You'll see when your favourite character, the one you spent all your resources on and ended up loving as a child, will be atrociously killed by the backfire of a choice you made ages before. Don't worry, sooner or later tragedy will happen, and you WILL cry. It doesn't matter which charater is your favourite, horrible shit will happen to everyone.

Man I had completely forgotten about the "GOG customers are pirates" incident even though that is the reason I don't own the second game despite loving the first one. In an ideal world there'd be at least a PR speak apology after overtly insulting an entire customer base but this quietly pretending it never happened and actually properly releasing the game (and updating on time this time around hopefully) is the best that could realistically be expected.

But yeah, since I did love the first game and reviews are pretty consistent the second one was even better and the end is nigh, I'm getting back into this series. I'll be buying 2 soon and by the time I finish the first two the third should have come out.

As people are mentioning it was pretty great how at risk your playable characters constantly were. On my first playthrough I lost two characters that not only I was convinced had plot armor, but were clearly foreshadowed to have things to do later on, (the human prince and his bodyguard/girlfriend) to a really dumb decision on the fly. Good times.

Weren't they still doing that multiplayer battle style offshoot for Banner Saga when 2 came around?
How about you speak for yourself instead of for other people. I personally am fine with copy protection *provided* it works. Denuvo for instance has been an effective means of anti-piracy for several years, only recently losing its effectiveness.

With your point 2 you're also skipping the entire reason it exists, which is to keep the pirates from playing the game for an amount of time. Yes sure, *when* it eventually gets cracked, those pirates don't have to deal with a version that has DRM. That however does not negate that the DRM had value because until then it prevented them from playing it at all, which I can tell you, is most certainly experienced as 'punishment' by the pirates.

Denuvo did not get such a massive backlash from the getgo because computers were dropping left and right or because performance was horrible. It got a massive backlash because it did exactly what it was supposed to, prevent a ton of pirates from playing the newest games.

I personally have no issues with a developer/publisher trying to protect it's investments/product, to a certain extent, the extent of which is probably subjective. I don't agree with online reliance *while playing*, ie Ubisofts "lose connection, drop out of the game" DRM they used for a while. Denuvo on the other hand has been completely unnoticeable for me. In fact, some of my best performing games had it (MGSV, Mad Max).

My position on this is a little more lax than some here though most likely since I consider an internet connection a basic necessity, so being without one (for extended period of time) is not a situation I expect to have anymore. So a drm that may have a check every couple of weeks or something for instance isn't an issue for me, and I doubt it ever will be unless something calamitous happens. Some with less capability of having access to internet will no doubt disagree, hence the subjective part.

I have no problem with DRM either, depending on the type used. Ones that require an internet connection can be bothersome when you lose said connection, and it is potentially worrisome if the company ever goes out of business.

The big one for me, however, who has recently splurged on the Combat Mission games by Battlefront, are the limited activations. I believe they give you two - three activations, with two backups if you contact them, and then one extra added every year. I don't know if those extra activations added every year are added automatically or if you have to contact them, but that's beside the point. The point is we purchase games and we may not be able to play them at some point due to limited activations if they, for example, go out of business even if we keep the games stored somewhere safe, like on a dvd or via cloud storage. However, pirates can just bypass the checks, I'm sure.

That said, I only have myself to blame for purchasing titles with drm like that. I knew what I was doing. So, I can't really complain. I was tempted not to buy them, but those games along with the Graviteam games are really the only games of that type around as far as I'm aware. (I don't particularly worry about Steam going out of business, really, and as a drm it's quite unnoticeable.)

And, while I'm not in the business of making games, I have learned that drm doesn't work as my work in a different field has been pirated. *shrugs* Annoying, especially when you have so few sales, if any at all.

How about you speak for yourself instead of for other people. I personally am fine with cavity search *provided* it works. Anal probes for instance have been an effective means of counter-terrorism for several years, only recently losing their effectiveness.

