Does this mean its one of the first GOG games to have DRM?

No. There are other games that have serials tied to them. You can play this "offline" without creating an account anyway. You'll just miss out on global leaderboards and internet multiplayer but LAN & singleplayer are available to you.

Yeah its just a multiplayer passcode so if MP does not interest you you dont have to enter it to even play the game

all old games used to have serial numbers, it's as old as gaming itself... (half-life 1 etc...)

Thanks! Glad to hear its not required, and that there is no drm.

If you need a passcode to play online, it's DRM.

Since when? What's the problem with this? I don't understand.

Also, you can play online without the CD-Key, just use LAN + Hamachi.

Only thing I can see is if someone else submits your key, using a key generator you get cut out of being able to 'register' the MP.

In other words they are digitally managing how your rights to their MP servers, and if the keys get used up, 'tough luck'.

It's not nearly a big deal if you do register in time, although it still requires you to go through sign-in process. Similar to the one used for Ubisoft's newer games (although Ubisoft makes you do it for single player too!).

However, without registration, perhaps it leaves MP servers more open to cheating and hacking?

Yes, a serial key is a form of digital rights management. There is no denying this, however it's important to understand what people mean when they talk about DRM and when GoG talks about DRM.

When most people talk about DRM they are using the term loosely and meaning to refer explicitly to unreasonably intrusive forms of digital rights management like forced online-only, limited-use serial keys and monitoring software. There are other methods but these three seem to be the most common and each of these have legitimate counter-arguments to their use. Forced online-only is just stupid for single-player games and we don't need to go further. Limited-use serial keys are an issue due to the very real potential of bad installs in an ever-increasing trend toward digital-only however the issue of manufacturing errors (e.g. World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria) creates another point of contention. Finally, monitoring software has a creep factor and forces players to think about just what else the software is monitoring (e.g. early World of Warcraft). The argument from publishers/developers is always that this helps to curb piracy but, truthfully, people who want to steal games find ways around them and the people that actually care about games and buy them are unduly inconvenienced.

The above is what people mean when they are talking about DRM. A simple serial key that is only relevant to multi-player gaming is DRM in the technical sense but it is in no real way intrusive. If you find it to be intrusive...well, I can only be so polite: you'd be really stupid. I'm going to hope I'm erring on the side of caution and suggest that you're not stupid, you're just being unduly technical and missing the point of the DRM conversation.

I'm pretty sure the chances of your key getting used are smaller than the earth being overrun with aliens from outer space, but i'm not sure about what the odds of that actually are. But the key is 16 alphanumerical characters, so 36 to the 16th, so your code is one of 7958661109946400884391936. That's a big number. My head hurts thinking about it.

That being said, I can see how this could be a little bothersome to some people, since as far as I know, you have to use the key for any multiplayer, at all, even on servers that aren't theirs. So I would guess there is something in the client, that you have to run on your computer in order to play the game, that could be considered DRM. On most sites this wouldn't matter, but that's kind of a selling point at gog.com, so most people that care probably shop here.

Personally I don't have a problem with it, I used it for a bit before registering the code, it worked fine, it was fun. I registered the code, it works fine, its fun. Played some death match. I recommend rockets. The more rockets the better. kaboom. Had to restart singleplayer though, but oh well, it's fun.

As for hackers, I am pretty sure that some people will be banned from some servers just for being good and making a few lucky shots, and I'm pretty sure there will be hackers. But the ability to ban accounts might help a bit.

Anyhow, that's my 2 cents.

Keep in mind that those serial keys are not generated by just throwing a completely random 16 char sequence; they usually contain some kind of information that can be retrieved by the autenticator (so it's not a one-way encryption) and as such the actual pool of valid keys is much more smaller than what you may think; once you got the algorithm down, you can build them without using any brute force.

That's why sometimes you see digital stores that "run out of keys" (it should never happen if they really were such a large number) and also why working serial key generators have always been around for a ton of software

Just to clarify, only a small subset of the possible keys are valid, that's definitely true, and it's part of the point of how those things work. Not sure I see the relevance of a digital store running out of keys, if you already have yours. And if someone found an algorithm that produced valid keys, and your key was one that was produced by it, yeah you could be in trouble. But that is pretty speculative at this point.

I'd just like to point out that CD-Keys are NOT DRM, unless they are activated/tied to a personal account.

CD-keys are used to stop pirates from playing on legitimate servers, that is their sole function. You can resell Quake3 with it's cd-key on ebay. Quake 3 does not contain drm, it only uses the key to discern legitimate owners over multiplayer. Otherwise, Id would be providing a free service to PIRATES.

GOG's policy on DRM is merely that they don't use annoying forms of DRM. However, what you people don't understand is that GOG ITSELF IS DRM. ALL YOUR GAMES ARE TIED TO YOUR GOG ACCOUNT. YOU CAN'T SELL/TRANSFER THEM. THIS ENTIRE DISCUSSION IS MEANINGLESS.

Uh cd-keys usually are registered to a name and account. If you resell a used cd-key it shouldn't be able to be reactivated on another account.

Related to this, most companies do not allow someone to sell or transfer accounts.

To add to what the last poster said, if the person was banned for cheating, the key/account would probably be flagged no matter who it was transferred to.

To add to that all the downloaded copies could technically be given out and would work on other machines. They aren't tied to a account, they don't have watermarks that link them to a specific person.

GOG is relying on honesty and trust that people won't abuse the system. It happens, but most people probably respect it.