Somebody has to do it. When you say (for a 100th time) that a game is DRM free and everything is perfect, somebody else has to step up and say that it's not the entire truth. And so it goes, over and over again...

So... why are you doing this? :)

Yeah, I just like debating stuff. At the end of the day GOG sacrificing some principles to sell a new game and give CDP some direct profit isn't the end of the world by a long shot. I just like to debate, so I will continue to do so while the topic is still being discussed.

I like the idea of having my own key. It will differentiate me from the pirates.
I will get very pissed if they don't give me a unique key that will set me as a unique and legitimate customer... :)
And I like the fact that my key will be needed in order to access downloadable content.

I support the way GoG and CDPred handled this. It is the right way to do it in my opinion. And it is not DRM btw.

The key is not DRM. Needing the key to download and install the rest of the game is DRM.

Anyway, about the supposedly high costs of offering patches without authentification (that's what according to the Marketing and PR Director of GOG :) CDP is trying to avoid - the high costs), like it was done in the old days, I thought I would make a small estimation.

Suppose there are 1 million paying customers and 1 million pirates. The game is 10GB in file size and all patches together amount to 1GB. Everything is downloaded on average two times by each user, only the pirates download only the patches from the freely accesible patch server and obtain the main part through other sources. All this happens in the course of 3 months.

How much extra costs would this mean for GOG?

Well 1 million times 22GB plus 1 million times 2GB makes 24 peta byte, from which 2 peta byte or 1/12 is unwanted pirates' traffic.

If spread equally over 3 months this results in a constant download speed of about 3 GB/second and of that about 250MB/second of unwanted traffic.

Now, it was impossible for me (by googling) to find a quotation for such a traffic load, so I am stuck here and use an alternative route.

For an amazon copy in a box, the shipping cost is roughly 3€. Now the electronic download of the same game must surely be much cheaper, otherwise downloads would never ever be able to compete. So download costs per copy are much less than 3€. Unwanted download costs which amount to 1/12 are therefore much less than 25cent per copy. That isn't much but still adds up.

I've heard (no reliable source), that internet traffic costs indeed is around 1cent / 1GB, so that the unwanted traffic is really only a small portion (kind of peanuts) but still it adds up.

But then, if you make standalone patches and make them downloadable from the account of GOG or from the update server, you would never ever get unwanted pirates' traffic (even less traffic because some people would archive the standalone patch).

You would maybe make the creation of an up to date pirated copy harder, but you would also bother the normal customers. Just remember the GOG philosophy: Make everything as easy as possible for the customer and in particular allow archiving and don't never ask for additional authentification. Obviously CDP doesn't share this philosophy completely.

Maybe pirates will re-invent the long lost art of making standalone patches. And that's the point I wanted to make: The real question is not, why authentification, but should be: why not standalone patches? And that is where a bit of DRM is hidden and only when GOG publishes the all-inclusive version, it will be really 100% DRM free (all of it) instead of only being 90%.

However, for me the announcement is an important step and I would not only credit the EnigmaticT enigmatic capabilities of persuasion for it, but also the community's persistence.

And before somebody asks, I know, it's just a game. I just wrote this for completeness. I already made up my mind about buying TW2 or not.

Is the Witcher 2 a "Good Old Game" already...?

Damn I'm getting old.

Any reply yet?

Point of view, relly, I find one-click patching to be way better than stand-alone patches as long as I get my hands on fully updated game after some time.

Dead horse is dead.

I love the way patches will be delivered. No hassle, no searching, just simple click and that's it.

See? He's CZECH! He's lazy as well!

I mean, intelligent.

Not really. You can combine it. Meaning one-click patching of a standalone patch that is saved somewhere, so you can archive it. Would work exactly as one-click patch but offer also to be applied later.

True but there's no need for that now. One click patch now, archive the final updated installer later.

Agreed, just wanted to point out that standalone patches from within the GOG account (but still one-clickable) are the best choice from a consumer perspective including the ease of use (no additional serial number required) and the instant archivability. In this case of course, one can also wait or trust in the final updated installer which comes later.

Sure, but the point is they're an incentive to preorder from that store.

The point is, there is now no way to get them otherwise since they were preorder items, so henceforth they should be release. This is pretty simple :(