Ha, they do the same with Newer games. Zombie Night Terror. 15% off here 25% off on Steam.

Not usually, sometimes GOG is even cheaper than other stores. It's just some single recent events which made me write that, mainly the new batch of EA games that arrived here like The Saboteur and Crysis which cost 50-100% more on GOG than on the European Steam and Origin stores. Apparantly EA chose to go with the US Steam and Origin prices here, because for some weird reason these games seem to be much more expensive in the US than in European stores, but it's especially weird since GOG has regional pricing for most newer AAA titles, and the result is that while for the US everything seems normal, for Europeans the games are much much more expensive on GOG than in the DRM stores now.

And the second thing I noticed is that the indie game Oxenfree is on sale right now in both the GOG Halloween promo and the Steam Halloween promo, but not for the same discount. So GOG's 60% off is now competing against Steam's 75% off, at the same time. And on top of it, GOG does not offer the soundtrack to Oxenfree, while on Steam, if you buy the game + soundtrack right now, it's still cheaper than the game without soundtrack on GOG costs at the moment.

Anyway, like I said, these are just two specific cases that I'm a bit grumpy about right now, and others here would regard them as petty, I guess, but I still find that kind of worrying, because it seems to indicate that some developers/publishers seem to think that customers here will pay more for DRM-free versions, and maybe they're even right about that. So in a way, if Steam has the monopoly on cheap games, GOG has the monopoly on the DRM-free versions, not in all, but in many cases, and that means publishers can get away with asking higher prices for those here. In these cases, there is no direct competition between the stores and no completely free choice for the customers. If you want the DRM-free version, you'll have to pay whatever they're asking for it here. If, on the other hand, you don't mind DRM that much, the other stores have better offers than GOG. You can't directly compare and say "under the same conditions most people would prefer Steam / GOG".

I believe most AAA titles will still be released with DRM as the companies will try their best to reduce their profits being hit by pirates but a small portion of companies will c the light & release their games DRM-free. However, i do foresee more companies willing 2 sell their games but perhaps not the latest games DRM-free as they know any DRM games can & will likely be cracked over time & it is only wise to allow ppl who r willing 2 buy DRM-free games 2 be able 2 purchase them instead of making them resort to become pirates instead.

So rather than let the games being distributed freely by pirates, these companies will rather cash in watever they can gain by selling them DRM-free. It's prettly much a no-brainer IMO.

TBH tho' at some point people will understand that pirates doesn't mean lost sales, if anything the only time piracy will affect companies is if people decide to buy the game because of it, piracy to most, feels like a right, if they cant pirate it a lot of people just wont buy it either.

Could you name a few things? I really can't think of anything.

Suppose this is 100% true. Are you saying that companies should provide their product for free to anyone who would otherwise most certainly not buy it?

And I very much disagree that piracy "feels like a right to most." Sure, there are assholes out there who feel that the world owes them, but most normal people don't feel that they have a right to take something that doesn't belong to them.

Absolute nonsense, as much nonsense as the notion that every game pirated is a lost sale.

Online Only possible positive: "My internet speed sucks, so I can't play this game. Increase the internet speeds available to me", similar to how faster cars caused better highways.
Denuvo possible positive: "We want mods for these games, but we can no longer mess with the executables. Why didn't you give us proper mod support that does not rely on executable modification?" with a system similar to either Shadowrun Returns or (even better) XCOM 2.

We are still short of a big public fiasco surrounding a company with heavy DRM policies that either enforces a mass license recall (read makes "your" bought games go away) or a bankruptcy or some other independent factor that comes to the same result.

It would have to hurt a lot of consumers in their wallets to shift demands to DRM free or indefinite licence policy. Not bloody likely, even at that.

Didn't companies that had DRM in their games go bankrupt in the past? I'm pretty sure that happened. Also I'm fairly confident that a whole bunch of games had their servers taken down, etc. It's just that this usually happens some time (often years) after the game's release and by that point only a relatively small amount of people actually cares.

People have a generaly lukewarm response if the servers shut down, since that is almost a given. Especially if the game is exclusevely multiplayer. Games for windows live was close, but it didn't reach a critical mass, and some of the games got patches rather quickly, so the whole business was delayed and got swept under the rug. Now, if, for instance, the whole Ubisoft catalogue was thrown head first into a legal quagmire where all licences on Uplay and Steam and such were revoked, that might be something.

Realistically speaking, I think the best we can hope for for any bigger publishers is that they may release some of their games DRM-free later on (as long as it is feasible to remove "DRM" from it, e.g. I am not expecting to see an official DRM-free release of Diablo 3 PC ever). Maybe years after the original release, if they think it would yield enough extra sales on sites like GOG.com.

And I personally would be fine with that. No sweat, I'll buy your game later when you offer it DRM-free. In the meantime I play something else.

Many indie developers seem easier to persuade releasing their games DRM-free from the very start.

I vote with my wallet, I e.g. bought The Witcher 3 DRM-free on release even though I haven't yet properly played even the first two Witcher games..