Good Old Games: gog.com and the DRM-Free Revolution | Hacker News Reader

Good Old Games: gog.com and the DRM-Free Revolution

forbes.com

211 pointsrubikscube99 comments

DRM is poison. It provides only negative value to the consumer by adding new restrictions and limitations.

Valve seems to be one of the few companies to make use of DRM that understands this. Steam may be heavily encumbered with DRM but Valve has piled on huge loads of sugar to make it palatable, more and more each year. Steam is more than just a DRM system, of course, and it's all of the benefits of the Steam-platform which make up for the poison at its heart (at least for a great many consumers). Additionally, because of the track-record of steep price drops on old games and the occasional steam-sale they blunt many of the down-sides of DRM (such as lack of used-games).

Some game companies only see DRM from the narrow perspective of a publisher concerned about "piracy" and feel entitled to dictate usage terms to their customer base due to feelings of ethical superiority. This is mistaken, and by abusing and misusing their customers they're destroying brand loyalty, which is perhaps the most important thing a company can have, especially one predominantly working in IP.

One thing worth noting about Steam's DRM setup that I think a lot of people decide to ignore (for whatever reason) is that whether Steam DRM is enabled for a game or not is up to the publisher. There are a bunch of games that you can buy through Steam that don't have any DRM. They update just as all regular Steam games do and you can install them just the same as all other Steam games. A partial list can be found here, for example: http://www.gog.com/forum/general/list_of_drmfree_games_on_st...

GOG is unique of course in that it doesn't allow games to be sold with DRM on its storefront. But I do think it's a bit of a misnomer to say that DRM is the heart of Steam. That's just the thing that made publishers comfortable with Steam.

As discussed below, it still affects the transferability of those games. I.e. you need Steam to install those games anew, since they don't provide you with a standalone installer. Therefore even those games are DRMed.

You don't necessarily have to install DRM-free software; you can often copy it into a directory of your choosing and run the binary.

Steam also provides the ability to generate installable backups (though IIRC you do need to sign into an account that owns the game to restore a backup), and to run in offline mode.

> You don't necessarily have to install DRM-free software; you can often copy it into a directory of your choosing and run the binary.

If game is playable after simple copying with no installation - that can be really considered DRM free (given there are no other forms DRM in the game). But probably not all games from that list are copyable like that.

> Steam also provides the ability to generate installable backups (though IIRC you do need to sign into an account that owns the game to restore a backup), and to run in offline mode.

If your account is closed, or Steam is closed altogether - the game becomes nontransferable. Therefore since you have no clear option for completely independent backup, the game can't be called DRM free.

You may also have to copy registry settings.

I dunno, that's not a much stronger argument than saying that installation discs are DRM because if you lose them, you can't install something.

Was the original DRM copy-protection put onto CDs, or the fact that the game required that CD to be inserted to play?

Valve seems to generally treat its customers decently and to describe that as some sort of sugar pill with which they cram a supposedly 'heavily DRM encumbered' Steam client down your throat is a little overwrought. I've been on Steam since the release of Half-Life 2 in late 2004. I own, according to the client, 118 titles. I've never had a Steam-related DRM problem. The client itself has occasionally had quality problems, so have some (mostly non-Valve) games but I've not once felt the 'negative value' of Steam's DRM itself.

It's getting close to a decade but I still have essentially unencumbered access to my copy of HL2 - I'd have surely lost the physical media by now. In 2007, I bought Portal which came in a bundle that included HL2 - I got an extra free HL2 license to give away. In 2010 I got a free copy of the HL2 OS X port and, were I the sort of person who enjoys the quixotic challenge of gaming on Linux, I could have grabbed my free Linux port just a few weeks ago. And that's just one game.

If that's poison, don't take me to the hospital, please.

I've bought $10, single-player, offline, RPGs, but when I tried to run them without an Internet connection, the game refused to work. Apparently there's some way to get around this, but it's totally unnecessary and part of their DRM.

