Well I agree, but also think that some should be able to play what they want and not have to wait for years for a game to become DRM free(if it ever does, that is).

Of course one could always hit the high seas to avoid giving DRM laden games any money(not that i'm telling people to do such) until that dev or pub drops the DRM, but then others give them nasty looks for doing such.

Feels like an eternity since I last read anything on Rock, Paper, Shotgun... since at least around the time people were raking them over the coals for aggressively punishing ad blocker users.

To add to the longevity issue, you have the security/privacy angle - a client like Steam which verifies on application startup allows the provider to know what/when/how you game which is data that could be sold on (to employers and recruitment agencies in particular). A particular twist with Steam being "too big to fail" is that Valve could bring in a monthly fee to maintain access to user accounts (their Terms of Service is even called a Subscriber Agreement) and linking any such fee to the value of games in an account would be especially devious ("Ooh look, $3,000 worth of content here - how about you pay $300/year to keep hold of it?").

On the security side, software like Steam runs as a Windows service, giving it privileged access - and since its role is to install/update other software it can effectively take control of client systems. In addition, Valve have had a number of security breaches with their software and back-end systems (a partial list is given here) and, given their customer base, they will be an increasingly attractive target for cyber-criminals.

Others have also mentioned streaming services like Netflix which take a similar approach with video ("rent everything, own nothing") and it seems quite likely that these end up popularising "lite" DRM - it's certainly less obtrusive than BluRay DRM which can require a 2-minute startup time. The question then is how long before the privacy and security implications hit the headlines?

https://www.bing.com/search?q=%2bsite%3agog.com+goglodyte&filters=rcrse%3a%221%22&FORM=RCRE&PC=U316

I prefer goglodyte over GOGer. Especially since most of us are hermits and live in caves. :)

about a decade ago there was a woman in Australia who tried to create an awareness group to fight against overly intrusive DRM, it seems the group succumbed to some infighting and she basically said there wasn't enough general interest in the topic. I'm pretty cavalier with the files I download, but there is something about Corporate Clients and Launchers that can double as data mining utilities that really bothers me, plus the necessity of always online for said clients is really a no go for me

Nice article... they could have mentioned that enforcing a client for even downloading your (maybe even DRM-free) product is a risk in itself - either by malicious data-mining by the owner of the client themselves, or - if there was a security breach - the spreading of an infected client which could be up to all kinds of no good (stealing data, encryption and blackmail, botnets).

Personally I've given up hope that anything will change. People simply don't care. Be it constant tracking and surveillance by their "smart" devices, micro-transactions and loot boxes, nothing owned, only "service" or "subscription"... people seem to be fine with it.
Today's generations of gamers don't even know a time without Steam on PC, consoles without online accounts. And on mobile GooglePlay are basically the same thing, if not worse. Game streaming will now become a thing, because bandwidth and speed (latency) finally allow it, it will only fail if the companies are either too greedy or the market becomes too fragmented right in the beginning.
If a company gets too greedy for the time there will be a short and loud shitstorm, but people buy anyway (see SW:BF2).

On the whole most people don't care, many grew up with it, it's their status quo, just like horribly processed food, air pollution and omnipresent ads. Most people are so busy in and "captured" by their daily lives, they don't have the time or energy to really care about "the future", the "what if Steam goes down or locks me out". People don't care that much about destroying the environment they live in, why would they give serious F's about some entertainment products.

Pretty fucking disingenuous to act like GOG builds will forever remain compatible,as GOG is more often lagging behind simple game updates compared to every other digital games store out there. And Steam started in 2003,hated by just about everyone. GOG started in 2008 and had a site shutdown as a PR gag happen before they even climbed out of niche populiarity. If I was a betting man I'd put money on GOG shutting down first as it's dropping of nearly all it's core principles over the years and constant clusterfucks happening on the technical side is only hidden by their overtime work on PR and devoted cultists in the forums.

Article was a very pleasant surprise. Something I wish it would have addressed in detail is the idea that the buying choices of people affect the entire market (meaning people with different tastes are also affected), particularly when the industry has such a vested interest in stream-only gaming. In other words, I would love if we lived in an ideal world where person A can choose to buy DRM-free, person B can choose to stream, but imo that is not going to be allowed by the industry in the long-term if enough people choose streaming. I mean look at right now how GOG is the only store to sell big games DRM-free and is a fraction of the size of Scheme. If GOG ever did go out of business, that is basically it for DRM-free gaming other than maybe some indies and zero-budget titles like on itch (not saying these are bad games, but I am more interested in the big releases like Metro Exodus and Prey being DRM-free).

