Now that those Bill Gatesean megalomaniacs at Steam have conquered all ArmA games, and forced GOG to remove them from sale, what does it mean for us who have already bought ArmA:Gold and/or ArmaA2 from here? At the moment it still looks like we can still download the game from GOG providing we already own it - just no one new can buy it no longer. But how long will this last? How long will it be before even existing owners no longer can download it from here and end up being forced into Steam?

PS/ Yes I LOATHE & DETEST Steam and all it stands for BTW! :/

You own the game license on GOG and have access to it indefinitely. All of this has nothing to do with Steam.

Thanks Sufyan! Puts my mind at rest! At least I know I'm not obliged to have to allow the Stalins at Steam to take over my ArmA's!
I'll not miss the Boho Interactive own DLCs neither - none of them have been worth a jot IMO ditto for DayZ - the 3rd party and totally free "add-ons" you find on armaholic and ofp.info are usually ten times superior - and their are probably other ways than S*** Steam to get them if I ever really need them!

PS/ Have I mentioned I really, really hate Steam yet? :')
PPS/ Not exactly a fan of BI neither for their lack of QA in their games, their "sod the customers they're just scum" attitude and their kowtowing to Steam! :@

GOG doesn't remove games from player libraries. I have one of the earliest cases (TOCA Race Driver 3, removed in 2009); GOG even updated it to use the latest installer design.

Bohemia Interactive have set up a Master Server page for their games, so Steam isn't the only way of finding matches. The Steam versions will probably become incompatible with non-Steam versions once the GameSpy replacement updates are out of beta.

What the f....,
why is the only option to play games today, to be online? I hate that shit. I own nearly about 2000 computer games. I collect them since the 90's. All of them are regular bought. I'm am sim-enthuast since I'm 15 (now I'm 44). But for me the collecting of games is now over. I don't want games, that I must play with online connection to get their f...... copy protection working, in case I want to play a single player mission. It's the same as with the starforce thing a few years ago. There where a few really good sims, and believe me I'm a simulation-junkie, but I haven't bought them because of their copy proctection. The DCS-Series (Flamming Cliffs, A-10 etc.) is such a thing.

I have one single PC I'm playing online. All the other PC's are offline, cause I don't want to have a firewall and a antivirus running in the background, eating up my machines performance, while playing a flightsim for example. Without those security programs, these days you could bet to have a virus or something else like this within a few hours.

If you have offline PC's today, you have a real trouble to get new, legally bought games running. You get forced to connect your computer to the internet. I don't want that!!!!

Make your voice heard...
http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?178672-GOG-com-removal

You can just press the "Go offline" button on Steam ya know. Takes you offline. In fact, I can't think of any offline game that requires you to be online at all times - even Sim City 4 had that feature removed.

So, just wondering, where is the problem? Steam has an offline mode where you press a button labelled "go offline" and you go offline. Origin has the same thing, if you're complaining about having to go onto Steam or Origin to buy and download the game online, well, so does GOG so.. What?

Back to the point, hit that little "go offline" button and voila, you're offline.

The problem is that he has computers not hooked up to the internet. Steam needs the internet to install the games, on GOG you buy the games, download them and you're independent from the internet. You can install and play without 3rd-party software (such as Steam) or internet connection.

The only difference is that Steam 'installs' it as soon as it's done downloading (which takes ~5 seconds), with GOG you can disconnect 10 seconds earlier. If he means like he's downloading on one computer and moving it to the next to install it, then I understand, but I don't understand the reasoning behind it if it's on the same computer. Steam downloads it already installed and moves it to the appropriate folder rather than download the installer. You don't need to be connected to the internet if you're not downloading, the same as with GOG. Furthermore you can disable the Steam requirement for all games on Steam by disabling the Steam overlay.

No idea where this whole "Steam is the devil and requires an internet connection 100% of the time" hype came from when you can easily press 'go offline' and 'disable Steam overlay'. Plus, unless you don't have an antivirus (bad idea), the feds are tracking you or you're on a metered connection (why download 13.7 GB on a metered connection?), then it shouldn't even matter that you're on the internet for 10 seconds longer than you usually would be. Just saying, Steam isn't as bad as all this anti-Steam hype makes it out to be. If people did a little looking they'd see you can disable Steam completely or just for certain games, and it literally takes three clicks to go offline. Not only that, but you can just pull out your Ethernet cable/disconnect WiFi (which apparently people do with GOG games when they're offline, if not then they're still online).

He mentioned that his gaming computers are not connected to the internet, so he's oviously moving between computers.

I don't think there's a "Steam is the devil and requires an internet connection 100% of the time" hype. But it is a requirement for all games (which aren't DRM free) to launch and disabling the Steam Overlay won't change that.
I believe everyone knows about the offline mode, but that doesn't change much if you just want to have the game and nothing but the game. It's not that dramatic to use Steam, but most people here will still prefer not to use it, maybe because they think it's more convenient (I think that at least). There's still a difference if you can download the game once and install when and where and how often you like without any further actions (just like in the CD/DVD era) or have to use Steam and your account for every single setup...

The dislike of Steam has obvious reasons. I hate Steam since I bought a full copy of Half-Life 2 on six or so CDs only to find that after I installed several hundred megabytes from those discs I could not have suspected such a devilry -- make you buy 6 CDs and then force you to download them again?? I need to register on Steam (OK, fine) but then download several hundred megabytes JUST BECAUSE THEY WANT ME TO. And as every NORMAL man I hate when somebody makes me to do something JUST BECAUSE SOMEBODY WANTS YOU TO.

So for me indeed there was something devilish in Steam. It's because they came up with something I could not even have suspected somebody could come up with (in the evil sense) -- and in my books, this is devilry.

