How do you determine if and when to buy a DRM'ed game if you think it will probably never come to GOG?

What is your metric for judging this matter?

What is your threshold, beyond which you will decide to accept paying for a non-GOG, DRM'ed game because you feel that if you do not accept those conditions, then chances are, you will never play that game within your lifetime, since it most likely will never become DRM-free at any point in time?

Supplementary question: have you ever regretted your decision to buy a non-GOG DRM'ed game? (i.e. either because you retroactively grow to dislike the DRM so much that, in hindsight, wish you had just not bothered to play the game whilst it has DRM, or because the game came to GOG later even though you thought it wouldn't)?

Additional Supplementary question: have you ever regretted your decisions NOT to buy a non-GOG DRM'ed game because you prefer DRM-free, but that game never ended up becoming DRM-free even though you really want to play it?

Never. If it's not DRM-free it's not worth my time or money. Even if it were gratis. Seriously, that's the only consideration. I'm not going to be a terrible person and prop up DRM systems.

Any other answer is incorrect.

+1: I got charge backs both times this happened early in the DRM-explosion era when I bought physical boxes that were nothing but keys in a box.

+2: Nope! There have been a couple titles I've been tempted to set sail for (a couple examples being sister titles in the same family as a game that is on GOG), but even there, I have not.

Free time is ALREADY a serious limiting factor in what I have available to me. Companies have to compete for my time even more than they have to do for my money. Customer-hating attitudes like including DRM are a great way to filter them out.

I can totally understand that position.

However, the downside to that position seems to be that one who takes it shall inevitably miss the opportunity to play many great games that are simply never going to become DRM-free.

Does the notion that you may never get to play certain great games bother in you in any way? Do you feel like maybe you might be missing out on something in that regard?

How can you boil it down to a simple metric?

Everything is relevant when choosing whether to buy a game or not.

Of course in 99% of cases, I am sad when I bought a game on the other place and then it comes to GOG a year later. But there you go, we have to live with the reality of the situation.

I have absolutely no loyalty to either Steam or GOG, I buy games because I want to play them and although I prefer DRM-free and avoid DRM as much as possible, sometimes there are reasons to buy somewhere else. Case in point, GOG prices their games in USD for me, whereas on Steam they are in JPY - given that the yen has gotten much weaker over the last year, and some developers have opted not to/neglected to adjust their regional price on Steam, some games are 33% cheaper on Steam now whereas they were at parity a year ago. Not GOG's fault, but it is a consideration for me.

That said I spend 10% of what I used to spend on Steam due to building up a backlog and also some bad experiences with Microsoft DRM on Steam. It would be 0%, but Steam does a good job of making gaming on Linux easy due to their integration with Wine/Proton.

I don't know. But the decision has to be made somehow.

And if there is a metric by which to make the decision, then it would be good to know what it is.

But what I'm really trying to get at is: what's the best method for which to make a decision of when to accept a non-GOG DRM'ed game for the sake of being able to play it at some point in one's lifetime, which otherwise might not happen if one refuses ever to accept any DRM?

It's a personal decision. Everyone's personal metric will take into account all of their desires and circumstances.
I don't make my decisions based on other people's opinions of DRM, only my own.

If you are looking for advice, my take would be that if there is a game you think will never come to GOG in a million years and you want to play it, just buy it when it is most heavily discounted somewhere else.

In some cases it's easy. Origin and Uplay don't release their new games on GOG, so that's the only viable option.
Also, for a game like the latest Lego Star Wars, I know we are still missing it's two predecessors, one of them being released over a decade ago.

Yes it's a personal decision. But I would argue that it's easier & better to make good decisions after one hears feedback from others in a similar boat (hence the reason why I made this thread).

It's the same principle behind why customers for any product will almost always read or watch reviews before maybe buying it: because they want to hear feedback about the matter from others in the same boat.

But didn't you get Horizon Forbidden West, which doesn't (at this time) have a DRM-free release at all? There's still the option of piracy. When DRM is involved, pirated copies end up having advantages over legal copies of the game.

My own personal stance, is that there are few games worthy of tolerating DRM.

In some cases it is unavoidable if you follow a franchise, and did so long before Steam came on the horizon. This has been the case for me with both Half-Life and Tomb Raider games and a few others. They are really the only exceptions, unless I can get the game for free.

Of course, the biggest hurdle to all that is attraction, so I have a policy of not looking into games that aren't DRM-Free, unless they are free ... or maybe on the rare occasion extremely cheap. I don't torture myself with urges for games with DRM. Even at GOG, I have a price point where I won't even check out a game and add it to my wishlist, unless it is cheap enough in the first place. No need to resist impulse when you don't know enough to care.

