Sign me up for the boycott!

This mistreatment of customers has to stop. The future of PC gaming and quality of games is at stake, all because a few publishers decided it was best for shareholders to throw the customer under the bus. Absolutely intolerable and they have to try harder.

No more DRM!
Maintain offline installers!

Worried about heading to is extreme paranoia. gog has an idea on why users do business with them.

And you are a doctor, so you can diagnose HappyPunkTomato remotely and see that he/she is ill?
Could you maybe tell me the next lottery numbers please.

Sure, that is perfectly reasonable and furthermore I think it's a good idea. I believe I have a good understanding of the de facto definition of DRM as used by the industry (but I'm open to corrections), so here's my take on it.

I'll start with a TL;DR and then go ahead and reply to individual points in your post.

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TL;DR:

Here's a bunch of things I'd argue that DRM is NOT:
- A license or legal agreement
- The fact that a game wants an online connection
- A game launcher
- A storefront and/or downloader client

And here's what I'd argue that it IS:

DRM is the management, i.e. policing, of digital rights, i.e. copyrights and other rights defined by EULA. Usually it refers to the technology used to implement/enforce restrictions.

It's the software that checks if your CDROM is an original copy from the manufacturer, or the page in the manual containing colored cells in combination with the code that asks you for a random one by row and column, or the software that goes online to report details about your individual copy in order to check that it's unique. That sort of thing.

EDIT: That said, Wikipedia seems to disagree with me, and lumps in license agreements with DRM as just another technology used to enforce digital rights.

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Correct, from my understanding.

If you mean to give a definition of DRM here (I can't tell whether this is the case), then it seems to me you're entirely skipping the "management" part. The license itself (the EULA) covers the "digital rights" part only.

EDIT: I might be wrong about this part. See comment about Wikipedia above.

Based on the quoted license text alone, that's not necessarily true. A license to use a product can continue to apply even after a company has ceased to exist, and could contain provisions that prevent the company from revoking your rights.

It would all come down to the rest of the details outlined in the EULA.

I don't know the details of how Steam has chosen to implement DRM. But yes, this is one way that DRM could be implemented.

I should point out though, that a common misconception seems to be that requiring an online connection or an online account is itself DRM; this is not true. The same goes for game store clients, launchers and settings applications.

None of the things you listed here seem to have anything to do with DRM, except possibly verification, depending on what is verified. For example, if the client was actually mandatory, that would still not constitute DRM.

The issue with Galaxy being pushed on consumers to an unreasonable extent is not a DRM issue.

This is somewhat related to DRM, in that if the GOG site goes away and there is DRM that depends on the GOG site being available, then it would likely stop working and you would lose access even with a local backup.

If GOG sells a game with DRM that requires a connection to a different site (that they don't control) then there is no way for them to prevent a DRM breakdown if that site is permanently taken down, save for releasing an update, patch or reconfiguration of the game that no longer requires the site. If GOG is gone, too, then you might be out of luck.

Unless you literally mean "can" in the "I can do whatever I want unless I'm physically stopped or unable" kind of sense, that's not what DRM is. This restriction that you describe is a legal matter and is defined by the license you agreed to - the EULA.

EDIT: I might be wrong about this part. See comment about Wikipedia above.

Not inherently, but DRM can be used to apply such a restriction. There is no restriction on what digital rights can be managed with DRM.

This is how it breaks down legally, according to my understanding, in simplified terms:

- Anyone who authors a creative work automatically owns the copyright by default (if you write a book, for example, it's automatically yours). This is one of many types of "intellectual property" (aka. IP). What it means is the author gets to say whether any specific copying and/or performance of the work is OK or not (with some exceptions and quirks such as fair use, derived works, co-authorship etc).

- A copyright owner can sign away their copyrights, so employees can transfer their copyrights to the company they work for. So when products being sold are also creative works (such as games), usually it's the company that produced it that owns the copyright (and/or another company such as a publisher).

- Contract law generally overrides copyright law. As a copyright owner you can enter agreements with other parties that limit your own right to suddenly go "Hey, I don't want you to use my work in that way, stop immediately or I'll sue you!" - usually you'd want something in return, like a big wad of money for example. These kinds of agreements are ultimately what "licenses" are.

