ARS interview with GOG.com

[Arátoeldar]

The DRM debate has been around for quite some time now, and as a marketable idea, its stock has gone down dramatically in recent years. Bands, movie makers, and indie game developers are all experimenting with content distributed without DRM, and knowledgeable consumers are beginning to make a stand against the overly-restrictive nature of some copy protection solutions.

 

But the DRM issue has flared up again in the game community with the recent surge of discussion in the wake of EA's Spore. EA's game has suffered major criticism for its restrictive DRM solution, which resulted in an exhaustive campaign of protest on Amazon and countless other online venues. Players protested with their opinions and their wallets, and EA in turn responded with increased leniency for limited installs, a measure that some argue still isn't enough.

 

Not all game companies, however, are on the DRM bandwagon. Consider CD Projekt and its new web venture, an online gaming portal called Good Old Games. GOG focuses exclusively on selling old, classic games without any form of DRM at low prices, and the games offered are, for the most part, games which have been out of print or hard to find for quite a while and were procured and modified to run on new machines without any DRM or intrusive software. We recently profiled the service, which is currently in beta but is fully functional and stocked with some great software.

 

I am in the beta for GOG.com. So far it has been an excellent experience.

 

Interview

[tk102]

Thanks for the link, Arátoeldar. It was nice to see some of the faces behind CD Projekt and hear their viewpoints. I especially liked the idea of positive (rather than negative) reinforcement for buying games legitimately.