You cannot resist all urges though, and I certainly have a goodly number of games at GOG that I really want, but are playing a discount waiting game on my wishlist with. It does mean being prepared to take a chance though, as games do disappear from GOG.

In the end though, I have the philosophy of plenty, where I have plenty of games just waiting to be played, so no need to develop too much of a craving, when I can just be smart with avoidance and distract myself.

I also have the philosophy, that any DEV or PUB that imposes the unnecessary additive of DRM on their game, doesn't really want me to buy it, and they certainly don't care about me, so why should I let myself desire their game or let any desire override my sense.

Not to mention, that any purchase of a DRM game just encourages that regime.

I've bought a lot of games at GOG, and have certainly done my bit big time, to encourage DRM-Free.

Hell, I cannot even be bothered to chase up a pirated hacked version of a DRM game, except in the rare case maybe, where I have been angered by DEV/PUB behavior ... like maybe abandoning a game on GOG but not at Steam etc.

P.S. I've not really bought a game at Steam and then regretted it because it later appeared at GOG. I did however buy some Tomb Raider games at Steam and got a couple free there, that later turned up at GOG. No regrets though, as I did not pay much at Steam, and they were damn cheap at GOG, so that I happily re-bought them at the asking price. I have never paid much for the few games I have bought at Steam and Epic.

I will only buy DRM games that are MP only, like Zero Hour. Use to break down sometimes and buy a game with DRM. But every time I bought a game with DRM, it would be released on GOG shortly after. haha . I am looking at you, Mad Max.

Nowadays, I wait or don't care because I have so many games on my backlog. There are few games I actually want that are not coming to GOG. Off the top of my head, Ready or Not is the only game I want right now.

This was my issue with buying games on steam.
You can try cracking your DRM games on steam, but even that is not 100% guaranteed it would work, or a new update will stop it from working. I had many games that would not work even when using Goldberg and steamless. This is why it's essential to support stores that offer DRM-free games.

Obviously you decide to buy it when you no longer are willing to wait to play it. Easy to do If you've got other things you're happy playing.

But then again you may die tomorrow. So if it's something you really want to play you might as well just play it right away. And there's something to be said for playing things when they are new and current. Some games are great at the time of their release but not so 10 years later.

If I'd die tomorrow, I would not play most of what I want to play anyway. I still have a lot of unplayed games which I never find the time for. I kill the time until tomorrow playing all the second choices. But if I'd die tomorrow, it would not matter anyway.

For old-school disc games (half of which aren't even on GOG), I bought various stuff over the years simply because 'NoCD's' were a thing back thing (nothing to do with piracy either, people used them all the time to save wear & tear on discs or play games on laptops with no optical drive). Ironically, these are the only versions of such games that continue to work on W10 today. And many of these games ended up either having their DRM removed in official patches anyway (Diablo 2, Prey 2006, etc), were re-released as DRM-Free versions (Age of Empires 1-2 Collectors Edition, Age of Mythology Gold, etc) or were bypassed with source ports.

For new DRM'd Steam, Ubisoft, etc, games I simply don't buy them at all. There's been various AAA games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Dishonored, Prey, Bioshock Trilogy and of course Skyrim which everyone thought "will never come to GOG" - until they did. Even I doubted Skyrim would come here due to the work in removing Creation Club, but they did it. That doesn't mean everything on Steam but not currently on GOG will come here, but pretty much everything I'm interested in has. I don't do multi-player at all, so nothing lost there. I've also lost a lot of interest in newer AAA's for reasons other than DRM (eg, trashy monetization, getting very tired of seeing 'obvious cash-in' remakes / remasters / sequels to the same worn out IP, etc). Not at all. Probably the sanest thing anyone can do it learn to grow out of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), not just for video games but pretty much everything from scalped GPU's & flagship smartphones to social trends. Even if the future of DRM-Free is utterly bleak, I've reached the stage where I already have more games to play & replay well & truly backed up than spare time to play them and I simply stopped caring about a few that may "slip through the cracks".

I have stopped determining if a video game that has Digital Rights Management (DRM) will be released for sale on gog.com or not and started to purchase them from Steam again and then write a negative review that it is not sold on gog.com.

I have given up waiting for ten years or twelve years of the video games not being released for sale on gog.com.

I thought I had it in me that I can wait twenty years or longer, but I cannot..