I like Steam because they act like they get gamers, they've released good games, and they tend to make things easy.

Not for a second though am I under the illusion that the Steam way is better than what it'd be without the insistence of running the Steam client/DRM/online parts.

Edit: In short, Steam shows that if you make DRM slick enough and appear to provide a value add, most people, even gamers, will just go along with it. Netflix is another example of a crippled product, but it's good enough for the convenience it brings.

I've definitely bought games over Steam that work offline.

In fact the only game I've had a significant problem with was Heroes of Might and Magic VI, and that was because of Ubisoft's DRM/uPlay platform and the vast quantities of bugs (even 2 years after release!).

I think you have a good point though. It's the 'sugar', not some objection to DRM or always-online gaming, which keeps me using Steam.

That and their support for indie developers, which is quite heartening for me.

None of those are DRM, all of those are unlimited free downloads (which pretty much every digital distributor provides).

The DRM is the fact that if you don't have an internet connection you have to hope that Steam successfully launches into offline mode or not have access to your games.

Similarly if Valve decides to ban your account, all 118 games become permanently unavailable to you.

A number of my Steam games are DRM-free. I didn't say these features were DRM but that they are things Steam provides while having DRM so unobtrusive I've not noticed it in 9 years. The OPs contention was Valve's DRM is some heavy burden that they basically bribe you to accept. I'm sure it's gone wrong for some people at some point but I think compared to the rate of just regular old game-crippling bugs, it's negligible.

And yes, if Valve decides to ban my account, the DRM'ed games become unavailable. Or I have to waste my time looking for cracks. But again, what is the rate of that? If the dog shreds my big folder of physical game media, it's also all lost.

> DRM is some heavy burden that they basically bribe you to accept. I'm sure it's gone wrong for some people at some point

These two sentences reinforce what the OP is saying, you aren't arguing facts, you are arguing impact. OP is saying we are underestimating the impact DRM should have on our decision, to which you responded "it doesn't bother me". That fact isn't important to this discussion.

I also use Steam, enjoy it, think they are a great company, and won't be stopping anytime soon. However it is certainly true that unlike GOG their platform is based around DRM.

> If the dog shreds my big folder of physical game media

What measures can you take to prevent Valve from banning you? For instance some people have lost their Steam accounts because they used Paypal and there was a disagreement between the two over a charge.

I control the physical media, I can't control Valve's authentication system.

It's a little difficult to believe you're actually trying to have a conversation about this when you selectively misquote what I said - you chopped off the bit where I said I was quoting/paraphrasing the OP and then claim my own words are reinforcing what the OP is saying. Well, of course they are, I was quoting the OP!

And I think for the most part, I am relying on facts - it's the OP that appeals to emotions - 'poison', 'heavily encumbered', suggesting Valve's motivations for quality service is to trick their customers into accepting DRM. Based on, well, nothing but opinion. My experience may be anecdotal but it is factual.

Similarly if Valve decides to ban your account, all 118 games become permanently unavailable to you.

Has this happened often?

Unfortunately yes.

Valve has a antifraud rule.of banning anyone that chargeback them. And PayPal has the nasty habit of sometimes.during their suspected fraud investigations to initiate a chargeback of recent purchases on their own and then lock the account.

There are on internet a couple of stories about this policy conflict between Valve and PayPal resulting in random people losing their Steam accounts.

I don't think this is true. I believe that steam accounts were temporarily locked while disputes were resolved (although now only the disputed game would get locked, not the account); I don't believe steam accounts were permanently locked for a payment dispute.

One of the few DRM-related problems I've had was with Steam - more specifically, with Portal 2, which used some kind of new improved version of Valve's DRM that was apparently incompatible with my anti-virus software. Naturally, the error messages were pretty much useless since informative errors would help crackers. I think Valve finally documented - but didn't fix - the issue several months later.

I think you are projecting quite a bit here in terms of what you think is going on.

