Thanks for posting this. It's a shame to see they have such a weak policy on DRM.

(although, in practice, it probably isn't much weaker than GOG, seeing as GOG's policy is mostly lip service)

I think that in reality, Itch has a stronger ethos for DRM-free than GOG. This is because they don't gatekeep, allowing anyone to put their stuff onto the shelf. DRM is all about control, and the choice to platform or deplatform is simply DRM at a different starting point.

Are you really sure about that, here is what the founder of Itch said after Steam announced they would allow everything as long as it's not illegal on their platform, seems very Gatekeeping'y to me:

https://twitter.com/moonscript/status/1004448157776793600

Considering that NSFW games on Itch don't require decensorship patches or been removed for having schoolgirl outfits, I think my position stands. Itch can always go down the slippy road of censorship, but hasn't yet taken those steps.

Thanks for this, much appreciated.

Probably the main reason is that GOG simply grew as a company, much to our disdain ironically, as when they were smaller in both library and platform overall, they uphold their word for the most part, while now it's more of a facade (I still remember when I genuinely believed in GOG and tried to convince people to use it).

It is funny. You would think it would be easier to uphold values when you acquire the raw strength to do so, but companies almost always seem to become corrupt instead.

Maybe the lack of an existential threat prevents virtue from having meaning? It seems like the point of morality is to preserve life and limb among peers, more than anything.

/nihilism?

Yikes, I didn't know about that.

But actually there is a threat: objectively speaking GOG releases would be the most prone to piracy (and while they do indeed are) the userbase always respected the DRM-FREE principles and pro-cunsumer approach; if you remove these what is left about GOG? We already have to deal with 2nd citizen treatments, releases not being on par with the steam ones, and so on.

I always wished for GOG to expand, but in a healty way, not the rubbish and uncaring for loyals customers that we see right now.

Sure, I'm being cynic, but after wanting to support GOG while going in and out steam threads to check if a games is equally supported with no missing content or update for every purchase I'm going to do, is truly very tiring.

My apologies, I didn't want to scare you or something, I just wanted to put some light into the matter, as imho it's better to always know beforehand something.

Along the hidden DRM and malicious intentions I found devs purposely adding keyloggers in their works. When I bought the game, my AV (kis) triggered, and while at first I thought "mmmh, must be a false positive" I just preferred to check away the game (while also sending the file to the AV company for further confirmation). Ended up confirming that indeed there was a keylogger put there on purpose, at which point I contacted the japanese dev and asked them about this BS. Long story short, their excuse was that they put it in order to track pirates.

Ah yes, as if your freaking piece os software is worth infecting the whole userbase which is actually buying from you *facepalm*. I can't recall the name, but it was a pixel art one.

Another case that happened to me, but more DRM oriented was about a game made in wolf engine: the dev had the "brilliant" idea of updating the game each day (usually going up by version, while not touching anything else) and with the game calling back home to their server: if the game didn't update for some reason, or if the game had no internet connection, everything would break ingame, due to flags made on purpose in case no connection and version validation could be established.

It goes without saying that they justified this in order to "pRoTeCt ThEiR gAmE" from pirates.

Too bad the game was cracked anyway since day one, and the solution to that was a small hex edit or something related to the exe, but my point was that you should always be wary of some japanese devs, they would take the more extreme (and stupid) measures in order to "fight piracy".

That reminds me of the doujin circle OHBADO, who had the nerve to region-lock his Madoka Magica fangame Homura Combat Blaze and its updated version. Way to piss on people that wanted to import the game and don't have a JPN Windows OS.

That was another stupid idea, I agree with you completely.

They should learn from the fan-made touhou themed danmaku games which as of late are re-releasing on steam too (loved the genre when I was younger, that doujin circle was awesome with their works), instead of going with the region lock stuff.

Greed is weird like that. It's understandable to want money; everyone wants to be rich. It stops making sense when you already have tons of money, but it's not enough. But when greed takes hold of you, there's no such thing as "enough," only more.

This might seem a bit cheesy, but I think you could possibly also add to the list 'Ebay'. In the sense that it seems to me a very viable source of DRM-free games would be to buy second-hand physical console games on Ebay and emulate the hardware on PC. I mean, there are tons of older Playstation games I never played, plus Gamecube, Wii and there are emulators available for all of these. Possibly there are also Xbox emulators available? As long as the DVDs actually contain the game files and not just a 'license key' and don't need some background server authentication, it is DRM-free.

It might be worth looking into for anyone that wants to explore other sources of DRM-free games than GOG.

My thoughts on this:

Crytivo - Meh. Very Meh, nothing really that interesting here.

Dlgamer - Whew, this is one of those key sites. These aren't always legit.

Fireflower Games: Eh, it's okay.

Epic - Hi Tencent!

Gamejolt - What in the heck are you doing? Do you even realize how much cringe (and I do mean ancient cringe from memes long since dead) is on that site? Their servers ought to be fumigated and thrown into the deepest part of the ocean.

GamersGate - I didn't know this still existed. I had a tough time downloading from there.

Humble Bundle - I used to get a lot of DRM-Free games in the past, but now they only really offer Humble Trove shovelware. It's quite sad, I was a longtime supporter.

Indiegala - Most games here are only provided via steam keys, so that's no bueno for me.

Itch - This is basically the new Gamejolt, with less cringe and more western NSFW content. Holodexxx will revolutionize the porn industry forever. I definitely recommend them for all things indie and western adult.

Playism - Used to use them all the time. Seems they haven't really updated in years.

Wingamestore - all I see are a bunch of games with steam keys.

Zodiac - It's dead.

Zoom - We'll see. I have my eye on it.

Denpasoft - I was not aware of this site. Thanks for the recommend.

DLSite - Great, highly recommend.

Fakku - I should have used this a long time ago, but I noticed that they also have games available in Groupees Adult bundles, which are mostly hentai related. Much cheaper there too.

Jast - One of my site affiliates.

MangaGamer - Major site affiliate of mine, I've promoted their work quite a bit.

Nice to see that developers are also selling their games without DRM.

You need to add Nutaku to the list of NSFW DRM-Free stores. Click "PC" and then "Paid Games." You'll see dozens of DRM-Free titles. It is also the largest adult game store on the western market. Funny that you did not include it.

Fun fact: Aside from their Steam versions, most adult games are naturally DRM-Free.

Distributors that only have physical copies will not be listed here.

ADDED
Nutaku

REMOVED
Zodiac

Thank you for the information. :-)

is that the case with every single game on Crytivo? I was looking at Life is Feudal: Forest Village and couldn't see any information on DRM anywhere on the site.