I think that is empty semantics. By "owning", he is obviously talking about being in control of accessing the game and doing whatever with it, even illegal things.

You don't "own" the game ever in a sense that you are allowed to e.g. share it to everyone, or sell copies of it to others. DRM tries to actively prevent that too, DRM-free doesn't. Unfortunately, DRM also prevents many other things too that would be fully legal.

In most cases, no. I'm a bit surprised you didn't know this. If that was always possible, then obviously there would be nothing to discuss related to Steam and DRM.

True, optional cloud saves are fine. They are only a problem if they (or any social features) are used as a red herring to include forced DRM, affecting also those who could live without cloud saves.

Depends if you mean smokers who want to have an option to e.g. smoke outside the restaurant on a designated area, or in a small smoker room.

I first thought you meant smokers who want to freely smoke anywhere in the restaurant, as that would directly affect also the non-smokers. I wanting a (optional) DRM-free version shouldn't affect other gamers at all. But if I demanded that certain game should e.g. exist only in GOG and not on Steam, then yes I would be affecting Steam gamers too.

I think I should rather have said I own the licence to play the game, not that I own the game. The point I was trying to make is that with a Steam exclusive, my ability to play the game is contingent on Steam continuing to exist.

I'll need someone with more legal knowledge than me to confirm that I would still be allowed to legally play Steam exclusives if Steam dies. And if so, well that must mean I could thus buy Skyrim now and legally use a crack to run it without Steam, assuming such a crack exists. And those producing said cracks don't need to worry about facing prosecution.

With respect to playing Steam games without launching Steam, I'd suspect that depends on the game. A DOSBox game shouldn't have a problem. So I suppose I could sign up for Steam, install Steam, buy Dark Forces, install Dark Forces, uninstall Steam, move the Dark Forces files to my gaming PC, and then play Dark Forces via DOSBox.

But I don't think I'm comfortable with developers having the attitude "Well, if they really don't like DRM, they'll make the effort to get around it and we will thus still end up with the sale".
Cough! Cough! I think you mean that us non-smokers are the DRM-free advocates and we don't like breathing in the DRM that all the smokers don't seem to mind ;-)

No. They're more like two guys who live in different apartments but have the same landlord. They both belong to a bigger entity called "Activision-Blizzard" that used to belong to Vivendi. For most practical purposes Blizzard is a separate entity with Mike Morhaime as the CEO.

As someone that has spent most of his life in the professional photography print business, and you being someone that is expressing concern over long term storage viability, I strongly, strongly, STRONGLY urge you NOT to use print or "Analog" as your sole safety net. Print archivability is a pretty fickle stuff, and a lot of it you have no control over, and if you are wrong about something in the chain of creation and storage then you may not see anywhere near as long a lifetime on those sources that the ratings say you can expect. It's only been fairly recently(last 15 years or so) that archivability of prints was all that viable past 10 to 15 years. People's photos all started fading into oblivion long before anyone really knew it was a serious problem or what to do about it. If you got prints dating back 50 years and they still look good, consider yourself damn lucky as it could have gone quite differently. I would also recommend getting old ones scanned pronto.

Prints are great - have them. Don't think they make your prints safer, and they make bad sources for reproduction. If you do, find a place to buy "metallic" prints rated to last 500 years.

This is probably because Steam moderators are ruthless when it comes to anti-Steam statements. They will suspend or ban you for it.

No. Both Activision and Blizzard are equal subsidiaries of Activision Blizzard, which was formerly Vivendi Games.

The thing that people don't seem to understand about the 2008 merger is that it was Activision that was bought (by Vivendi), not Blizzard; Blizzard had been owned by Vivendi for about a decade by that point. Speaking of which, another thing that people don't seem to understand is that Blizzard hasn't been an independent company since even before they released the very first WarCraft game in 1994 (and had switched hands about four times before they were acquired by Vivendi).

On topic, one reputation that GOG has been having a hard time getting rid off is that it is a DD service that exclusively sells classic games. Granted, those do represent a significant portion of the catalogue and releases, so one can't blame them for having that impression even after the re-branding. But still, there are people who don't seem to be at all aware that GOG sells indie games as well.

By the way, I find the mentality that "only pirates would want a GOG release" to be almost child-like in its naivete. Do they honestly think CEG represents some sort of serious obstacle to piracy?

No, I don't and that's one of the things that pisses me off about the issue, smokers make easy targets because they have a "dirty habit" so no one cares when politicians push through laws which address issues which weren't issues before. We're all aware that smoking is bad but if smokers want a place to congregate and drink in the warmth of a bar why should they be denied the choice? Oh right, because *I* don't like smoking or people who smoke.

