GOG update their stance on DRM-free, Galaxy as 'optional' for single-player

Quoting: GroganI don't like multiplayer. Specifically I don't like being obligated to anyone else in any way, with gaming.

Yes ok but just keep in mind MOST people play multiplayer exclusive games these days. So they must cater to both, and many multiplayer games need user account and purchase authentication these days plus anticheat stuff on top.

Gone are the days of simple peer to peer or peer hosted server multiplayer. There are of cause a few still around but newer games are all going always online route which yes is annoying and I hate it too.. Can't change reality but!

Quoting: Mountain ManThere's just too much pressure on the industry to keep games locked down despite the fact that DRM has done nothing to curb piracy in the slightest and only serves to inconvenience the honest paying customer.

I don't think the data actually bear this out, at least in absolute terms. I think there is *some* deterrent effect to DRM on games, if only for the very brief period before it gets cracked, and that might amount to a relatively small but nonzero number of additional sales. On the whole I still think it is philosophically a shitty way to treat customers, but there is almost certainly a marginally legitimate reason it exists.

I think I've come to realize something. The appeal of GOG was never really about DRM per se, it was about opposing industry bullshit. DRM just happened to be the primary, most egregious form of bullshit back in the day. Over time, big publishers continually pushed the envelope. Expansions became DLC became microtransactions became loot boxes and battle passes. DRM became "live services." AAA gaming is a cyclone of bullshit now, but GOG has remained focused only on DRM. They're no longer a bastion against industry bullshit, just one specific kind of bullshit. If my only options are "full bullshit" on Steam, or "reduced bullshit" on GOG, then what's the point? I'll just buy neither. :/

I just want an actual DRM-free version of Hitman, one of my favorite games of all time. Is that so hard to ask :(
I already own the game on Epic and Steam but I just want a version I know I'll be able to play and fully enjoy into the future even after servers go down. And they will go down eventually, they always do. I don't unusually mind DRM but when it's a piece of media I feel so strongly about, I can't help but want to have it preserved.

Quoting: areamanplaysgame

Quoting: Mountain ManThere's just too much pressure on the industry to keep games locked down despite the fact that DRM has done nothing to curb piracy in the slightest and only serves to inconvenience the honest paying customer.

I don't think the data actually bear this out, at least in absolute terms. I think there is *some* deterrent effect to DRM on games, if only for the very brief period before it gets cracked, and that might amount to a relatively small but nonzero number of additional sales. On the whole I still think it is philosophically a shitty way to treat customers, but there is almost certainly a marginally legitimate reason it exists.

The reason publishers pay top dollar for Denuvo is to increase their early sales, which tend to make up the most significant portion of their profits. Denuvo doesn't think that it's possible to prevent a game's copy prevention mechanisms from being circumvented forever, but that they can frustrate reverse engineers long enough to convince more people to buy the game.

It would certainly be effective at convincing people who don't buy because they can get it for free to buy the game, but as for people who want a game unencumbered by Denuvo's anti-tamper software or people who simply don't have the money, I don't think it would have much effect. Perhaps the truth is that the second and third groups of people make up such an insignificant portion of the publisher's target market that it isn't worth attempting to appeal to them. The question might be: "how do we convince more people to buy our game without noticeably degrading the experience for our current customers?"

I don't think most customers tend to worry that much about not being able to copy the game files to another computer. As long as they have another computer with Steam on it, they can still download and play the game. It's not as if you can only register/install a game on a maximum of three computers as it was ten or fifteen years ago; Steam instead prevents you from running it on more than one computer at a time. Most people probably think this is fair, as the only thing it really stops them from doing is sharing their account with a friend and both of them being able to play at the same time. The inconvenience for paying customers is non-existent.

As to whether Denuvo has an impact on resource usage, this is hard to prove if the only version of your game that you release is the one that uses Denuvo. Most people will assume it is the game and its lack of optimization, not the anti-tamper. And this still isn't an issue that will dissuade people from buying the game—they might be annoyed about it, sure, but they'll get over it.

The only area of concern is what will happen to the game if Steam disappears. I don't think anyone really believes this is going to happen, even if Valve files for bankruptcy. Of course, you could still be banned as you can with Amazon and lose everything you've spent thousands of dollars on for the past few years, but I don't know whether Steam does this right now.

Steam even has an offline mode that has attracted praise.

I've personally never had DRM preventing me from playing a game—assuming I was using Windows, of course. Singleplayer games that require an internet connection to play are something everyone is willing to raise their pitchforks over, but these are far and few between.

The problem is no longer that DRM is ineffective and inconveniences customers. The problem is that it works and most people don't even notice or care about it. There may no longer be an "until it's too late". This substitute for ownership is slowly becoming acceptable because the difference seems to be mostly semantics. At best, some will make a distinction between "acceptable" DRM and "unacceptable" DRM, which is usually always-online DRM for Singleplayer games.