EA (to pick a random DRM supporting publisher) and others perfectly understand what they are doing, and the tradeoffs involved. It's not ethical superiority, it's business. You can claim they are destroying x, y, and z all you like, but the reality ends up being pretty simple:

Until consumers stop buying games due to DRM, or these publishers have actual numbers that show it is actively causing them to lose profit, they'll keep doing it. I'm not talking about random blog posts from indie developers. I'm talking about game after game with DRM failing, and game after game without DRM succeeding. Or, if all their games have DRM, them going out of business, while other non-DRM using publishers succeed.

From the publishers perspective, if it was really having all the negative effects you have, they wouldn't keep selling so damn many copies.

Honestly, I'm not really arguing one way or the other, i'm just pointing out that publishers aren't concerned with ethical blah blah blah, they are concerned with money and unit sales.

If DRM doesn't decrease their sales, and possibly decreases profit loss, it's a win for them. If it does decrease their sales, and the decreased profit loss makes up for that, it's a win for them. If it does decrease their sales, and the decreased profit loss does not make up for that, it's a lose for them.

Until it's a lose for them, they'll keep doing it.

Games are art, not commodities, and this adds a monstrous degree of complexity to economic analysis of the genre, especially around different business practices. You can't compare sales of a game year over year because demand is different, just as you can't always compare sales of games to each other.

Certainly games compete with one another, if on no other basis than dollars out of limited household budgets and hours out of limited leisure time. And certainly some games tend more towards sport than game (MOBAs and online military FPSes come to mind) and choosing between games can be a matter of choosing between different mechanical aspects. However, in the main choosing between games to play tends to be closer to choosing between musicians to listen to or books to read. Competing games may have similarities but there is still only one Katamari Damacy, only one Mass Effect, only one Sim City, and so forth.

Why is this relevant? Because it means that the factors behind the relative success of a given game are as much due to aesthetic factors as to anything else, including DRM. Hypothetically, if a band releases an album in a way that is heavily DRM encumbered and the album doesn't do well is that due to the album itself or consumers reacting to the DRM? The simple answer is that you don't know because the whole thing is subjective. More so, it means that people tend to be more willing to tolerate onerous burdens (including DRM) because there typically aren't commoditized alternatives. This means that it's almost impossible to determine the impact of the use or absence of DRM on the success or failure of any particular game or even on the game industry as a whole, especially since this current period of widespread sophisticated DRM is only around a decade or so old.

We know that in the short term companies can certainly get away with shoving DRM down customers' throats without always incurring hugely negative consequences to their business. However, game publishers are very much in the brand image and brand loyalty business, and persistent long-term trends that are ignorable in the short-term could be quite significant over the course of decades.

I can't predict the future, but anecdotally it certainly appears as though major game companies are squandering a lot of customer good-will, and sometimes DRM is the cause of it. And I suspect that in the long-run such effects will have significant impacts on the industry as a whole.

The first sentence makes me wonder if you understand publishers. To them, games are not art. They are valuable IP assets.

They can and do compare sales of games dissimilar to each other.

As others pointed out, they even can realize that DRM is actually causing them only harm, but they use it for covering up their incompetence.

Steam DRM can still be annoying if you're internet connection goes down and you didn't manage to start steam correctly in offline mode and then refuses to play until you do connect.

Last I checked you could edit a file to trick it.

Still, the lack of a proper functional offline mode, after all this time, is ridiculous and a bit troubling.

Yes but when your internet is down, you can't search for this trick :(

Steam is just another game rental platform. The difference is that with Gog you can't be screwed over later if you break some arbitrary rule or they change the ToS. You truly own the games.

I have more than 60 GoG games. Most bought during their awesome collection sales. I have nothing but praise for GoG and all my dealings with them. They are the answer to piracy in that they make acquiring and owning games easier, and better than pirating them. I've bought a few games from them I had illegal copies of. Why? No DRM, extra stuff, the "right" price and this...

