Because this forum has lots of nice members that aren't GOG staff. And fun Mafia games.

DRM-free, almost exclusively*. DRM (for me) means some other guy has control over my stuff. Does not happen.
The only rental service I currently use is Netflix, because I see it as "non-linear, ad-free TV". Movies and serials I really want to own I buy on disk additionally.

*I have a few "steamed" games on disk (bought, of course!), for which I use cracks.

Staff? No, they're fine people. And most are pretty competent too. In German we say "the fish stinks from the head". I think in English it's "The rot starts at the top".

Because GOG and GOG staff are so bad and so unprofessional, I have to rely on community members to update my offline installers.
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/the_what_did_just_update_thread

Many members in this forum are nice and cute.
I just do not trust GOG staff any more.

DRM-Free is the most valuable feature of a game. Worth it to pay full price, even. There were some other tenets and values that gog offered, as "core features", before... Cough! Just like their advertising videos in Youtube, still preserved, unveil... Cough! But something bad happened to them and other got abolished, other got altered.

At one point, there was overflow of people nagging and demanding achievements, client, profiles, or else they wouldn't find it interesting doing business with gog. Hence, the slow transformation to steam-like service. Keep in mind, though, that all those news and extras, are "optional", at least up to now. You don't have to go through them, if you don't want to.

So, unless DRM-Free feature itself gets abolished, GOG is going to always be different. But sigh, the absence of oldies is very noticeable, alas.

I cared a lot when Steam started and the whole SecuROM "5 activations" type thing was getting going. I cared a lot, I saw it was an attack on consumers and more importantly game preservation. I was pretty passionate, which made GOG's message very attractive.

It still is and I still support GOG. However I will say with SecuROM activation limits mostly gone and Steam taking over PC gaming to the point it has, I'm no longer really scared of DRM like I was. There's absolutely zero chance of Steam vanishing with your library any time soon, even in my lifetime, so there's not much to be scared of. Also on PC especially you can count on the community to keep classics running, should Steam somehow collapse. I was just playing Westwood's Blade Runner on Windows 10 the other day, thanks to some very helpful Germans and their 32-bit modern installer.

Still, as a message more than anything, DRM free is a good thing to support for consumer rights.

It's an educated guess here, but I'd say that at least some of the GOG staff are doing their best and are very much professionals - I believe there's a (major) lack of proper management/coordination with regards to many of the issues which have arisen lately and with the way they are handled and prioritized.

To answer the OP, many collectors and archivists which are also gamers can cite examples where DRM implementations have rendered some cult classics unplayable due to the disappearance of the original developers & publishers or simply due to lack of interest in fixing/removing the now defunct DRM measures. So, even if it's there and let's say that it doesn't bother you in any way as an end user, it can still be an issue down the road.

That's my two cents at least, beside the "I paid good money for it, so give me the damn DRM-free version which I can play 1000 years from now, emulated on my photonic VR compute cyborg implant, while I'm on my way to Mars after being brought back from cryostasis" argument.

DRM has its cons and pros of course.

For publisher it's kind of help for software to be less pirated, but for the user it's more-or-less inconvenient thing.

I mostly liked old-fashioned DRM, that physical one (like codes / words hidden in software manual or even lenslok) and sometimes it even did give me fun to use.

Today, DRM is mostly in digital form and I do not like it that much as it can cause technical problems and often invades user's privacy.

Back when I coldn't play my copy of Half-Life 2 because of Steam, I cared a lot. But not so much now. I buy most of my games here, but I'm migrating more back towards Steam. gag is already becoming more like Steam, and I really don't need two identical services to play games. The only games I have on UPlay and Origin are not offered on Steam or gag. I'll stick to Steam for now for the best games, if they ever figure out how to stem the tide of raw sewage that is Steam Direct.

Several years ago I took my kids trick or treating for Halloween. One house was not passing out candy but instead giving away codes for Plants vs Zombies. My kids were more excited by that than by all the candy because the candy would be eaten and gone but they could keep playing forever. I was not as thrilled because I knew of PopCap's DRM, but there's no good way of explaining that to a 5 year old. So I relented, created a PopCap account and installed the game. I figured it would be okay for just this game and I could explain DRM to them when they got older. It turned out not to be necessary as this one game was enough for them to experience first hand many if the issues associated with modern DRM.

First was when we got a new dog, who dug up and ate part of the internet cable in the backyard. We had to call the cable company to come out, replace the line and bury it a bit deeper. During this time we had no internet, which meant no Plants vs Zombies even though every other game worked just fine. Then cane the day when I was at work and they couldn't get the game to start without a password. It turns out that there was an update which required the Admin password for the computer, so they had to wait until I got home from work to install the update. Afterwards they noticed that one of the zombie models had been replaced, their favorite zombie was no longer in the game. It was the one dressed like Michael Jackson from the Thriller video. I had to explain why we couldn't just install the old version to get that zombie back. Finally came the day where the game wouldn't start at all. PopCap had sold the game to EA so our PopCap account was no longer valid for the game, we would have to create an Origin account instead. At that point we decided that we had had our fun with the game but it was too much of a hassle to keep playing.

Everything on Uplay is on Steam, isn't it? I do have some stuff on Uplay because of sales though. I don't really mind the idea of the 5 or so big devs having their own clients and GOG being the place for indies and others who risk a DRM free launch.

Is there anyone here who still considers needing the CD/DVD in the drive to be DRM?

I can see that going either way and I ask only for reference. The problem with DRM is can mean so many different things to so many different people.

It depends. Is it in the drive because it's "protected" by SecuROM/SafeDisk, or because you're not familiar with CD/DVD image emulators? :P

I have this fight on my movie forum all the time. For me requiring a disc is copy protection, which is a different thing. DRM is about contacting a server and asking permission to play what you bought. Different people have different definitions though.

No. They're on Steam, but require UPlay to work. Why buy it on Steam and have to use both the Steam client AND the UPlay client to play my games? No thanks. I just get them on UPlay and cut out the middle man DRM.

This is how I fee about it, plus growing up with a 2600 and NES, it just seemed natural to need a cartridge there in order to play something.