Fair enough. No, even without DRM. The standard seems to be you never own any digital goods or services you purchase. I don't even own my copy of any random open source project. That's a tossup, but i'm gonna bet that if it went to a court it'd be ruled "no" to preserve the status quo. This was never really tested, though. You mean their game? (Back to qustion 1) Physically yes, but legally no. I was more moving towards the CP2077 thing or anything else new that came out. Specifically people can make a case for GWENT, but I'd like to hear a strong one for the map. Legally no. You never own software unless you write it yourself from scratch, and even then you can't be employed by anyone who can argue that you wrote it for them, and that includes a school (which is really shady shit). Last i heard, Nintendo has a grace period, even if it is a bit tight. Well we'd be on the same side, but there are people here on GOG who'd like to argue otherwise, but now suddenly they're absent from the conversation.

And you're making a strawman. I specifically cited the map, not a shirt. Ah, but at least when i go to those sites I can actually trust when there's DRM that they tell us there's DRM, unlike GOG. GOG was intrusted to no DRM at all, but it's already violated it with GWENT and CP2077, and the multiplayer stuff but we seem to give them a pass on that. What's that F.E.A.R. has SecuROM in the DLCs? I'll give you that, but everyone has a threshhold to get crossed, and this topic specifically is to see where we actually define things. Is the map, with an always-online (not a one time online like the shirt) requirement DRM, especially given it's a companion for CP2077 which is a single-player game?

I think it depends for services games. Do you consider early access games a service game for example?

Instead of asking if a certain percentage of the game makes the game DRMed, I think the better phraseology is "does the game have DRMed content?". If we are only asking if a percentage of the game being DRMed makes the whole thing DRMed, then this is obviously just going to involve a lot of subjectivity. However, if we identify any aspect of a game as having DRM, then we can accurately say the game itself includes DRMed content.

To me, that does indeed mean it is, technically, not a DRM-free game. I honestly think it is a bit silly to make excuses for this stuff when we wouldn't otherwise. For instance, no one would try and say a days-old sandwich out of the dumpster counts as "mostly maggot-free, so you purists are really just doing yourselves a disservice by not wanting to eat it". But since people persist with this subjective argument anyway, I propose we stick with the objective criteria.

If we go by the criteria of "does the game have DRMed content", I think a pretty good argument can be made as to the game being out of place on a store that is branded as DRM-free...even if the DRMed content is minimal.

You can thank public education and the lack of critical thinking skills for this. People rationalize it away because they are easily conditioned into thinking it is something that it is not (cognitive dissonance).

What about the Actual Games as a Service model?
Aka Gefroce Now or something similar to Origin Access?
- What if Gog signs a deal with Gefroce Now to have a similar offer to what Stadia was supposed to be, with a selection of titles that are accessible as part of a a subscription model - available at all time via Geforce Now?
Suppose this will be an additional offer, running alongside with the current offer of buying directly each title, but still having the benefit if running it through Geforce Now Premium, as long as the subscription is in place?
I assume having prebuilt Geforce Now rigs already set with a selection of older titles will spare some strain on support requests, so maybe Gog can offer that service free of charge upon every purchase (for a selected time frame).
You will still be able to download and install at will, but using Geforce Now service will obviously require being always online.

I realize this discussion has gotten quite involved and I still insist we need a cohesive definition of DRM.

To my mind though it's quite simple. It's in the name. DRM == Digital Rights Management. If someone else is managing access to games, content, saves....well that's DRM. Someone other then myself is managing my access to something I paid for.

Multi-player gets a bit trickier but I maintain the same would apply. Even for an MMO. Can I create my own server (that I would need to maintain/update/etc.) and log on? If you want to boot up World of Warcraft or something and be the only human in the entire digital world I guess be my guest. I understand why it's common for these types of games to have DRM. I would always like the option to run things yourself if the servers get turned off or you prefer a previous version. I don't play these types of games really but from a theory perspective I'm trying to define DRM in a scope that preserves the consumer rights of everyone.

We agree everyone has their own threshold. Mine is substantive content being online only, like an expansion pack. The new Quake remaster has the Quake 64 add-on locked behind a Bethesda account activation on Steam for example, and if the GOG version does the same that would be over my threshold.

In any event I grant everyone has their own threshold, my only point was it's not as black and white as some portray it as.

I understand why you say this here, but it's pointless. purchasing software has always been the 'license' variety. And as nobody writes their own operating system and games to play on their hardware (or very few) it's moot.

I'd like to see when copyright is turned back on it's head and suddenly things expire to public domain after 20 years... things would change a bit.

Maybe. I don't keep up with nintendo stuff myself.

Then we need to take actual games into the forefront, and then slap a GOG label on it. Like Dark Spore... Then ask them to justify why it doesn't work. GoG has Spore here, so it's only half a step off.

Hmmm... so this is more 'is it a multiplayer game or singleplayer game' issue? Like GTA 5 Online... I haven't kept up with CP2077 and can only hope they get the bugs fixed and everything good; But having a alternate or companion variant of the game that may even use a lot of the original files, hard to say.

They would say the online server you can't modify or do anything to is to keep cheaters at bay. This may be true to some degree, until they start micro-transactions and selling you commodities.

I don't know. It's obvious there's cheaters and hackers, making themselves invincible and ruining games for others for online play. I'd rather there be an 'official' server and everyone can run their own as well. Poof problem solved. You can be god in your own server and people are free to join/leave servers as they want, but characters shouldn't cross boundaries between servers. (Or if they do, it's things that are far harder to cheat with and not god weapons or hack items)

This thread being downvoted to hell is how you know GOG is fckd.