"The games are always remastered for modern operating systems as well, making them playable on new machines."

I haven't even played some of those 60 games. Bought as part of "deals" and in some sense I'm happy to give money to GoG for being fair / awesome and my trust / desire for them to continue doing so and thriving as a company and business model.

Being decent with customers, works.

I still have original install media for Wing Commander III, but bought it again just for the modern OS remastering.

I agree with the sentiment of your post, but I don't think they "make acquiring and owning games easier" than piracy. In fact it's very easy to pirate gog games because of their anti-DRM stance so if a potential customer doesn't feel like paying the 5 bucks for a game, it's just a torrent away. Not saying GOG haven't done something wonderful but it's certainly not pirate-proof.

GOG makes games easy to find and you don't have to worry about malware. I'd say these two factors make it easier than piracy in practice.

Treating your customers as humans is good business.

Customers pay and pirates plunder.

Software pirates will find a way to steal things they are unwilling to pay for. The smart companies in software will work to serve their customers and leverage the pirates for their one valuable quality - free marketing and distribution.

Another way to look at it is the reason the F2P + micro transactions works is the same reason that shareware works, lower the friction to enjoy the product and make it easy to share. Sharing is valuable.

Video game companies are so much hoping to stop piracy or used game sales that they forget that sharing a game with friends is free advertising and marketing for them.

If League of Legends wasn't free, I probably wouldn't have tried it, but because it is free to play a lot of my friends have played, purchased, and enjoyed the service. Apparently Team Fortress 2 makes 3x more money as F2P than a traditional $50 boxed game.

To me it boils down to getting your product into the hands of people who are willing to pay for it. If people aren't willing to pay for it without DRM, adding DRM won't make you more money, it will just piss off the people who were willing to pay you in the first place.

I'm kind of surprised how many of my hardcore gamer friends are anti Xbox One already simply because of the way MSFT is going to handle used games and DRM. They're losing the hearts and minds of their core market.

Selling game cheaply is good business, DRM has nothing to do with the success. Most of my games are on Steam (and most of games on Steam has DRM), I have 2 or 3 games on GOG. Only because they were cheaper on GOG when I wanted them. With a bad DRM you can easily lose customer but I don't think you actually lose customer if your DRM are well done.

Also Team Fortress 2 make 3x more money for 2 reasons. It's Valve, which has a HUGE fan base, and they sell crate that contains a random hat, which can be sold for money to someone else (in the end it act like a lottery where people think they will be able to get a rare hat that will be sold for hundreds of dollars on the market). I don't think you can reproduce these two things on every game.

I tend to only buy cheap games (or heavily discounted games) on Steam, partially because of their DRM. A game on Steam isn't bought, it's more of an indefinite lease. If Steam as a service shuts down, or something happens to my account, Valve isn't guaranteeing me access to my games (as far as I know).

I try to buy on GOG even if it's slightly more for games I wish to keep, archive the installer, and be able to revisit years into the future.

but I don't think you actually lose customer if your DRM are well done.

In my view - no DRM can be well done, and some customers always will avoid DRMed services. So Steam loses some customers for sure. Many of them end up as GOG's customers naturally ;) Competing on DRM-free as a feature has its benefits.

Is this really true, or we suffering from Pauline-Kael syndrome here? How many people are actually aware of DRM outside of a rabid internet minority (and I include myself in that list)? It may lose some customers, but I bet its a minuscule fraction.

Actually, non-internet users are more likely to feel it, when they can't activate or play their games without a connection.

They at least need it to buy the game. But when it's DRM free they can do it somewhere, and then just bring the installer home.

I mean when you buy a disk, put it into your PC, and can't play it because there's no internet connection. Or when your internet cuts out and your game quits even if you're not playing online, just because the DRM can't phone home anymore.

Right, on-line DRM is one of the worst kinds.

