Everybody's (well almost) favorite digital games store GOG.com has come up with an initiative that aims to make more people aware of what Digital Rights Management (DRM) is and why it is bad for consumers.

https://fckdrm.com

DRM is basically a technology that controls how, and when, the user can use the bought digital content, whether it be games, videos, music, books or other piece of software.

Nowadays DRM sends user information to an online server, where it runs checks to see if the user touched any files, or it can even refuse access o the software unless you're logged in online somewhere.

The FCK DRM Initiative states that DRM is basically a kill-switch built into your games (which is usually the case). Many of us might think that the DRM is not that bad. It usually works right? But what about when it does not. There are plenty of examples out there in the world wide web that illustrate how terrible idea the DRM is.

So what are your thoughts about DRM? About GOG.com? About this Initiative?

6 years ago

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Are you a fan of DRM?

View Results
Yay.
Nay!

I think right now GOG is the best platform to give as DRM free games and at the same time benefits of digital games. Also someone here are blaming GOG for not selling keys for theit games. The sell keys - you can buy game as a gift and you will receive key. I do not know why resellers do not use it for their benefit like it was with Steam... Especially since all (or most?) games are region free.

6 years ago
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I don't like many of DRM's (except only Steam), but if I must chose one, it will be - FCK GOG :)

6 years ago
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Desura... Does no one remember Desura. Now I know a lot of the games were DRM-free on desura so if you managed to download them first you could keep playing them but, when it went down you lost access to the installers and your library of everything that didn't give you a steam key in advance or a seperated non-desura installer. Gog is providing those installers so that if there site goes down the game can still be installed. Hopefully without the need for their servers. And since you can just download the installers you can create you own back-up of all the games for reinstall and not need Gog if it was unavailable much like most of the games that you may have installed from desura kept working even without the client front end. You can't do that with steam, Uplay, and Origin.

6 years ago
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I'm also wondering about the choice to use the F word in the name of this campain.

6 years ago
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looks like they believe its fun and will attract kids :O
i think that using this F word is stupid idea.

6 years ago
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Looks to me like another way for CDPR to advertise their platform.
Their marketing department is good, I'll give 'em that.

6 years ago
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Ok, people are free to prefer DRM-free as much as they want. Meanwhile I'm sticking to Steam and all the features it offers (all those DRM that just gate off games and often mess them up while not offering shit in return can go fuck themselves though).

6 years ago
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Nice to finally know GOG's stance on DRM ;)

6 years ago
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Well Steam is not DRM, it acts like downloading platform just like GOG. Fact that developers can add DRM separately is another matter entirely. But Steam =/= DRM.

There are a lot of DRM-free games on steam, but mentioning it on GOG PR site wouldn't be really wise. They didn't start whole campaign to loose their only argument. I don't know if Origin, Battlenet, Uplay have DRM-free games. I don't think so at least, they focus on one publisher so I think all games there have some sort of DRM. So they shouldn't be mentioned there.

So they take part of reality they want to show, dismiss everything else and wait for profitz.

6 years ago
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Obviously we need both platforms to download the games so I take it If we're talking about Steam vs Galaxy here which you don't even need to update your games whereas you need the Steam launcher to do it and for most games you need it to launch them. A small percentage of the library -not counting the games which work with tricks like deleting steam_api.dll or some other "hack", as they may disable the trick at any given moment- is indeed DRM-Free and I applaud companies like Paradox for their choice in that matter. But for all intended purposes Steam is indeed a DRM system that publishers have an option to leave out. Understandably GOG want to push their (only) argument but it's quite unfair to simplify the role of Steam as that of a downloading platform. And does GOG really need another argument? It is basically the main reason for competing with Steam and the major argument in the gaming community when they're not fighting about games' quality.

6 years ago
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i love Die Roll Modifiers ;_;

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6 years ago
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Now if they only would remove DRM from The Witcher 1&2 on Steam... (They use standard Steamworks authentication AND CEG)

6 years ago
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GoG dont publish W1&2 on steam though. The parent company CDPR does, and likely maintains that so people make use of this:
https://www.gog.com/witcher/backup
...and discover GoG.

Here are the games GoG DO publish: https://www.gog.com/games?devpub=gog&sort=popularity&page=1

6 years ago
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Whilst true, it mainly serves as a very clever marketing idea. Kudos to GOG.

6 years ago
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Anyone remember when GOG shut themselves down as marketing stunt, preventing people getting access to their games they'd purchased?

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103810-Good-Old-Games-Faked-Shutdown-to-Avoid-Being-Boring

6 years ago
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Maybe you need to read again the very article you linked - they didn't shut down as a marketinng stunt, they DID a marketing stunt ouf of the NEED to shut down. Important difference, because you painted the picture like they shut down just for fun, while not caring about the userbase.

wanted to avoid being making a "boring" statement about it. "98% of the code of our website was rewritten ... which required a major change in our backend and as a matter of fact, taking down our platform for a few days,"

6 years ago
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In which case, you take the site offline, telling everyone 'we're down to upgrade everything', not 'we are closing down and you have no access to your purchased products'.

6 years ago
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6 years ago
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6 years ago
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6 years ago
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i hate drm!

never change, sg-hypocrites. ❤️️❤️️❤️️

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6 years ago
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Factually inaccurate - I didn't enter!

6 years ago
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