So no matter what Steam does (short of suddenly sending me a reimbursement for that useless copy of Half-Life 2 game) they just do not exist for me anymore.

Life is short, so obviously there are million games in the world I can play in this short life without going to Steam.

Of course, there are people who enjoy doing something just because somebody wants them to, but I suspect most people do not. However in our changing society this is changing also. Good example is increasing number of people who enjoy being unable to do anything without being online for even a second.

So Steam will always have customers, but I won't ever be one of them.

The reason I don't like to be online is very simple. I have build a military flightsim cockpit. I'm running a lot of selfmade hardware, old Thrustmaster Hotas FLCS/TQS for the F-16, Suncom SFS and Talon for F-15 and F/A-18, Suncom SFS and Thrustmaster X-Fighter for the old Birds like the F-4.
I build this all at my own. You could change the grips of the sticks, so you are able to get the right setting for each
plane. There is also a yoke for big birds with a 4 lever throttle. All original PCB's are removed and replaced by
USB-circuit. Many of them I've to build by my self. There are all HOTAS buttons and 180 cockpit-switches including the good old Masterpilot MFD's programmable.

I've planned the circuit-boards by my self and had to electrolytic etching them. So you can see it was a really big thing to get the thing working. I began this project in the late 90's and it's not completely finished yet.

I'm very low on money, cause of my divorce. Here in Germany it could really ruin you. So buying new stuff like HOTAS Warthog and so on wasn't an option. To get this thing programmed isn't easy at all. So I don't like to be online, to get something like a virus on the computer.

To do the splits between sim's made in the 98 area and sims of these times wasn't easy at all. There are two PC's connected to the cockpit. One is an old Athlon XP Board with a 6800GT AGP Geforce and 2 Voodoo2 in SLI and one Voodoo1 you can switch between. So all old area games run on this machine with Windows ME on it.
The "modern" machine is powered by an Athlon 1100T 6 Core with two GTX660 in SLI-Mode and runs Windows XP or Windows 7 (Dual-Boot).

To get the cockpit hardware running on both machine with 3 different OS, switching the whole system between the two PC's was a really, really hard thing.
So I don't want to be connected to the internet with this thing! I have a backup of the sytems, but to get things back you could play for weeks. There comes a moment you don't know what you've done to get things running in such a complex piece of hardware. Originally I have planned to document all. But there were so many things, that changed in the building time, that filled books.

So it's possible to get it back to live if something goes wrong, but I don't want to activate something, that must not be.

Why have I done this? Very simple! Since I'm a child I wan't to be a pilot. But it never comes the way you've planned it. So the closest thing was to build a simulator.

I would love to see your setup. Any chance of starting a thread about it in the General section?

Hi,
sorry I wasn't here for a while, cause I had to do so much other things. Yes we can. But at the moment I'm very bussy. To get a job I had to move to another town. So I'm not much online in the next time.

My Cockpit is a bit of an reasonable compromise between playability and real simulation.
Today it's possible to have working Instruments and MFD's, but only for a few sims. Mostly this is the MS Flightsimulator, X-Plane or in the military sector Falcon or DCS. Since I'm playing a lot of older Sims and want
to be able to use the Pit for them all, I had to make this compromise. So no working Instruments. Just the buttons and switches in the pit are working and the HOTAS.
Last Thing I was working on was a cyclic for Heli-Sims. I really enjoy Heliflying, but there are only a few sims that have a good flightmodel. I hoped that TakeOn Helicopters has such one, but I was very disapointed. I never had flown a chopper by my self, but talked much with Helipilots from ADAC here in Germany. They told me that one of the closest to the real thing was the good old SAR4. You couldn't do extreme flight maneuvers in this sim, but the normal behavior must be really good. Another one, and my favorite is the EECH-Series with the Allmods-Mod. I really love this sim.
Since my favorite jetfighter is the good old F-14 Tomcat, the other sim that must be able to play in the pit is the Strike Fighters Series. The other older Sims that I love is Janes F-15, F-18, IAF, USAF and the Longbow Anthology. Or the old Novalogic Sims like F-16 Multirole, Mig-29 and Comanche Gold. Another good series was the sims of Digital Integration with Hind, Apache and F-16. They had 3DFX support. But none of the wrappers worked with them. With NGlide you could run really much, but no Digital Integration Game. So I had to have a machine with an old 3DFX-Card in. As you can see those things are really old, but they are still good. Much better as many new eye-candy sims. But it's a real challenge to get those things running on modern systems. For some of them a few freaks have made patches to get them running on win 7 64. But for most older games you need an old machine.
That and the low on money problem was the beginning of a never ending story ;-)

I'm with you 100%. I am not buying games that I would like, such as Arma 3, SW Battelfront 2015, and Skyrim due to the mandatory persistent connection. That and no sp for SWBF. I see everybody saying about how BF was meant to be online and such. I own the two previous battlefront games and have never played them online, yet I played them for hours. WoW was the only online game I ever played.

They are destroying PC with this. Many games I opted to buy for console because the console version requires no online connection and 20 years from now, provided i still have a working console, I will be able to play it without worrying about the company's online authentication.

This is exactly why GoG are my heroes and I will continue to support them. Most of the games I have on GoG were games I still have the discs for, such as the original floppy version of tie fighter. Hopefully some of these games are eventually put on GoG when the companies are sufficiently happy with how much they've gouged the gamers that keep them in business. Again, Battlefront is a perfect example: $70 for the "base" game, or about a quarter of the actual game, another $50 if you want the full release for the DLC. I'm sure they will continue releasing bs every few months for $50... it's just not worth it.

/rantoff