Is it true that people who dislike DRM prefer GOG over Steam and that DRM-free is one of the primary features that attracts many users to GOG? Yes, it is true. How many - I can't say exactly, but this subject is often brought up on GOG forums and site features feedback - you can read about it. Minority or not, GOG responds to this demand, while Steam doesn't, so GOG is more competitive in this particular aspect.

I don't doubt that - I've bought games on both platforms (Alpha Centauri on GOG = awesome). But the point is, amongst total games sales, I would like some degree of proof as to what the actual effect of the outrage is. Of course the GOG forums are DRM-angsty; that's part of why they are at GOG! What I don't know (truly - not being adversarial here) is whether DRM is a real factor for a substantial number of buying decisions, or not. The recent Sim City fiasco was probably the highest profile DRM-related brouhaha ever; - Rock Paper ShotGun, QT3, Polygon, all the gaming press (including the larger offline press like PC Gamer) covered it and expressed outrage, as did some mainstream media. And yet, best as I can tell it had little effect on actual sales (I'm open to being convinced I'm wrong on this).

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/05/07/simcity-sales-reach-1-6-mi...

What I don't know (truly - not being adversarial here) is whether DRM is a real factor for a substantial number of buying decisions, or not.

I'd be interested if someone could make a thorough research on these decision factors, but I'm really not sure what kind of methodology can be used for that. It's hard to measure such things for external researchers. Companies which participated in DRM fiascos (like the SimCity one) probably can estimate how many customers they lost in result, but they might not want to publish that information :)

Ironically though, lost sales caused by DRM won't necessarily make them change their minds about DRM. Some publishers executives can excuse failures of their low quality products by lost sales caused by piracy, so they use DRM to cover up their incompetence (i.e. "we are doing all we can!"). So additional lost sales won't convince them to drop that excuse for their products which fail just because there is no big demand for them. They'll claim it's because DRM wasn't yet strong enough, and pirates just cut their profits ;)

But in addition to steam games being cheap, steam has turned into an absolutely wonderful service, no more worrying about serial codes or patches or losing the discs. I have a lot of games on steam that I haven't been able to play yet, but bought because I know I won't lose them

> no more worrying about serial codes or patches or losing the discs

So, Steam is better than the DRM you were used to before it. So much better that you prefer not to deal with the old DRM system at all...

That's not exactly a point against "DRM does always annoy the honest clients".

Except for games that use GFWL - the serial number has to be re-entered every time you install them, and they're tied to an email address you might not have one day.

Unfortunately, GOG's pricing seems too high in ahem less developed countries like Russia. While "one world fair price" policy sounds right and fair (and certainly has advantages, as I've heard there's a problem with EU vs US prices), it only works for countries with similar average incomes.

For comparison (no games are on sale or other kind of promotion in either store):

- Legend of Grimrock and Don't Starve (both have equal prices): 14.99 USD on GOG, 299 RUR (9.42 USD) on Steam;

- Fallout 2: 9.99 USD on GOG, 199 RUR (6.28 USD) on Steam;

- Deus Ex: 9.99 USD on GOG, 150 RUR (4.73 USD) on Steam.

Not like $10 (~317 RUR, about two 0.5L bottles of a good beer) isn't affordable (it totally is, if we're talking about single purchase), but, still, paying 25-50% more than usual local market price feels quite significant in the long-term. Given that Steam's DRM is relatively unobtrusive and don't seem to bother most gamers, I doubt lack of DRM is significant to many consumers, compared to price.

GOG considered lowering prices on various titles (see their discussions). They also often have sales where you can buys games very cheaply.

Can US customers buy games from the Russian Steam store?

No, but Russian customers can buy games from the russian store and gift them to US customers. Or at least they could I don't know if Valve has changed that yet. There is/was a pretty big black/grey market doing that.

However Valve does consider it violating some ToS or something so if they think you're doing it as a business they'll take all your games and ban you for life.

