n30p1r4t3: DrMcCoy expressed it well. One should try as much as possible, so the argument that 100% isn't possible is not really useful. DRM is like unethical pollution. You should avoid its proliferation with each opportunity.

I disagree with your idea that DRM is needed to make money. DRM is useless, since it doesn't prevent piracy. In practice DRM is only used for nefarious purposes - controlling the user, controlling the technology, controlling the market and so on. And then you should think about derivatives of DRM, such as DMCA 1201 and other such junk, which are even more evil. Unlike DRM, closed / non free software is by far not always used for nefarious purposes just because it's closed. But DRM - always, really, since DRM has no sensible and ethical reason to ever be used.

I never really encountered a situation when DRMed product had higher quality and usability than alternative DRM free one. The presence of DRM itself is equal to crippling of usability of the product, and therefore it always means reduced quality.

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Quoting: Quote from Caldazar

Quoting: QuoteHowever, if you're going to use these games, you're better off using them on GNU/Linux rather than on Microsoft Windows.

Richard Stallman

The man knows the nuances.
And I think about an important difference betwee GoG and Steam;)

I think he was comparing using DRMed games on Windows to using DRMed games on Linux. If those are compared, he said Linux is preferable, since Windows itself restricts users even more (not to mention that Windows always has built in own DRM).

I don't think he compared DRM free games (let's say Windows versions run in Wine on Linux), to DRMed ones run on Linux. So what he said doesn't apply to GOG vs Steam arguments IMHO.

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Quoting: Quote from scaineThat's an admirable stance, but not one I can get behind, sorry. It's a little too Stallman for me. If you take that stance and apply it to everything in your life you'll be giving up a fair list of things. In fact, off the top of my head: every console, Steam, some Desura, all Apple products, most Android products (unless you bypass Play and take your chance on the malware infested third party appstores), every Bluray disk, BBC iPlayer, Netflix, Lovefilm (pretty much every online film repository bar Youtube), most DVD's (the ones encoded with CSS certainly, and good luck knowing which are before you buy them), most e-books and certainly anything to do with Kindle. There's probably lot of other examples, but most of that list affects me directly.

In fact, about the only thing that isn't governed by DRM digitally these days is music. And probably that only because of radio stations.

So, yeah, pretty admirable. But not for me. I like a balance, and a little DRM is acceptable provided it in no way gets in my way. And for me, Steam doesn't.

That's what I do :) I reject DRM in general. DVDs are an exception, since that DRM is obsolete essentially, so I don't consider that to be DRM really. libdvdcss is anyway the only way to play DVDs on Linux. Blurays? Never used those, I think they are irrelevant since disks are dying out anyway.

Apple? Oh, horror, I don't even come near that for many other reasons besides DRM. Netflix? No go (clear DRM which even aggressively attempts to push it into HTML standard - even more reasons to reject it). E-books? I buy DRM free only (no Kindle or anything like that). There are DRM free e-books available, the situation is much better than movies which are limited to DVDs mostly.

I don't use Android for mobile, but not so much out of DRM concerns, but because I prefer proper glibc mobile Linux (Harmattan, Nemo, upcoming Sailfish and so on, but that's another story).

So, obviously I don't buy any games with DRM as well.

I don't really think it's extreme - it's the only way to actually vote with your wallet, since if you are indifferent, DRM only strives more.

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Supporting DRM is inherently bad, since it helps its proliferation. I hope we don't need to go into lengthy discussion why DRM itself is bad. But it's bad enough to avoid it outright. So there is some conflict here. You might want to support games which push better drivers, but you don't want to support ones which proliferate DRM. For me second issue has higher priority.

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Better drivers and so on - are good news for Linux. Majority of games which drive those changes using DRM - are bad news.

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I'm not excited that it's only available through Steam (so I'm not getting it naturally). Just wrote to Deep Silver and asked if they are going to release it DRM free without Steam anywhere. Otherwise it would be a pity if such game will remain Steamed forever.

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They answered about DRM free Linux version:

QuoteRed Baron will be available on our website www.redbarongame.com, DRM free, with Linux support (as well as SteamOS and Windows).

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/madottergames/red-baron/posts/642076?cursor=4857896#comment-4857895

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Another issues there - original Bard's Tale games (1, 2 and 3) which are packaged with the game are not starting for me. I get errors like:

overflow_sz:ffe84a1d, pos:312e
overflow_sz:ffe84928, pos:3130
...parse_option: line 11, 0x87d3700,0x87d3700 = g_joystick_type = 0 (g_joystick_type = 0) len:19
...parse_option: line 12, 0x87d3700,0x87d3700 = g_cfg_rom_path = res/sys/bttricode (g_cfg_rom_path = res/sys/bttricode) len:34
Read: 131072 bytes of ROM
Open card ROM file bards_tale/diskII.prom failed: -1 err:2
Terminated

Those are Apple IIgs releases which are in password protected zip archives - iibt1.bin, iibt2.bin and iibt3.bin. But when you try to run them from within the main game, files are unpacked in ~/.local/share/BardTale/data

Is there some easy to use emulator for Apple IIgs?

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For those who have problems with cutscenes not playing in Bard's Tale. That's because the game looks for Theora (OGV) videos, while HB package ships with MP4 (weird). So convert videos first (in 'movies' subdir of the installation of Bard's Tale):
for file in *.mp4; do ffmpeg -i $file -codec:v libtheora -qscale:v 9 -codec:a libvorbis -qscale:a 5 ${file%%.*}.ogv; done

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Lot's of work that Valve does is good, but I still don't use Steam because of principal dislike to any DRM. So, it's good when developers take care of releasing games DRM free, and not just "on Steam". Amongst Linux crowd this subject is more important in general, and there are quite a lot of Linux gamers who don't use Steam and prefer DRM free releases.

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