Do you know why did I buy the game? Not because I can't pirate it or I have spare money... because I want to :)

Nowdays nothing can stop people from downloading cracked verions so putting the best protection won't help anyone. However, making it DRM free is a stupid idea. In order to sell more copies they should make it harder to activate the cracked verions. It will be harder for the pirate gamers to download complicated cracks and installing shitty programs in order to play the game. As most of us know - no one likes installing doubtful programs under the written line of "made by hackers". I hope that in E3 with their new game they will come with a new slogan of "NEVER again free DRM"

How do you figure they can make it harder to activate the pirated versions? The only way to do that is to use DRM. And guess what: the pirates remove the DRM. I don't get what you're envisioning here.

I am saying that now instead of downloading the game from torrent and direct downloads people can download the game right from the publishers if they have the link. it's like they own the legal copy. Instead of looking on the internet for a download + crack + solutions they've got a welcome messege from CDP. Good job, Instead of selling 100K more copies they prefare to give them free and make it easier for people to download the game and all the free DLC that will come later (from what i know they didn't mean free DLC for pirates).

and how, exactly, do you propose they make money?

Whats going on here then?

Of course CDPr knew DRM was going to feck with things.

That's what DRM does. Its designed that way!

If it doesn't like your system it breaks the software so it won't execute. (I thought everyone knew this).

It's very presence screws with stuff for a much more basic reason though even when it works.

Basically DRM is an additional shit load of invasive code that needs to be dealt with at run time.

The more complex the DRM the worse its effects. Secondary drivers,(check the hidden device option in your device manager) HAL hooks, continuous media checks etc. It effectively chews up available system resources, memory and drive bandwidth, network bandwidth and introduces an additional pile of ass backwards resource checks on your system. This is very bad for optic media drives btw.. its effectively forced to track skip which doesn't do the motors any favours and now the continuous on line check garbage can actually bugger home routers and set null connection states on older DSL gear..

What some people are making a mistake with though is thinking that it was CDPr that included the DRM in the first place.

DRM has nothing to do with developers.
It never had and it never will.

DRM is a publisher thing.

In this case the complaints given with regards to the whole patch rape feast should have demonstrated this quite clearly.

GOG versions are fine.

The Steam copies are slightly buggered. (steam code weighs a little due to its encryption and network overhead)

The EU/US Store bought copies are buggered. (that'll be Atari... thanks atari... you really stopped the pirates there... especially since you could download a working version from gog faster than you can run it from the DVD)

And... finally the Russian version published and distributed by 1C has been badly gang raped by starforce to a degree where it can't even be patched... every game distributed in Russia by 1C includes starforce...them licensing deals a bitch eh?

The thing is that if you want actual DVD's and shit you gotta publish.
CDPr knew this and so does everyone else.
Publishers fear pirates. (cos they really are that retarded)

That's why everyone said buy the game from GOG.

It's going to make zero difference in sales. Zero. Once a cracked copy is available, everyone that wants it illegally is going to get it. Doesn't matter what CDPR does at this point.

Having said that, where, exactly, do you see CDPR having the actual game itself available for DL for anyone that wants to steal it?

I believe he's under the(incorrect) assumption that one could grab the download link from the "My Games" section and spread it around. You know, the one that goes https://www.gog.com/en/download/game/the_witcher_2/etc/?

I think this fellow is unaware that you have to be signed into a GOG account that owns the game first.

Ah, I believe you're right. I was pretty confused about what he was trying to point out, but now that I've read your post, it seems likely that's what he may be thinking.

Yes, you just need one paying gog-pirate and the game was "for free" for thousands of people, making it ridiculously unimportant wether the retail version has DRM or not, the only difference was for the customer, let us see if the publishers this time have learned from it and lets hope CDP won't need to do those "dirty deals" with them anymore.

Let it go.

Probably also they realized that GOG (DRM-free) sales were better than they expected so thought maybe the DRMs weren't too important after all...

Besides where you accused them of deliberately crippling the game for a large portion of their player base in your OP? Remember that? Those were good times....

I really hope so, would be interesting to see how well it sold generally and during the specific parts like gog, steam and retail.

@Cyjack: Learn to read, I wrote HOW I FELT. DRM and 9Gb patch due to not providing a proper steam patch makes me feel like I'm not as important as a gog-buyer.

I'm wondering, when you chose to pick the non-GOG version, did you know it had DRMs? I can't remember what they said about DRMs, I think I believed all versions wouldn't have them (except for Steam, of course).