The underlying problem is still that for most people, the term PC gaming = Steam. They don't think about any other options, let alone something comparatively relatively minor like DRM. That is IMO the main core of the issue.

And it's hard to persuade someone to change their ways after they've been doing the same thing for many years. Imagine someone suddenly telling you to start doing something differently after doing it the same way for a long time. You wouldn't be all that happy or willing about it either.

They can be made to work forever. Even in 200 years someone will be able to extract the innosetup installers and create a source port or emulate a Windows OS from the iron age of computing. Well you can do that with a DRM'd game too, but first thing it would do is complain about not being able to reach the DRM servers.

Unfortunately no one is interested in non-drm until they have a problem.

Gog is the best store but in the medium term it will disappear. It is impossible to survive with the competition that is so harsh and in an inferior situation.

Personally, I'm just going to be scared of the day the internet breaks, and civilization collapses into anarchy.

Seriously though, one of the reasons I buy DRM-free is so that I don't have to rely on external factors to be able to play my games.
If my internet goes down, as long as I've downloaded the files, I can still play the game.

Not so much if Stadia or Steam etc. go down. While I applaud these new technological innovations, infrastructure has not caught up. Being able to always be able to play your game as long as you have an internet connection will be a limit until you can guarantee an uninterruptable internet connection. Which may be the future, but is not the present.

While I was on the side that regarded Steam as a bad idea when it first came out, due to the philosophical implications and the dial up internet I had, the technological state of the world caught up to the idea. You can download things in seconds or minutes now that would have taken at least hours then. Now Steam is accepted because it works - those pesky hidden monitors and spies and data miners - well, if you can't see them - then they must not be there(!).
Steam is so accepted that it is the industry standard. But so was video, then DVD, and now everyone just watches Netflix.

While the world burns, and people rock fetally, cut off from social media, I'll be in the corner playing Planescape.

Where exactly did I claim that?

Pro-tip: "backwards-compatibility" of a game is exactly the opposite of "being compatible with future OSes".

Still don't get it? Ok: I was talking about my ability to play the games on the older OSes (where the games were originally released), rather than whether or not they will be playable on future OSes.

Then again, I am not convinced that Steam releases are more future-proof either (ie. playable with future OSes). Quite often Steam releases of older games tend to have compatibility issues with newer OSes than GOG releases.

Possible or even probable, but completely beside the point of what I was talking about.

You see: even if GOG shut down tomorrow, I could still keep playing my GOG games, thanks to DRM-free (and the fact that I have actually downloaded my GOG game installers already).

If Steam closed its doors later, like a week after that, I still could keep playing my GOG games, but big part of my Steam library would now be unplayable by default, thanks to DRM.

I hate to play devil's advocate, but there's something to be said about publishers finding a way to 'secure' Day 1 sales from piracy in a way that does not bother MOST customers because its practically invisible.

That's practically the ideal. 99% of the customers get the product as usual, exchanging the cash for the product they want, and the 1% that was going to get the product through illegal means during launch day cannot; they have to wait. This would hardly be a problem for the 1% if we didn't live in the most hyperconsumer times of all where even missing out on just the first day feels like missing out on the entire game for some reason (except for older people that are probably part of this forum).

Yes, there are proven disadvantages to being the paying customer in this case, like a drop in performance, but most customers don't even notice this disadvantage. They sure noticed the fact that they couldn't install their game because they lost the manual with the cd key on it, or that they had to flip through a book to find some word to play the game. Don't notice anything right now when they click Play on a game in their Steam library.

You can argue that it's worse now because of that but... In the end, all that matters is that the customer is happy and getting their money's worth. If that's what most customers feel, then... Good on the publishers for finding an adequate solution. My point being, this is the best form of copy protection that publishers have come up with since they started selling computer games; it's the one form that most customers don't complain about.

Edit: DOOM Eternal is actually a lucky hit for us, as it showed those 99% of customers that they normally get inferior products due to the invisible DRM.

One solution might be if i could teleport myself to the year 40.000 or so, have myself converted from my oldtimer game mode to the current generation mode , since they obviously who don't care or mind buying DRM instead of a game .

Anyway, that would be the only way i could stop disliking DRM and start buying it, cause there is no way i will ever like DRM or change my opinion about it.