Judging by his most recent post it looks like your interpretation was correct actually. :P

Now i'm just confused.

You understood it right, i'm not very concerned with bypassing their drm for backup purposes because if they were to implode tomorrow or something i wouldn't stand to lose that many games since i own some other version of most of what i have there.

Well, by my definition it IS still DRM, since, technically, you are not installing the game if you copy the installed files. Installing is the process of creating those files. But, quite frankly, I don't know what to make of it. I'm surprised there are still games that can work just by using that "dirty" trick, copying the installed files from one place to another and I didn't know you could do that with Desura games (but I doubt with all of them). Still, I'm more inclined to see that as a trick to bypass DRM rather than a feature that makes the system not DRM.

You know what, I'm going to try it right now and maybe I'll even read the EULA of Desura.

UPDATE: See?, Q.U.B.E. gives me a .NET Framework error if I just copy the files somewhere else. I guess it's kind of an easy to solve problem (maybe reinstalling .NET Framework), but we are definitely pushing the system away from its boundaries. I'm not convinced by your argument, sorry.

UPDATE2: Well, it was easier than that. Read the first point of their Terms of Use: "A Subscription does not permit you to make copies of the Application or to use the Application separately from the System." According to them, you cannot use a game, nor make a copy of it, outside of the client.

Since .NET's installation path is the same for all systems, the problem most likely has to do with some registry keys that QUBE adds during installation. I don't see what else could be the problem.

Try Cameyo and see if that works for you. Last I checked that only worked on small installs, ones less than 500mb, but for DRM free programs it should allow you to basically just copy the install from one computer to another as you wish.

I like it because it keeps my install from getting all bogged down with apps that I only use once in a while.

The wrong framework, probably. Just because you have .NET 4 installed doesn't mean a .NET 2 required game can use it. Yes, .NET managed to fuck this up even worse than Java.

Microsoft should really stop doing so much backwards compatibility. 2-3 max versions of .NET per OS should be enough.

Right now, XP has 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, and 4.0. I hope they won't bother bringing 4.5 to it.

7 has 3.5 and 4.0 so far. 4.5 should come for it, and that should be it.

Same goes for XNA, although that may be irrelevant with Windows 8... No news have been posted about XNA's future.

Well, in that case, the package would be a lot bigger... lately, they've been trying to reduce the size. You can see the 'client profile' which is ~29MB, the 'normal profile' ~49MB, and the 'extended profile' which is around 83MB and only comes with Visual Studio. (this is for .NET 4.0)

Maybe you're right, why not, it is always better to install a single thing, than a dozen, but then people will start crying how big .NET is. :)

Well, you're right, they would cry, but in practice now they're stuck updating at least the two most popular (2 and 4) and likely 3 as well. It's the same net result, but perception counts for something, not sure what the worse perception is among the end users, big package or more updates. I would think more updates but am completely ready to admit I may be wrong about that.

I'm with you, totally, one package vs a dozen is always better, and the file size doesn't matter at all. But no doubt, if they combine all packages, people will start talking how bloated .NET is with all that outdated stuff that won't be used anymore and so on...

It is good that they've reduced the size of 4.0, hopefully with 4.5 they'll keep the size very similar. (from an end-user point of view, pretty sure this is irrelevant to developers)

You have to connect to GOG to download the game and the same is for desura, it does downloading and installing in one step, then you can zip it and unzip it to another machine and run it and there is no connect to any server. I don't know about windows, but on linux this is absolutely enough, so there is no DRM.

And even you use Desura client for downloading and installing, it doesn't limit you in any way, you can do it on as many machines as you want.

You need internet to install Desura games, that's a damn big limitation.

Yeah, that means your games can still go poof whenever Desura does.