We're specifically referring to the model where a game will not work if you do not connect to certain servers.
Absolutely, but the GOG fanbase seems to want to put exception after exception in, starting with multiplayer, and now it's hard to figure out if there even is a line that can be crossed. It seems some people are more on "team GOG" than "team DRM-free." These people, however, also want to convince us that they're "team DRM-free" and that GOG is the only solution. You'll see this to some degree in StingingVelvet's posts so far. I didn't get to reply to his latest (post 22) yet, but I figured it'd be here for reading, indeed scrolling down, he's advocating for everyone to see things as amount of DRMed content.

That's normal, though. That's why cognitive dissonance is such a problem. Narcicists (and those suffering narcissistic victim syndrom [which isn't in the DSM, but it seems useful enough to accept as a term] go to the fathest extremes are unreasonable, and we have to see them as lost causes, but for everyone who's not, we stick to logic and they'll break free from it.

That's a different model, actually. Because, in that scenario, all but the frame data, sound output, and input is handled entirely by another computer. In that case you're specifically renting the device (or a certain instance running on the device) as opposed to the game itself.

MMOs are a different and intersting topic. There are alot out there that promise to allow people to run their own servers, but then reneg on that promise. I think the closest to a DRM-free MMO is Windward, which got delisted from GOG. I only mention it because it classified itself as an MMO, though i hesitate to call it that.

Well, that's why i keep mentioning the nap. GWENT applies here, too, though, but obviously that doesn't appear to have been crossing the line for most people 'cause it's not single-player. The map, however, is single-player and entirely DRMed.

Someone paying more attention than me to the downrepping pointed out that certain political affiliations get regularly downrepped, and when certain members of the opposing political faction won't receive it. That is, until, the "argument is lost" then it seems every reply gets downvoted to hell and back as if the whole purpose is to shut down the thread and punish even those on their own side for failing to protect the position or by keeping the thread going instead of it getting buried. I'm assuming that this is to create an illusion that "the community" or "everyone" is "against the very discussion of the topic." Make no mistake, though, it's most likely one or two people with a bunch of spare accounts or a small, very vocal, group of people.

However, this is a bipartisan thread which makes this particular case interesting. It seems whomever was behind all the bot account voting in the political threads really, really doesn't want to talk about always-online DRM in gog games and wants to make it appear as if "everyone" doesn't find this topic appropriate for gog. This is an interesting development indeed.

Yay, parts of my posts are getting edited and even some replies are getting removed. I don't have any evidence that this is GOG staff (they're not home, anyway) so i can only assume this is a database issue. I'm going to try one more time to fix this, and if that doesn't work i'll have my replies saved for a later period.

EDIT: Wow, an edit saying that it appears to have been resolved disappeared.

Replying to this one 20 times is frustrating... Unfortunately i didn't save this one before it disappeared so the quality of my reply has dropped significantly.

Therefore i was basically saying the question was just as moot as the inevitable answer. I'm trying to discuss this topic before it gets to that point. As of right now it's a "companion map" and GWENT. I don't agree with the community, but the community has accepted DRM-in-multiplayer. We have a "companion app" for single-player that has always-online-non-DRM. Just search for "map" and it'll show quickly.

Since your reply is disappearing; I'll leave this untouched and answer from here... Just in case then...

Personally i don't like the 'Multiplayer DRM is okay' stance, still annoyed not being able to use one copy of NWN to play with my brothers and friends and instead having to purchase a $40 game multiple times. (This is before GoG and stuff so...), none of it should be DRM'd.

But i think DRM-Free singleplayer is the only part they honor; Unfortunate. I'd hate to get say Diablo 3 where i can play DRM-free, but the moment i try to do anything multiplayer it updates a bunch of patches and imposes rules that i didn't have to follow before, or start deleting my saves because they are not digitally signed by the DRM component or something stupid like that.

Putting DRM on is probably more akin to having bad code and hiding it through obfuscation thinking that is more secure. While open source projects where you have 100x the eyes looking for flaws and submitting patches tends to be more robust and stronger long term, though not as monetarily beneficial. Then with Microsoft and other companies have knowledge of hidden CPU instructions they rely on or documentation that is secret. Quite annoying.

I just wish everything made sense...

I was hoping this would come up. It's ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS that Geforce Now has to beg game-makers to allow their games to run through their "rent a network GPU' system. It's EVEN MORE RIDICULOUS that publishers can say no and they respect that. This shows precisely how publishers think about this crap. There truly should be *zero* restrictions on the service so long as stuff actually can support it. The user should just be piping in what they want to run and it comes back.

Rent-a-network-hardware is a completely different thing, and orthogonal to DRM. (*Of course, unless you run into a title that only plays via that service.)

Everyone wants into that kitty, 'cause it takes the non-mobile-non-MMO games and turns them into subscriptions. Not hard to understand. What you're missing is that this is about honor or something: this is more about how every game company knows that, at least in EU, US, and AU, the internet isn't good enough for that. Delays are outlandish for starters, and that's without taking bandwidth into consideration.

Seems to be sticking, now. I can see that point of view, though: you're letting your friends play your copy with you. At the same time, oddly enough, this didn't matter for 4 people playing on the same Gamecube or something like that. Except they don't, unless something about a map makes cyberpunk 2077 a multiplayer game. I get that, too.The problem is, we're not holding companies to standards, and we have too many pseudo-monopolies that are just as good as real monopolies in practice. THe question is how we handle it without accidentally giving them more power. With the way GOG's been going, i've started to employ tactics for other companies that made GOG great in the first place: telling people where to get games other than gog, and asking devs to release games DRM-free on platforms other than GOG.