I've heard they only ban you from (any) trading/gifting, not from Steam itself. Although I'm not sure whenever this is true or not.

Could be. I'm mostly just remembering a dust up from a few years back, so I may mis remembering.

Only by visiting Russia and accessing Steam store from here. Or with the aid of Russian proxies, but I heard Valve considers this a ToS violation.

It's great to see GOG receive more attention. I will note that GOG hasn't stood for "Good Old Games" for quite some time now. It's not just GOG, with no official expansion. They are easily my favourite games retailer (I choose not to purchase DRMed digital media, so are one of the few available choices).

Now that GOG are packaging up some of their releases of old games for OSX using WINE, I suspect it's only a matter of time before they support Linux officially.

EDIT to add: the fact they offer the same price worldwide is also a massive point in their favour vs just about every other retailer (no insane price hike for Europeans or Australians).

I am a fan of theirs since their beta period :)

In fact, I like them so much I bought more games than I even downloaded...

And The Witcher 2 is the ONLY game EVER that I pre-ordered, and the ONLY game EVER that I paid more than 30 USD, just because of CD Projekt sheer awesomeness.

By the way, I created my GOG.com account to buy Screamers, I suggest you people do the same, very obscure, but very fun racing game (that needs quite a bit of processing power, it was released before Pentium was invented, and designed to only work in full graphics with Pentium! Very crazy stuff!)

Just had a look at Screamer. Looks awesome! And Mac compatible too :D.

Just thought I'd recommend a game that came out on GOG quite recently: Chaos Overlords. A unique turn-based strategy. A mac release is planned as well.

http://www.gog.com/news/release_cha0s_0verlords

CD Projekt has figured it out in nineties. Everybody pirated games in Poland (the prices weren't adjusted for purchasing power, nobody did localizations [except pirates - Russian CDs with illegal bothed Polish-Russian localization of English games was on every street market for 20-30 PLN, when same game was 150-200 PLN and had no localization]). That was before CD recorders were available cheaply, so pirates were earning big money on that.

CD Projekt somehow persuaded Bioware to let them do proper localization of Baldurs Gate, hired the best Polish actors for voiceovers (think Morgan Freeman hired by small publisher in USA when everybody knows nobody buys games), did all the coding by themselves, and priced the product reasonably. And it was (maybe still is) the single biggest hit on Polish gaming market. By order of magnitude.

I'm glad they continue with that attitude towards customers.

It's great to see that there is a successful games distribution service which understands that DRM doesn't do anything good and only reduces the value of the product for the legitimate customers. I avoid Steam, but use GOG because of their DRM free stance.

The only thing they lack is selling Linux titles. While many (but not all) of their Windows games work with Wine, in addition of course to DosBox and Scummvm games which are easily playable on Linux, it's still good to have native Linux titles too. There is a proposal for them to start doing it (you can vote on it since GOG is asking for feedback on this matter):

http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/add_linux_versions_of_games

DRM free distributor with Linux games would make GOG an unquestionable preference.

Desura carries quite a few Linux games and they usually don't really have DRM. I recommend them.

The only thing is: Most of games on GOG are really good, like, 5/5 good; but games on Desura are hit-or-miss.

I know, I bought Trine there for example. But I rarely use Desura, I use GOG in vast majority of the cases, and now they have Trine there too, but not the Linux version. The proposal is for them to start selling Linux titles too. From their comments, it looks like figuring out the best way to support Linux is what slows the rollout of such feature.

I remember one of the founders of GOG being a part of the ZX Spectrum scene in Poland back in the eighties. He was sort of a major hub in the sneakernet where cassette tapes where the packets, snail mail was the backbone and walking around was the local network. Piracy wasn't even a word, everybody was "obtaining" games. No wonder GOG "get" gamers - their experience with the market goes 30 years back :)

Well, it was legal then - the copyright treaties were only signed around 1994 IIRC.

And nobody was selling stuff to Poland anyway in eighties (even if we could buy it).

