GOG: “Gamers are not criminals and they do not need DRM”

GOG (short for Good Old Games), the online store for PC games operated by CD Projekt RED of The Witcher fame, has become famous for its hardlined stance on DRM- or how it is absolutely not necessary. All games sold on GOG are DRM free (including, yes, the newest AAA releases such as The Witcher or Age of Wonders), and with CDPR just announcing their client for PC gaming, GOG Galaxy, they reaffirmed their stance on DRM and its absolute pointlessness.

“DRM is only impacting the good-hearted passionate gamers out there,” Guillaume Rambourg, vice president GOG North America, told Eurogamer. “The very same gamers who are ready to spend $50 or more to own their favourite triple-A title and support our industry.

“Going through some cumbersome online activation procedure? Sometimes even having to connect to the Internet to activate the single-player mode of your favorite title? Or even worse, being obliged to remain online to play that single-player mode? That’s not really the best way to reward those faithful gamers who just spent quite a chunk of their monthly income to buy your (expensive) game.

“Our industry should be cherishing and treating all gamers with respect, those people who pay our wages, servers, development projects and what not. Instead, we just make it frustrating for them to buy games. How schizophrenic is that?

“DRM is not protecting any product,” he added. “It is harming your fans and your brands in the long run.”

“If being a DRM-free platform was such a threat, then how come GOG.com welcomes 2 million gamers a month, distributes 755 games as of today, has been profitable from the day one; and is more ‘alive and kicking’ than ever, five-and-a-half years after we launched?”

He has a point, though- simply because of their stance on gaming and DRM, GOG (and by extension, their client) earns a fair amount of goodwill from gamers that makes them want to support them. Hopefully, the launch of the GOG Galaxy client only means good things, because competition is great for the market.