- There are some laws that tend to complicate things, for example you can own a specific copy of something that you bought (e.g. your copy of a book), which still doesn't inherently allow you to copy it, but allows you to do a lot of other things. The "licensed, not sold" or "lending" part is a technical detail that minimizes the amount of rights the copyright owner might give away by default. It's basically saying you as a buyer don't even own the copy, it's their copy and you just paid for a license to use it. What you are actually allowed to do with the copy would be dictated by the license.

- Even though copying without permission is generally illegal, that doesn't always actually stop people finding ways to do it, or even to try and find legal loopholes. Hence companies often opt to implement some sort of measure that physically (or at least digitally) prevents you from doing that. Circumventing these measures tends to be illegal (with certain exceptions). DRM refers to the implementation of those measures as well as the measures themselves.

EDIT: As commented above, Wikipedia also counts the EULA itself as DRM. This is not how I've come to understand the concept, but I'll concede that Wikipedia probably did a lot of fact-checking and my personal experience with it has been limited.

In theory I could tell you the same thing you just told me...

Agreed. Although the actual number of DRM-free on both platforms is comparable (~2600 on Steam based only on the first list, ~3300 on GOG).

For me, personally, galaxy has no feature that I want, so the only thing I would get from using it is my games taking just a bit longer to load, which is why I don't use it (or any other client).

I don't think the term DRM is particularly useful because most people do not agree what it is, which I why I try to avoid using it. I'll go one step further and state that I am not against DRM-free games, here or anywhere else. What I am against is selling games with single-player elements (however minor you or I might think they are) that require online registration or online connection without warning me clearly about it before purchase, because I don't want to buy these kind of games. I travel a lot (well, in normal years) and often to places with limited or no internet connectivity, so online requirements is something I want to avoid. I have stated before that I will stop my boycott if GOG shows signs of improvement --- in my case, clearly marking all the games that have any online single-player requirement (e.g. No Man's Sky, Absolver, CP2077) on the game page would be such a sign.

For me, yes. What I want to avoid is this current lottery where, buying a game, I don't know whether it has single player online walls.

For me, yes. What I want to avoid is this current lottery where, buying a game, I don't know whether it has single player online walls.

Irrelevant for me because I don't play online, so I wouldn't be able to get it anyhow, let alone keep it.

I think this is a really good point: 'what is DRM'? How is it defined?

Imo, there are good definitions on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management

and defectivebydesign.org:

https://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm_digital_restrictions_management

As far as I know, GOG has not provided a clear definition of what they consider to be DRM (which leaves the door open to disagreement and confusion among users). I quite like the Defective By Design definition: So, to me, it is quite simple: in the context of video games, DRM is anything that is built into the game with the aim of somehow restricting or controlling what a person can do with it, after they have purchased it (outside of the legitimate scope of the game itself).

It is the intention that is important, not whether it forms part of the license or is officially being flagged as 'DRM' by the developer, using their own preferred definition.

So, obviously an always-online user account verification requirement meets that description. But, so does a pre-order cosmetic bonus that is built into the game that requires online purchase verification to activate. There is a control built into the game with the intention of restricting users' access to part of the content. That is DRM.

I do consider this to be DRM, as I explained above. The only approach to DRM that makes sense to me is absolutely zero-tolerance. Anything else will inevitably undermine the argument.

Completely agree with that. All of this is just imoral for consumers.
As stated before: DRM only hurts the consumers.

While they try to "control" user activity with piracy in mind (after all this was the original idea of DRM's), they hurt consumers by:

- Slowing down performance;
- Sending and colecting data without user full awareness and knowledge of what they will really do with it;
- Experimenting new software that might mess up with user computer and so on.

Yes, yes, we all sign up the terms when we install software, but that's exactly why some people hate DRM's and just don't install games that use it.

