Split off from this topic, to not derail that one any further.
I don't suppose the money needed to get a game to be published on GOG would be prohibitively large, and otherwise they're not losing anything - as noted before, if the deal GOG offers isn't good enough for those who decide to pirate, what is? More importantly, are the publishers themselves able to offer a better one?
I've seen far too many people citing piracy as some terrifying beast that has all but devoured PC gaming, and only increasingly strict DRM schemes are keeping it at bay. That seems far too paranoid to me, so once the publishers manage to get rid of that mindset (at least partially), they should hopefully realize that GOG isn't that bad a choice if they want to see some money from their old games.
"More carrot, less stick" seems to be CD Projekt's alternative solution (not just with GOG), and that's the more sensible option. If the Witcher:EE and GOG takes off, that'll open the eyes of even the more paranoid publishers. This strategy has worked for Blizzard and Stardock, sooner or later you'll be able to count CD Projekt among them as well. How many more will it take for people to get that maybe they're doing something right?

imho, the all-dreaded piracy is a state of mind coming from assumption, that licensed games are expensive. let me explain on my own example.
when i was a kid, that's early nineties, all i had in my pocket was 1-2 dollars (in russian equivalent) to spend on breakfasts at school per week and my parents thought that gaming is a disease that should be fought with. so, what would i choose - half a dollar for a bunch of pirated games, or one boxed version for 20 to 50 bucks? the answer is obvious. besides, back in those days it was REALLY hard to find any official software in russia - a real pirate's paradise it was.
what do we have now? i am grown up, educated, with decent job and lack of time. certainly, i can afford and would prefer a well-made product with official feedback over technical issues so i could spend my time gaming, not patching. plus, the situation with piracy has changed - the prices of jewel-boxed games is almost the same as of pirated ones. as for the downloadable pirate-content - yeah, there are no guarantees that it'd work at all, and as i said before - i do not want to spend my time trying to figure out how to run the game, i just want to play)
i hope that it explains my point of view that the desire of using pirated games is like having acne spots - it gets over with age. unfortunately not with all people.

I think GOG's price for their games are going to help balance piracy. The games are only 6-10 dollars. One of the reasons people pirate games is because they don't want to pay $40-60 on a game. Since they're so cheap here, they might be more encouraged to actually purchase the game.

GOG is pretty immune to piracy, these are old games, generally the only way to get them was either dropping really lucky in the preowned bin or by piracy. either way the original people made no money.
with GOG, you have to think of piracy as the zero mark, and any sale made through GOG is money that the original developers weren't expecting to see anyway. Piracy on old games like these doesn't really count as a loss. (not that i'm saying it's right here, just from a business standpoint) The only problem will be is if GOG doesn't make enough to cover operational costs, which i don't think is too likely to happen.

I agree with you, but regarding the "copy protection" methods, buying a game doesn't always mean that you can actually play it, unfortunately...
Anyway, I guess piracy isn't a big problem for GoG. Most of the people who actually download pirated games are kids - and they don't want to play old games. I hope.

Yeah, I actually see GOG as being really great for game companies, because the only way to find most of these games, are like previously said, is by either pirating or by finding them in a used game crap bin.
Even if only 1 copy of each game is bought, and the rest gets pirated around, the original game company (or at least the owner of the IP) will have received a little more cash for the item than they would have previously.
I'd prefer to support the efforts of GOG than pirate because that way we can see a lot more games come back to life.. rather than being lost within the pages of unseeded torrents. Number one reason for pirating old games, in my book, is availability. if I cannot buy the game, I'll just take it. I 100% would buy it if it became available, but most of the time, it isn't.

GoG should not fear Piracy. On torrents etc. peoples looking for new games, old titles will be ignored.

I would not buy games from GoG if they used DRM: since they don't use DRM, GoG get my money. Pirates will pirate these games regardless, but GoG putting them out there with no DRM attracts customers like me who are all too willing to spend money but hate DRM with a passion. Seems like good business to me.

Exactly. Pirates will take down every security system sooner or later. And any securom, Starforce etc. can be problem, but only for legal customers.