Yeah, that's what I meant about piracy not even being a word - indeed there was no other way to obtain software back then.

It's interesting that they are expanding from good old games and bringing in a lot of good indie titles as well. I see them growing as a credible, DRM-free competitor to Steam outside the AAA, $60 game market.

They don't focus on old games exclusively - there is no point to limit their options. They are working on bringing more old titles of course since that's their specialty, but it will only boost their service to add new titles as well. They are competing with Steam, and especially on the DRM free stance.

They are not good old games anymore. They rebranded the site to simply GOG or GOG.com and nowhere in their site it says anything about good old games anymore. I remember TotalBiscuit talking about this in his video some time ago.

As others pointed out, they still can be called "good old" in a sense of quality. I.e. even if the game is new, but it has the values of classic games rather than mass market junk approach, it can be loosely called "good old" :). GOG is known to pick really good games in general.

See http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/continue_to_add_more_good_o...

The DRM argument will continue forever. It only hurts those who already want the product. Yes, maybe you gain a couple of extra sales, but you probably lose out many more because of all the extra hoops you make your legitimate customers jump through.

Oh, and I just bought SimCity 2000. There goes all my free time.

The main problem with DRM is that we can have culture lost forever. There will be some things impossible to purchase (in its own right absurd in digital age). But also with platforms dying we can have games and ecosystems lost for the future generations.

After all PS2 has ended its run. Soul Reaver and some FF games enter public domain early next century. By that time they may have been lost forever. And it is a loss to humanity if you ask me.

"The main problem with DRM is that we can have culture lost forever"

That is just a side effect of the real problem with DRM: it takes control away from the owners and users of a computer and puts it in the hands of privileged third parties.

FYI: There are tons of DRM free games on Steam http://www.gog.com/forum/general/list_of_drmfree_games_on_st...

The recently released, higly anticipated System Shock 2 is also DRM free.

Easy way to test a game: Download it then close the Steam client. Run the game from the folder. If it starts = DRM free

Also sometimes there are two layers of DRM on Steam games. The standard one + a 3rd party. Like most of the EA multiplayer games unplayable w/o an EA/Origin account.

http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_3rd_Party_DRM_o...

Is it easily reinstallable/transferable on another system without using the Steam client as well? If yes, then it can be really DRM free.

It's a bit ironical though, that the list of DRM free Steam games appears on GOG, while Steam doesn't mark in any way whether the game is DRMed or not :)

There is a backup feature so you can move a game between computers. I've used that but I guess there is no way to make a proper transferable backup w/o the Steam client.

So if Steam goes out of business, or your account would be suspended, and in any other case when you won't have access to their client - the game will be nontransferable. That's one of the positive indicators of DRM.

If GOG goes out of business and you haven't downloaded the game before... Same story.

It's not the same story since GOG gives you the installers. If GOG goes out of business you can still use them, if you have them. You just should be diligent to back them up. Steam doesn't give you such option and you simply have no way to transfer the game in absence of access to Steam at all.

I'm glad GOG is getting some publicity. I much prefer them to Steam. The Steam client has always been clunky to me on all three supported platforms. I also don't like the social aspect. GOG gives me a downloadable game for easy transfer, gives me the ability to log in and re-download, their customer service is superb and it's pretty cheap. Come to think of it, I'd be more than willing to pay over the standard $10 for their games.

I think it's kind of sad that they mention "GOG.com" over and over without a hyperlink. The author links to two games on their site (Might & Magic and Night of the Rabbit), but not their home page. Why do old media companies avoid linking to sites they write about?

Anyone know Polish and is able to summarise for us the key GOG.com-related figures from http://www.cdprojekt.com/resources/document/prezentacje/Wyni...?

All data in PLN (around 0.30 USD), the first number is for 2012 Q1, the second for 2013 Q1.

    Incomes on sales: 17 680 000, 27 810 000.
    Profit on sales: 470 000, 4 070 000.

