GOG: How an Indie Game Store Took On the Pirates and Won 397
An anonymous reader writes "As if we needed further proof that DRM really is more trouble for publishers and consumers than it's worth, Good Old Games, the DRM-free download store that specializes in retro games, has yet more damning evidence. In an interview this week, the store's managing director says that its first venture into day one releases earlier this year with Witcher 2 was a storming success — and the version that hit the torrent sites was a cracked DRM version bought from a shop. The very definition of irony."
Love GoG (Score:4, Informative)
Found a lot of my lost collection and favorites there. Love em.
Re:Dropping DRM is a step in the right direction (Score:5, Informative)
When talking about games, the "assets" are 3d models, textures, scripting and dialog.
Source code isn't playable without data
Re:Dropping DRM is a step in the right direction (Score:5, Informative)
Doom is open source. You still need the level file (*.wad) to play the game. You have to pay for that.
Re:Addressing only half the battle. (Score:5, Informative)
Probably detected a break in the HDCP chain. The Anydvd driver is essential for HTPCs even when you own the bluray disc.
Re:But without DRM ... (Score:5, Informative)
The crackers would be more likely to crack the one with DRM, because there's nothing to crack on the DRM free copy. Cracking is a game to these people, with nothing to crack there's no fun.
Re:Article is Misleading (Score:5, Informative)
What? No. Utterly false.
In fact, the parent company of GOG [wikipedia.org] is the company that developed the game in the first place [wikipedia.org], so of course they made it available on GOG. It was available on launch day from GOG back in May 2011 [gogwiki.com]. In fact, it was available from them for pre-order before it was available anywhere else. The reason you're probably confused is because GOG replaced the regular edition of the game with the enhanced edition in April 2012, hence why it shows as having a release date of April 2012 on GOG's site.
Sorry to rain on your ill-researched drivel with some actual facts.
Re:Dropping DRM is a step in the right direction (Score:4, Informative)
They did. I read that back in the Wolf3D/Doom days that one of id's company jokes was the "$50,000 XCOPY"; they'd have another dev license the Wolf3D engine for $50k and then they'd xcopy the source onto a tape.
Doom hit the scene in December '93 and the source was released in '97 - at first under the non-commercial id Software license, and a few years later it was dual-licensed with GPLv2 as well, so some of the older sourceports are closed-source.
Re:Addressing only half the battle. (Score:3, Informative)
DVD video actually has plenty of DRM (both content scrambling to prevent unlicensed playback and region coding to prevent geographic redistribution). The "problem" is that they're both trivial to bypass. DeCSS doesn't bother to pretend to be legit; it simply brute-forces the scramble. Region unlocking has existed for over a decade.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)