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: areamanplaysgame

Quoting: Mountain ManThere's just too much pressure on the industry to keep games locked down despite the fact that DRM has done nothing to curb piracy in the slightest and only serves to inconvenience the honest paying customer.

I don't think the data actually bear this out, at least in absolute terms. I think there is *some* deterrent effect to DRM on games, if only for the very brief period before it gets cracked, and that might amount to a relatively small but nonzero number of additional sales. On the whole I still think it is philosophically a shitty way to treat customers, but there is almost certainly a marginally legitimate reason it exists.

The reason publishers pay top dollar for Denuvo is to increase their early sales, which tend to make up the most significant portion of their profits. Denuvo doesn't think that it's possible to prevent a game's copy prevention mechanisms from being circumvented forever, but that they can frustrate reverse engineers long enough to convince more people to buy the game.

It would certainly be effective at convincing people who don't buy because they can get it for free to buy the game, but as for people who want a game unencumbered by Denuvo's anti-tamper software or people who simply don't have the money, I don't think it would have much effect. Perhaps the truth is that the second and third groups of people make up such an insignificant portion of the publisher's target market that it isn't worth attempting to appeal to them. The question might be: "how do we convince more people to buy our game without noticeably degrading the experience for our current customers?"

I think we simply don't have data on this, so both of you are really just speculating. Unless some AAA publishers start publishing DRM-free and sales could be compared with those with DRM, and if enough of them do so to get statistical confidence in the results, best we can say is that we don't know if and how much DRM increases sales.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that AAA companies are also mostly speculating, since no one is releasing DRM free to compare, so this has merely become "standard practice" really rather than something that's properly evaluated.

For example, most AAA games make most of their money from console sales where piracy is not possible (right?), PC itself is a niche in gaming FYI. So that does hint that DRM cannot be *that* important.

Also, DRM-free _could_ theoretically increase sales too. If N% of people pirate the game, but recommend it to others and that leads to M% more sales, there is nothing forcing N>M. If nothing, at least word of mouth from pirates does mean that the actual loss is less than N%.


Last edited by ShabbyX on 19 March 2022 at 4:33 am UTC

Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: areamanplaysgame

Quoting: Mountain ManThere's just too much pressure on the industry to keep games locked down despite the fact that DRM has done nothing to curb piracy in the slightest and only serves to inconvenience the honest paying customer.

I don't think the data actually bear this out, at least in absolute terms. I think there is *some* deterrent effect to DRM on games, if only for the very brief period before it gets cracked, and that might amount to a relatively small but nonzero number of additional sales. On the whole I still think it is philosophically a shitty way to treat customers, but there is almost certainly a marginally legitimate reason it exists.

The reason publishers pay top dollar for Denuvo is to increase their early sales, which tend to make up the most significant portion of their profits. Denuvo doesn't think that it's possible to prevent a game's copy prevention mechanisms from being circumvented forever, but that they can frustrate reverse engineers long enough to convince more people to buy the game.

It would certainly be effective at convincing people who don't buy because they can get it for free to buy the game, but as for people who want a game unencumbered by Denuvo's anti-tamper software or people who simply don't have the money, I don't think it would have much effect. Perhaps the truth is that the second and third groups of people make up such an insignificant portion of the publisher's target market that it isn't worth attempting to appeal to them. The question might be: "how do we convince more people to buy our game without noticeably degrading the experience for our current customers?"

I think we simply don't have data on this, so both of you are really just speculating. Unless some AAA publishers start publishing DRM-free and sales could be compared with those with DRM, and if enough of them do so to get statistical confidence in the results, best we can say is that we don't know if and how much DRM increases sales.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that AAA companies are also mostly speculating, since no one is releasing DRM free to compare, so this has merely become "standard practice" really rather than something that's properly evaluated.

For example, most AAA games make most of their money from console sales where piracy is not possible (right?), PC itself is a niche in gaming FYI. So that does hint that DRM cannot be *that* important.

Also, DRM-free _could_ theoretically increase sales too. If N% of people pirate the game, but recommend it to others and that leads to M% more sales, there is nothing forcing N>M. If nothing, at least word of mouth from pirates does mean that the actual loss is less than N%.

I'm certainly speculating, but if you want a biased source:

90% of visual novel players don't buy the game (the game was bought 50,000 times, but the patch was downloaded 500,000 times)

Most visual novels today are released without DRM. I can think of only one visual novel localizer today that releases the game encumbered with DRM. MangaGamer previously used Soft-Denchi for its DL releases about a decade ago, but didn't include it in physical releases. Their audience helped change their mind, and many other localization companies also followed suit and now only release DRM-Free editions. Even in Japan, most physical releases are unencumbered by DRM today, with some exceptions.

