I can't imagine never gaming again. Gaming much less, sure, I've done that already. Not gaming at all though? I doubt it, I've been gaming for 30 years, it's a big part of my life. However I definitely, absolutely, see myself no longer playing NEW games at some point. They're becoming so online focused, and streaming is around the corner, that it will push me out eventually. But I'll have literally thousands of classics to play so who cares really.

Consolization, DRM, Steam, etc. pushed me out for nearly a decade before I discovered GOG. During that time, I mostly played free games (such as Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and its various mods, Tremulous, Urban Terror, Sauerbraten, etc.).

Um, that's the whole point of 3rd party escrow. It's not operational until the funding stops, it's an insurance policy that becomes active when the funding stops. As long as GOG have provided them with ownership details, be it email verification, or account login mechanism, then this is exactly what they do (and such escrow provision does involve duplicating the mechanism to provide the data correctly). It doesn't require distribution rights from the publishers, as I'm not suggesting the escrow provider continue to sell games, just provide a guarantee of availability to those that have bought them.

I'm not saying it's a good idea, just that escrow doesn't operate as you seem to think, and in fact is used very commonly with software firms by large clients in order to protect against exactly the risk of a vendor of a key product going bankrupt. I actually was lead dev at a company where a 3rd party escrow agreement was in place, and we had to give all our source code etc. to the third party provider, and the capacity to build the software (i.e. our build process and documentation). It in no way invalidated ownership of the product. The concept has been around for a long time, all this has been carefully considered.

I don't boycott Steam, so I've had plenty to play despite some annoying melding with console games. There's still amazing PC style games like Dishonored and Deus Ex Human Revolution to enjoy. As the years go by though games like that are getting further and further apart, at least from the big developers. I doubt it will be long before singleplayer games are pretty much exclusively the realm of indies.

That may be true but it's not really how GOG advertises DRM free and it is also a bit vague (what exactly is meant by certain types). Does GOG by chance describe somewhere exactly what they mean by DRM free?

Yes, exactly, the cloud would have to store all versions of the game that its users put into it, but it would need to store them only once. It would work and it would save a lot of hard disc space, the more users would use it the more space would be saved.

Your continued existence isn't environmentally friendly either. How about stopping it... please?
Grim 'jokes' aside; you can't play a game without downloading the installer - your idea doesn't make sense at all.

Well, they describe DRM as "a kind of copy protection technology." Lol. https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001947574-FAQ-What-is-GOG-com-

Obviously they know better, dunno why that FAQ is so bad.

Oh dear. "Some kind of..." is really not a good start to describe what makes your business different from all the other businesses out there.

He has a point though. Downloading is kind of the practical part but ownership is what really counts. If there was a digital service to register ownership of digital goods and that service would be safe and secure, digital businesses could be conducted much easier. Dunno if escrow.com is really that service or not. But it seems to be the right direction.

Ownership for the sake of ownership is ridiculous. I own a big luxury yacht!* It lies at the bottom of the ocean*... but hey, ownership is what really counts, right? Yay!

Oh, and of course they all say "safe and secure". It just sounds like a different form of DRM to me. I've read enough crazies calling that a "service" too.

*Not important if it's true or not - I'm just illustrating a point. :-P

What I mean more is that legally you are required to obtain some kind of rights to your games before playing them. Whether they have DRM or not or whether you already downloaded them or not doesn't matter so much, you really need to buy them first and it would be nice to have some way of proofing that you really bought them. Legally it all comes down to it.

To stay in the picture. I'm confident I'll get the yacth from the bottom of the sea if I need to, but I fear nobody would believe it's my yacht.

To be clear, I was referring to escrow as a concept, not escrow.com.

"Did you know that there's a killswitch in your games?
It's called DRM, and it can block your access to the things you bought.
You can still take control by choosing DRM-free sources."

"What is DRM?

Digital Rights Management, DRM, is a really broad term for tech that controls how, and when, digital content can be used – like your games, music, video, or books.

Games with DRM include a layer of software or code on top of what's needed to just play the game. Nowadays DRM will send your information to an online server, it could run checks to see if you touched any files, or outright refuse access unless you're logged in somewhere.

In other words, DRM is there to question what you're doing every step of the way.

Why should you care about DRM?

Because there is a killswitch built into your games. Sure, DRM might not affect you right now, but corporations hold the key and they'll only let you in as long as you can repeatedly prove ownership. As long as you're connected to the internet. As long as their DRM works without fault. As long they're still around.

So should the burden of proof be on you? Do you place your trust in someone who doesn't trust you?"

fckdrm.com

Sort of like a digital Fahrenheit 451? :D
Only if the "combination of optical microscope and a polariser, similar to that found in Polaroid sunglasses" that can read the size, orientation and three dimensions of the nanodots via the modified polarized light of these "self-assembled nanostructures" is still around, otherwise it's just very expensive glass and not "Superman memory crystal". :D
+1

Sounds like a good strategy for a catastrophe. But that doesn't invalidate the need nor the desire to keep a local archive of the games one has bought. What if your computer dies, then you have to download the game/s again (from gog or this third-party escrow service). I'd rather use a local spare harddrive.
The downside, as @teceem noted, the third party will necessarily claim they are a safe and reliable store for the digital goods, without this being true.

I am crotchety enough to not trust anyone (further than I must) about anything, so —— again —— I'll keep my game library archived locally, thank you. :)