    Incomes on sales to external customers per division:
     - game development (CD Projekt RED): 1 500 000, 4 100 000.
     - digital distribution (gog.com): 5 500 000, 12 000 000.
     - publishing, distribution in Poland (CDP.pl): 10 400 000, 11 400 000.
 
    Result on sales to external customers per division:
     - game development (CD Projekt RED): +100 000, +1 400 000.
     - digital distribution (gog.com): +900 000, +2 700 000.
     - publishing, regular distribution in Poland (CDP.pl): -800 000, -300 000.

    Assets in 2010-2012, 2013 Q1: 1 100 000, 1 700 000, 2 500 000, 3 100 000.
    Debt-equity ratio: 2012 Q1 27%, 2013 Q1 19%.

Thank you!

Will GOG start making all their games Linux compatible anytime soon? (at least through Wine).

Feel free to vote: http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/add_linux_versions_of_games

GOG are interested in feedback and demand.

Note - this is not about Wine. Many of their Windows games already work with Wine, you don't need GOG's help to play them. As well as old DOS games which use DosBox and Scummvm. That's about adding native Linux titles to their catalog.

For DOS games they wrap them into Windows installer and ship a Windows build of DosBox/Scummvm with them. There is no point in that on Linux, so you can use innoextract to unpack them without installing through Wine:

http://constexpr.org/innoextract/

Then just plug it into you distro's DosBox and Scummvm (some tweaks can be needed to the DosBox config files which they ship to adjust to the Linux filesystem syntax, but they are minor).

Many of their older games are DOS-based and therefore work fine under DOSBox.

They've added mac support for some games relatively recently (mostly via dosbox gui wrappers), give them some time.

The big game publishers are probably foaming at the mouth over GoG taking off with no DRM and mostly decade(s) old computer games. I can only imagine it's a huge kick in the balls to EA, Blizzard, etc.

Some games on GOG are from EA. Example: http://www.gog.com/gamecard/clive_barkers_undying

More of those: http://www.gog.com/catalogue?search=Electronic+Arts

And even more, a few weeks ago there was a really good sale of classic EA games at very good prices. I think this is the complete list: http://www.gog.com/promo/ea_weekend_promo_030513.

DRM-free Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, plus the expansion, Alien Crossfire, for about 2.50 USD (less than 2€). Yeah, it's easy to love GOG.

Was the SimCity 5 launch really bad for EA?

The publicity was horrible.

Of course I would be stunned if even 5% of the gamers who were calling for EA's heads over it will abstain from buying the next game in their favorite series if EA is involved in it. Most gamers seem completely unwilling to boycott.

WooHoo GOG!

all they need now is the 'neverhood' ;)

I became a bit more wary of GOG when I learned they are incorporated in Cyprus.

Why? Are you also wary of digital sellers set up in Luxembourg for tax purposes (e.g. Amazon)?

EDIT: GOG also claim that laws regarding signing international contracts are more favourable in Cyprus than Poland http://www.gog.com/forum/general/my_credit_card_companies_st...

Why? Buy your games, stash installers, they'll be with you forever.

The whole point of no DRM is you not having to care where they are incorporated and whether they're ever going under.

This is the main point why GOG is great. Just save your install media and you can reinstall in 10yrs if GOG goes away, regardless of where GOG is hosted. The same is not necessarily true for Steam. I've also been getting tired of the lag in starting up Steam just to play a few minutes of a game.

Yeah, I can't remember when TF2 started for under 5 mins... :( I play like 3-4 times a month and every single time I've got steam update, tf2 update, long logging times and apart of that the steam client became really heavy on my (probably above average) machine.

I was going to mention some of those other things that have been bugging me about Steam over the years, and it's been getting worse and it seems more bloated. I didn't really understand GOG at first, but once I realized how it worked, I'm less enthusiastic about Steam. For titles available on both, I wish I could return the Steam versions and use only GOG :)

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