To me, piracy and drm are like two blades on a double-edged sword. On one hand, Publishers are afraid of losing money, so in response, they add anti-piracy measures. On the other hand, potential customers are vexed by the possibility of there being DRM's on a possible purchase.
In the case of publisher paranoia, their efforts are usually for naught because DRM's are usually broken days after, or even before, a game is released. For customers, they'll usually suck it up and buy a game, not buy it, or pirate it.
But this isn't even taking into consideration the game quality. Think or how many games, on the PC specifically, are released a month. Of those games, how many will actually be an enjoyable experience. Lots of games coming out today seem like rehashes of older games done worse; some of them are enjoyable to a degree and others are so buggy, they can't even load up. Would that justify a 50$ purchase?
With all the bad games floating around the market, It doesn't even disturb me that games are pirated anymore. People want to spend their money on quality, enjoyable games.

Pirates will always be pirates, regardless of the cost. Heck, I'll bet if these games were just £1, the ones who pirate because they can will still download them.
One thing to remember is this, Pirates will NEVER get a great community like this, a forum to post their concerns, problems, praise, tips, mods, etc.. They will never get support for their downloads, and most of the older stuff will still have the same XP/Vista problems they have always had. Whereas, here at GOG, all games work fine with great support from GOG members.
Now, you can't pirate that.

Surely GOG should attract the kind of people who hate DRM, some to the point of pirating because it is less trouble than buying an original (e.g. Bioshock ) and making it work, rather than pirating because they just don't want to cough up and pay game studios the money they deserve. I have no trouble paying $5-$10 bucks for an old classic I haven't played in ages, and has no DRM whatsoever. Most people who play games of this era (GOG hosted stuff is classic after all) surely shouldn't either. And how many kids, who maybe can't afford to buy new jewel cased games, are going to want to buy the original? How many of them have actually heard of it? And $6 isn't exactly a stretch for them even on their limited budgets.
What I'm trying to say is I don't think piracy will be a huge problem for GOG, given their target market and total lack of DRM.

In regards to other companies possibly not releasing their games due to piracy, I would find that a terrible decision on their part. There is really no place other than ebay and Goozex to trade much older games. While the companies are holding onto the intellectual property of these games, they are making absolutely no money off of it. Instead, it just sits there collecting dust so to speak. Nothing is changed if the game gets pirated or not in its current state. If they are released on GOG, even though it may still be pirated, they may also obtain a small fee for every game bought. Considering tens of thousands have signed up for this service, that goes to show that people will pay for old games if given the opportunity and right price. Any company who would pass that up and not work with GOG are making a huge mistake.
When it comes to piracy and DRM though, I believe the real damage has already been done. Developers and publishers are wary of consumers due to piracy, and enforce some very harsh DRM restrictions in today's new releases. Customers appear to have lost faith in developers, due to these DRM tactics or the fact that companies tend to abandon them all together, and work exclusively on console. Companies simply went to far when they limited how many times you could install software you legally purchase for $40-50, and then it is up to their kindness if they want to allow any more. Meanwhile, pirates are unaffected and continue on as normal.
The paranoia is astonishing. Developers also blame lack of sales on piracy, without taking a step back and looking to see if it is their DRM tactics or a poor product or console port. Despite the hype around the game, if it isn't done right, it won't sell. While some companies realize what happened and work to fix the game through patches or new releases, others just cry piracy and leave PC gamers behind.
I hope and pray that through GOG and Stardock that other companies will see that DRM free software can thrive and make money. Right now it is essential for both sides, developers/publishers and consumers, to learn to trust each other again. I fear it may never happen though, but I hope it does. We can see some companies are taking the right track, and it seems to be paying off. For this, I am extremely thankful to GOG. People may think of this as just a good site to buy old games, but I see it as a start to something much greater.

I don't think piracy will be much of an issue at GOG. Most pirates will probably be focused on newer games than to waste their time with the older games that are offered here. Besides, with the large amount of people I've seen vowing to follow the rules of now piracy, I think that the honor system will work.
If it doesn't, however, whoever is pirating is only hurting themselves.

i suspect that courting certain gaming subcultures (the isometric CRPG crowd or point and click adventure gamers for instance) would do a lot to keep GOG piracy low. these are game niches that are not serviced anymore.
i suspect the fans of genres like this would be more concerned with attempting to prove that they still exist as a market, of making the sale of the type of game that they *love* as economically viable for publishers as possible than they would be with pirating copies of GOG games everywhere they went.
fans of the newest FPS haven't faced the extinction of their favourite genre. the idea of going into a store and finding no FPS games to purchase is implausible (at best) to them. for those of us who have loved genres that literally died, however... i suspect we're, by nature, more protective of any distributor or vendor that can provide us access to our favourite worlds after our CD copies have gone unreadable due to scratches and dings.
the financial downsides of relying on particular gaming subcultures are obvious, tho.