I don't smoke, by the by, I just get annoyed at legislation that forces people's hang-ups on others. Let the establishment choose, most will ban it or designate an outside smoking area, smoking's not popular at all. I, however, see no reason why there shouldn't be places which cater to smokers.

No, I do, I just mean it is the establishment's choice to allow it or not, non-smokers are still free to choose a smoke-free restaurant or one with a designated smoking area or what-have-you. We're on the same page but for different things.

The reasons for it are different but the ends are the same, we've been reduced to a minority because of changing norms (smoking's not cool anymore, even despised; DRM's not that big a deal anymore) and have less choice as a result of the majority's influence.

Don't get me wrong, I'd still love it if everything on Steam were suddenly available to purchase, download, and install GOG-style but when the average Joe is telling me how awesome Steam is because of how easy it was to buy and install a game I am unpleasantly forced to acknowledge that most people just don't care if they're "renting" their games, they're just happy it's so cheap and easy. I will not give another dime to Steam, I don't support things I disagree with, but there are ten people offering their dimes in my place and the publishers have already noticed. Add in, as someone mentioned, the cost of removing Steam functionality and DRM-free really doesn't seem worth the trouble. I'd like more choice just as much as you but I have no illusions as to how much that choice is worth to the people who matter.

I don't see being anti-DRM as engaging in a dirty habit. Far from it.

Over here we needed those anti-smoking laws as people who smoked didn't respect the rights of those who didn't smoke. I don't mind smokers smoking so long as they don't pollute the air I breathe.

Same with DRM. Those who love DRM are welcome to have as much as they want. Just don't subject me to that same requirement.

But I get the point you're making.

Semantics - it is not gog or Valve who can revoke a license, but the producer / rights holder. I kept it as gog and Valve for the sake of the argument, and yes, a rights holder can revoke a license. Just because it is not ever done, do not mean that it is not possible. In a situation like this, the only difference is that Steam can enforce it, while GoG can not. If a rights holder have revoked all licenses (even if this is not ever done) - a gog copy do suddenly become illegal to play. A game bought on GoG is still just a license, same as with Steam.

For the rest - if you back up a steam game, you can also still play it even if Steam revoke our rights to do so, but you need to back it up. For gog - you need to back up the game if the same happens here and a game is removed from your library - same difference, but execution is different.

No you don't. Steam's backup is only a way to save some bandwidth, you cannot play the "backuped" game without either reactivating (it i.e. going online with Steam) or using a crack.
There is also the whole "I like some Steam features, Steam is DRM, therefore DRMs are great and DRM-free suck" crowd (Heck there was even some guy on Kotaku, or some another similar gaming site, that made a pretty long article on how DRM-free sucked because he could customize its Steam launcher page while he couldn't do the same with the DRM-free version).

I don't know how big this group is, but given the number of comments found on KS, on several games forum and even here, I suspect it's not that small.

You really can't. For some it will work as they're not DRMed, but for most, you'll have to get a crack for it to work properly.

Not to mention, what does 'back it up' mean? Many games need registry entries created at installation. If you're as PC-savvy as 90% of users, you're not going to do that - not to mention that you'll have hard time with the backing process itself, with removing the game from Steam directory. You keep suggesting solutions which are only really availible to a very small group of users, while GOG offers the very same solution for everybody.

With Steam you need to connect to their servers at least once to use the game on a new PC, even if it's being restored from a backup. On GOG you can install in an infinite number of computers after downloading as long as you have a backup.

Big difference.

I wasn't aware of such problems. I have tons of black & white photos made with cheapass communist cameras in the 50s, I also have plenty of Kodak photos from the 90s, and they look just as good as when they were developped.
I am pretty much the same. I was really mad when they changed the laws here as well. Now the owner of a restaurant cannot decide even if it's smoke free or a smoke allowed place.

btw. I would rather compare anti-DRM and others to crazy vegans that have to jump into the party and the say to everyone "LOOK AT ME, I'M VEGAN!", but it really works both ways.

How many people really say that though? Sure, you see a lot of people who prefer Steam, I'm one of them, but I don't see many say DRM-free then sucks. Do you see people saying that all the time or is that an assumption?

Which both, basically, boils down to "Steam can enforce it, gog can not". Legally, there is no difference between Steam and Gog regarding games and licenses, which I have been trying to say. You own your game, legally, just as much on Steam as on GoG.