I personally have no issues with a cop / customs officer trying to protect the public, to a certain extent, the extent of which is probably subjective. I don't agree with online reliance *while in the air*, ie American Airlines' "fart once, drop out of the plane" security they used for a while. A pinkie up the butt on the other hand has been completely unnoticeable for me. In fact, some of my best travel experiences featured it (Japan, Australia).

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(That being said, I'd rather y'all got off the devs' case. They're nearing completion of a massive project, having kept true to the original promises and creative vision, without doing a hack job or going bankrupt or whatever, and this colossal team effort doesn't deserve to get stained by a suit whose closest brush with videogaming is paying for a camgirl's candy crush habit.)

This really shouldnt be an issue. The steam versions may have some extra files for the drm, but its still the same game so the save files should be exactly the same. You may just have to manually move the save file from your steam saves to the GoG folder.

Agreed, this is unnecessarily restrictive. There's still a decent amount of games that have limited activations these days but they tend to regenerate per month and as far as I know at least deactivate if you uninstall them.

That's great news, since I loved the first one, except for the cliff-hanger (I'm not really good in waiting for sequels). I haven't even been aware that it'll be a trilogy up till now. Good I haven't started BS2 yet ;-)

Make it four :)

Look at it this way: best case, you, as an end customer, are paying a surcharge for something that you never notice. Worst case, you can't use the product you paid for because of it. The end result for you as the person who purchased the game is never a net positive, and always potentially a net negative. I don't see how one could ever reasonably defend that as a consumer. Which leads into…

What does that punishment amount to for the pirates, though? They can't play a game they didn't pay for in the first place. Their loss is, at most, a few wasted minutes and a bit of download bandwidth. The potential damage for you as a consumer is a lot bigger though, since you actually paid for the thing.

That is also the big revelation about the futility of DRM. In the rare cases where it actually does work for some amount of time, what is the effect? Turns out most would-be pirates don't end up buying a legit copy. They just go on to the next game they can pirate for free. And here we have the third party involved in all of this, the publisher. They have paid for something that, while effective, still didn't give them any return of investment, because the overwhelming majority of those pirated copies haven't been "lost sales" at all. They were just freeloaders, which, of course, is immoral and wrong and annoying, but not an economic loss.

Every which way you turn it, everybody involved loses. Everybody except pirates, that is. Personal opinion doesn't really come into it. DRM is a lose-lose situation.

Even with reliable Internet, you probably should be worried about it. In the GOG community, for instance, a lot of people are into playing older games. It's basically guaranteed that 10-15 years from now, none of the online copy protections of current games will work anymore. Few of the companies, let alone DRM servers, will be around anymore. If you're very lucky, you will get to pay for your games a second time at a new distributor (ideally someone like GOG where you end up actually owning your copy). But who will guarantee that? Online DRM, regardless of how lax it is, is a virtual expiration date on your software. I, for one, like playing games years after I initially bought them, and sometimes I only get to play them long after I bought them, too. More than once, I even bought a boxed copy of a game at a retailer, which turned out to have already "expired" when it arrived. I could either get them fixed with customer support or refunded at the retailer, of course, but why is this necessary? All of this for something that never had a valid purpose in the first place.

Edit: Also, from what I remember (although I don't know how much of it was true) Denuvo was not at all criticised for working as intended. It was criticised because a lot of people noticed a huge performance hit. I remember many screenshots and videos comparing the original version with the un-Denuvo'd one and showing massive differences in the framerate.

What I care about is a healthy games industry that manages to pump out as many more gems as they can during my lifetime. It's the same reason I don't care for (some) people's calls for digital second hand sales. It's regressive and it's not necessary.

Things that don't or barely/rarely effect me are for me less important than keeping up a steady supply of good new games to play. For that reason I do sympathize with profitability and don't line up behind any and all arguments in favor of the consumer. It's a balance. There's a ton of stuff consumers want that are unrealistic and in some cases would absolutely have a negative long term affect on the gaming market. Naturally on the other side there are things companies want that are not to be accepted and should be rejected. (The bad drm's mentioned before for instance)

As for the 'surcharge' you mention. That's of little concern to me. With the current sales based PC gaming market all I have to do if I don't agree with a price is have a little patience and the right pricepoint is just a matter of time.

