, is that GOG has to both:

1) Keep things DRM-free and keep the most important fundamental values the platform was built upon.
2) Keep an eye on where the industry is going, what developers and publishers want in order to support releasing here, and try to accomodate them so long as rule #1 isn't violated in the process.
3) Keep an eye on what customers want and don't want and try to balance all of that and find compromises where necessary also without violating rule #1.

I see Galaxy as being a big step towards #2, and also as a way of trying to balance #3. I say balance #3 because the userbase is torn on the idea of a client and service with some wanting it badly and others despising it badly, so the proper balancing of such a thing would be to make it so that users that want such a thing can get what they want, but to develop it in such a way that it very carefully avoids doing things that people do not want, and to make the whole thing optional.

Galaxy will at least have the potential to woo more games here that are ready to embrace DRM-free but expect a set of similar services client or server side like Steam provides even if it is optional in nature. It probably wont have much effect on companies like Rockstar for example that are pro-DRM to the max however, but targetting the low hanging fruit that is or /might/ be available by expanding the services here such as with Galaxy can only make more options available to everyone in my eye and hopefully that can help to change things for the better not just on GOG, but PC gaming in general.

The "dirty" secret of Steam games is that many of them arnt only having the "Steam based" DRM but they even may have some third party (SecuRom, multiple accounts and whatever) DRMs, so they are basically multiple-DRM games but majority of users got no clue...
Link of multiple DRM games: http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_3rd_Party_DRM_on_Steam

Fallout 3 is now one of the new "multiple DRM" games on Steam, so the policy of Bethesda and theyr mentality seems to be pretty clear.

Besides: Had a own headache-issue related to a Steam game: Galactic CIV is in need of a Stardock account, else the game didnt work for me. 2 accounts at once just in order to play a offline game, what a hassle! its clearly a DRM behaviour. but thats my last time i buy Steam games without excessively checking all the infos regarding such matters, waste of bucks because i enjoy games that are no hassle and no harm (but most people may not agree, im well aware).

But for me its clear, when i buy a game i earn he right to play that game hassle free on my machine and without more than a single account. A SecuRom was even able to make my Optical Drive dissappar (in system) all of a sudden and later i found out its thanks to the DRM. :) (crazy). GOG games are providing me that security, in term i will have hassle in any term (incompatible or other issues) there is a possible refund.

I even hate that game and the entire series but that matter is a problem of the society. GT5 was able to hit the "correct spot" the society was asking for,. They could use a proprietary design and 5 DRMs at once, it wouldnt change the peoples view and hype. Im just glad i didnt hand them over a single cent. :)

What clearly can be said: Just because a software is hyped by the majority it doesnt necessarely mean its a good game when it comes to the "unique" view. Its totaly possible that i do not enjoy such a game at all. In contradiction a low "rated" game with low popularity could be very fun to play. Majority cant stand for all of the individuals and the specific taste, its just a "higher chance" of success in term a game is popular, no more and no less than that. But i cant explain what "popularity" is all about and how it works, because its way to complicated and can not be fitted in this post.

Sure, Galaxy got some potential in order to supply the "new demand", but to be honest, not all the users are appreciating "the new way" the industry is heading. For example the achievements is something i never cared at all, it could be gone and it would make me happy but its a new syndrome that a large gamer base is totaly freaked out in order to get achievements and i got no clue what is it all about. Feels like a job to me but i play in order to have a fun experience, not in order to execute a job. I could care less how many achievements i have, all what matters is my joyful game experience.

Regarding voice chat. it only makes sense for online games and generally i play the huge stuff such as EVE Online, WoW or whatever and they all use external voice coms such as TS/Mumble or whatever. So another spot i have absolutely no need for...

I would probably be able to release a huge list of all the Steam features i dont need at all, and if i want to be social and just talk to friends, there is a lot of external clients available in order to get connected. So, Steam isnt the only option and of course its important that the developers are able to update theyr games but that option isnt impossible on GOG, its a online platform and data can be updated too. Steam is easyer to be updated but its not impossible on GOG games. I hate it when there is to many updates, but thats usualy related to online games only (EVE Online, WoW...), For the offline games its better just to bring a new update once a month but a good one, not a endless patchwork-nightmare. So GOG may not be suitable for online (only) games but that kind of game is totaly standalone, a game of that category is not in need of Steam because it got a own launcher with all the "fancy" stuff implemented.

Anyway, Galaxy seems to be a new way in order to supply those needs, whether its useful or not. It will provide new utility for those developers feeling the need in order to supply the "new age" hype of "stay connected and hunt achievements".

IMO GOG making all 3 games free for a limited time right before Interplay's rights ran out, awesome thought it was, was like a parting one-finger salute to Bethesda, I don't think GOG would have risked burning any bridges there if it felt there were any bridges to burn, sadly!

Saying that though, the Fallout pack is currently 6th in the Steam top selling list so there's obviously still SOME market for it, seems bad timing for the release with the Steam Sale imminent though...

I've stopped buying Bethesda games for some time now. That's the only "message" that matters.

Here's a beauty from the Facebook page:

"Eh, I'll pass, although I thank Black Isle/Obsidian for creating the Fallout series, they really don't know how to write amazing stories like Beth, New Vegas story was really bland and underdeveloped"

Oh dear...

New Vegas was bland, it also didn't feel post-apocalyptic, it felt "contemporary" and allegorical, a bit like Fallout 2 actually. Also Obsidian are not Black Isle, Tim Cain, Jason Anderson and Leonard Boyarsky (the creators of Fallout) didn't work on it.

New Vegas did have some interesting ideas in it, but it was still just a FPS Action-RPG (not a true CRPG like FO1-2) built on the crappy engine and gameplay of Fallout 3.

Console First-person shooters can never be Fallout.

I could of swore I played them both on release day on PC... doesn't quite make them "Console first person shooters". You really should get your "Consoles are bad" obsession checked out already.

As for the topic, New Vegas was bland as hell. Lots of boring, uneventful places to explore! The characters/stories weren't too bad though. But neither were the ones in Fallout 3.

I don't see the point in not buying them. You're suppose to play games not sulk because they're not on your favourite platform/website.