Johren, on the other hand, also localizes games into English but only releases them with always-online DRM for which you only get 3 activations, after which they tell you to purchase another license. They haven't released any numbers, and I doubt they will, but they're a much larger company than most localizers as a DMM operation. Many people openly express distaste for Johren for how badly they feel they're treated as a customer, however. Limited activation, always-online DRM is something that will incense most-everyone, I suppose.

These sources are clearly biased, but do with this information what you will. I think the only thing you can conclude is that it depends on the game. I've always thought the games that don't end up having their DRM circumvented are games that few people are interested in playing.

For what it's worth, visual novels are mostly released on Windows, but there are some console and mobile releases, so PC sales make up most of the overall sales.

Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: areamanplaysgame

Quoting: Mountain ManThere's just too much pressure on the industry to keep games locked down despite the fact that DRM has done nothing to curb piracy in the slightest and only serves to inconvenience the honest paying customer.

I don't think the data actually bear this out, at least in absolute terms. I think there is *some* deterrent effect to DRM on games, if only for the very brief period before it gets cracked, and that might amount to a relatively small but nonzero number of additional sales. On the whole I still think it is philosophically a shitty way to treat customers, but there is almost certainly a marginally legitimate reason it exists.

The reason publishers pay top dollar for Denuvo is to increase their early sales, which tend to make up the most significant portion of their profits. Denuvo doesn't think that it's possible to prevent a game's copy prevention mechanisms from being circumvented forever, but that they can frustrate reverse engineers long enough to convince more people to buy the game.

It would certainly be effective at convincing people who don't buy because they can get it for free to buy the game, but as for people who want a game unencumbered by Denuvo's anti-tamper software or people who simply don't have the money, I don't think it would have much effect. Perhaps the truth is that the second and third groups of people make up such an insignificant portion of the publisher's target market that it isn't worth attempting to appeal to them. The question might be: "how do we convince more people to buy our game without noticeably degrading the experience for our current customers?"

I think we simply don't have data on this, so both of you are really just speculating. Unless some AAA publishers start publishing DRM-free and sales could be compared with those with DRM, and if enough of them do so to get statistical confidence in the results, best we can say is that we don't know if and how much DRM increases sales.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that AAA companies are also mostly speculating, since no one is releasing DRM free to compare, so this has merely become "standard practice" really rather than something that's properly evaluated.

For example, most AAA games make most of their money from console sales where piracy is not possible (right?), PC itself is a niche in gaming FYI. So that does hint that DRM cannot be *that* important.

Also, DRM-free _could_ theoretically increase sales too. If N% of people pirate the game, but recommend it to others and that leads to M% more sales, there is nothing forcing N>M. If nothing, at least word of mouth from pirates does mean that the actual loss is less than N%.

When I say that "DRM has done nothing to curb piracy in the slightest", I am referring simply to the fact that any game you want can be downloaded for free regardless of what copy protection the publishers encumber it with, so in that sense, DRM is a complete and total failure. From the publishers' perspective, however, if they see a slight bump in day one sales, then they probably consider it a resounding success, although it could be argued that online stores like Steam that make it easy to buy and download games have had the greater impact.

Quoting: Mountain ManCompanies that lose sight of their original focus tend to not last long.

To be fair, sometimes it works. A quick search turns up examples of famous companies that completely changed their focus and were fine, or got vastly more popular and successful as a result. Suzuki, now known for their motorcycles, originally sold mechanical looms, Avon originally sold books, etc.. Of course, sometimes it also doesn't work out (and I'm sure more business-savvy people than I could do a decent job predicting whether it will or won't for a particular case), but it's a little more complicated than a blanket statement either way.

Quoting: Philadelphus

Quoting: Mountain ManCompanies that lose sight of their original focus tend to not last long.

To be fair, sometimes it works. A quick search turns up examples of famous companies that completely changed their focus and were fine, or got vastly more popular and successful as a result. Suzuki, now known for their motorcycles, originally sold mechanical looms, Avon originally sold books, etc.. Of course, sometimes it also doesn't work out (and I'm sure more business-savvy people than I could do a decent job predicting whether it will or won't for a particular case), but it's a little more complicated than a blanket statement either way.

I suppose there's always a caveat, but I'm talking about successful businesses that abandon the thing that made them successful in order to pursue something less certain. Those are the ones that often find themselves suddenly struggling. Probably the most famous example is Coca Cola when they retired their original formula and introduced "New Coke" only to watch their sales take a dive. Of course they were a large enough company that they could absorb the loss and correct course, but smaller businesses are rarely so fortunate.