While I whole heeartedly agree DRM free would be a the far better option, it is highly unlikely 20 years of thinking is going to vanish.

So lets assume DRM isn't going away.

Currently the PC gaming environment is dominated by one company. There is no competition and with out competition there is no choice. Without choice, consumers have a dramically lower ability to influence the environment.

Microsoft was forced to back down on their plans to lock discs to an account because console gamers had the choice to go to Sony.

When it is released we will have to wait until mods come out that make it work and oh the bugs too many bugs.

Yeah, I'm trying to be funny. It is childish though.

Really interesting point though that mods will have to fix it for it to work. Doesn't sound really implausible considering most of the last few Bethesda games required mods to fix them.

I wonder if you'll need mods to fix the client. :P

People like that would rather choose comfort over software freedom anyway, they don't actually care about the underlying DRM issues. They're psychologically married to Steam and can't bear to play any game that doesn't boot from the same launcher, even if that means submitting to a market monopoly.

Tell that to the Steam fanatics who don't like the idea of running several clients. Maybe they are using the default option of starting the Steam client when Windows starts.

Wanna bet they did this so they can try to sell you mods again?

It's amazing how readily companies throw their integrity away for harebrained get rich quick schemes

While all true I'm not sure how comparable that could be. From the sounds of it they start they Beth version of Blizzard Store; being a very small (but very popular) shop/always online DRM for their own stuff to either digitally somehow use there or activate your retail keys there.

It does not sound like it want to become a 2nd Steam store for everything. Instead of "Get TES7 from Steam" it becomes "Get TES7 from BethPlay (or whatever)"

The only competition to Steam AFAIK is gog since they are the only who do they own thing (aka not be a Steam key reseller) and still sell across the board instead of i.e. just Witcher games.

It might be childish, but it's also a well traveled form of mockery. And surely, if anyone is deserving of mockery it's these companies.

Fanatics is what fanatics does. Doesn't matter what kind of fantastic they are, gOg or Steam. It is part of the job description to be irrational. Good thing most of us are not fanatics.
Name calling, is if anything, the lowest form of mockery.... As said, Upay, yes kind of, that's mockery. Staem? Orgyne? That's just.... What is is? Except pointless.... At least try to get a word play in there, like.... I don't know... Shame or (Un)Original.... that's more like mockery.

I didn't say anything about the OP's examples being good. :)

ScrewPlay is one of my favorite names lol

The real reason is they probably don't want to have to pay Valve a cut every time they sell one of their games. Anytime something is sold on a third party's platform, that third party gets to take a good chunk out of the sale. I think it tends to be around 30% or more depending.

This isn't about getting rich quick, it's about not throwing up to a third of your potential profits at someone else for little reason. If they can keep all the sale money by making their own clients, you bet all of these companies are going to be interested in doing that - and that's exactly what we are seeing.

It blows for the consumer, but rarely has that ever stopped anything.

On the phone it looks like a mod distribution platform for consoles mostly.. i wouldn't read to much into it.

Does it affect Bethesda-GOG relationship?