These cases didn't even exist when the complaining started, it took a long time before Denuvo actually started getting cracked but the complaining started waaaaay before that. At that time that argument wasn't possible to make since there was nothing to compare to.

Even then, most of the complaining was based on 'My framerate had a dip so it was Denuvo'. There's been (at least) one clear case where it most certainly did mess it up but it was also the first game where for some reason Denuvo had a ton of calls happening, way more than the games before that. Just the other day there was an article about Denuvo not having any significant affect on FFXV.

You're trying to make the argument that no piracy = nothing gained but there's no proof of this. Even from just empyrical evidence (on Denuvo based games) I've seen tons of pirate end up caving and buying a game because they didn't feel like waiting any longer. Is that every pirated copy? Of course not, I'd be surprised if it even broke 10%. That however does not mean that that number might not be a significant economical difference or perhaps at minimum a break even situation. It's also likely to depend on a ton of factors like the most obvious one, whether a game is good or not. People are not likely to end up buying if it ended up being a lemon but if the game turned out to be great it's not strange to see people who otherwise pirate to buy those games (if they have no other choice).

I personally don't worry about this because after buying classics on GOG for a while I realized I really don't play them anymore and was buying them more for collection purposes. Pretty much all of the classics I was a fan of have remakes/enhances of some sort of another I was happy to buy, if not spiritual successors that have far surpassed them.

And if I still want to play them 15 years from now I'll be ok spending a little more repurchasing them for whatever the current platform/store/enhanced versions there are then to do so. I've done it to digitize, I've done it to HD them, I'm sure tons of people here have done it to buy DRM-free versions of games they already had.

15 years from now I consider it quite likely it'll be good to have an updated version for whatever hardware/OS upgrades will have happened by that time, or maybe things I don't even think about yet.I personally don't enjoy playing stuff on legacy hardware.

That was your perception of Denuvo Press-Forum-Coverage? Really?

If you could elaborate on Press-Forum-Coverage, but I'm going to go ahead and assume "Yes" will be my answer.

Well, the postings and articles I do remeber tend to sound like "worst DRM-extension since starforce and co", "makes games worse" and so on. Exactly what you think didn´t matter. Pirates complaining never had a chance to dominate my picture. But this could depend on my filter bubble. What makes this unlikely is that at the same time I do recall tons of pirates posting on forums in my filter bubble before...
Edit: And don´t forget (well, as this is an edit, I actually did) postings like "why would a spend money on such a shitty version; I´ll wait till it´s finally cracked" on the same forums...

It depends when you saw those articles. I don't think they matter at all for the argument above because there was no way at all to tell whether that was the case before they started getting cracked and that was *long* after the complaining started. The complaining started the moment people realized games with Denuvo on it weren't getting cracked after a couple of days and after a few weeks it really kicked in, let alone after it happened to the next game after that.

Like I said, some of the best performing games I've had had Denuvo on them. Heck, I've seen many complainers come to realize they owned these games with Denuvo on them and they hadn't even realized. (that's another argument entirely, I do think the presence of Denuvo should be clearly listed on the store pages).

The point is, based on those experiences I find it hard to take seriously that Denuvo had any significant performance impact. Again, not denying that eventually there was at least one case that did happen when they made changes to how it worked. Either way, this was long after Denuvo released and long after the complaining started.

I'm not saying there are no actual arguments to make *against* Denuvo. But if people think that the massive outburst against Denuvo has been because of those and not because of the massive numbers of people suddenly not being able to play the games they wanted without paying for them, then imo they weren't paying attention.

Absolutely, pirates are gonna pirate. There's always a group that will only play the games they can pirate. That said, there's also a subsection that will happily pirate games if they have the opportunity but *will* pay for a game if they have no other choice but to do so.