If your airliner is on a clear course towards a mountain, it doesn't make sense to do something to try to avoid it? When is the best time to start changing the course? Now, or 10 seconds before the impact?

it really depends on your position, airspeed, and angle of attack relative to the physical constraints presented by the mountain. I think most CEOs would say the golden parachute is a legitimate option.

Thank you for explaining WeirdoGeek. I do not agree with steam being the lesser evil. Steam has removed games before. China makes a lot of money for steam, I won't be surprised if they start removing games to please CCP. Just sounds like you have too much invested into Steam, which I understand fully.

On a side note, steam can handle backlash and survive, unlike GOG. Remember Steam's net worth is $10 billion, compared to GOG $34 million.

I got all my refunds in one business day from GOG. Maybe it was during the downtime. Smaller companies will take a little longer to do things compared to someone like steam.

Edit: I don't hate steam and still use them for MP games.

The feature for me, why I use Galaxy is the convenience that all my latest released games which got big patches they simple need to improve the game, are automatic. I don't need to do a thing. I do not launch my games with the galaxy client, I launche them in their game files with their .exe I dont care for online updated gamefiles and whatever else the features of galaxy are. The only feature selling it to me is the automatic updates. I dont need to check all my games if there is a patch or whatever its taken care of.

We can agree that labeling games properly for this "hidden" multiplayer walls in single player games would be nice so we customers can simple choose if we want that or not. And yeah I think this is bad but its not an DRM issue.

I didn't say Steam didn't pull games of the store. I said they only do so when the devs request it. They don't it for the sorry reason GOG is doing it. I also said that I completely understood and had no problem with wanting a market in China. However, I refuse to believe that these "many gamers" make up a big enough number to basically speak for China as a whole and in fact, there is solid reason to believe these many gamers are just trolls, bots and people who were simply hired in the name of making the response bigger. If GOG has the means to disprove these theories, they are more than welcome to speak up and do so.

I'm well aware no company is perfect and that no matter which one you side with, it is practically guaranteed you are going to have to face the situation of them doing something you don't like and having to take the bad with the good. With Steam, I've yet to face a situation so bad that I simply cannot support them anymore.

This sorry situation where GOG canceled the release and gave a less than half-assed reason is unacceptable. Saying it is happening because "many gamers" demanded it only served to make them look like they got bullied by a bunch of trolls and caved in to their demands. I don't want the future of gaming to be one where people like the "gamers" that did this nonsense decide or at least have a major say in what games the stores are allowed to sell and I choose to fight this by not giving GOG my money.

This definitions seems good. I just disagree with your point that any "not game relevant content restriction" like cosmetics is a form of DRM. Is it shady practice? Yes - imo. Is it "DRM" for me no. A clear definition how GOG interprets DRM would help us cutsomers to better understand their values and it would be easier for us to compare if their values match our personal values.

BTW: I think it is nice that you started this discussion, and make this protest action in order to raise some awerness to the topic and what concerns you. However I doubt GOG is going the greedy route and really consider aborting their DRM-free policy. They know as a company why people use their service. They are not a "better" steam. Most of us use them because they are diffrent to steam in their DRM-free policy. Its their core. They know that, we know that. I dont think they are stupid and shoot themselves in the leg like that. So to sum it up, I don't think the fear that GOG is going to make a full turn around in their DRM priniciple is a fear we all really need to be concerned about.

I agree, but this only transforms the problem into needing a clear definition of which intentions count as DRM and which don't, which is still very subjective.

The most relevant definition is clearly whatever GOG used when they promised to be a DRM-free store, and a lack of a clear such definition is indeed problematic. The closest I've found is the "So what's with this DRM thing?" section on this page:
https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001947574-FAQ-What-is-GOG-?product=gog

The intent of DRM mentioned there is "to limit the usage of digital media", which is quite a broad scope. I suspect the scope is broad because it is not meant as a catch-all definition, but as an uncluttered introduction to the idea.

There's also the "you buy it, you own it" slogan. I'm not sure to what extent this would be legally enforceable (depending on the EULAs used), but it's probably meant to convey a mindset anyway rather than a legal guarantee, especially since they call it a "philosophy".

Still not a clear definition, then. But at least it's something.