Interview: Good Old Games and the "idiocy" of DRM

[Capper]

Don't Remind Me

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.

Interview: Good Old Games and the "idiocy" of DRM

[NoctisReitop]

I <3 old games. *looking into this goodness*

[LaKraven]

This really makes me remenis over how games have lost their innocence. Shareware is basically dead, nobody seems to make it anymore! Companies are all revveling in the idea of massive profits through overpriced, usually unfinished or badly finished games, and we are the ones that end up paying the price.
Logic would dictate that we gamers should STOP buying their products... but let's be realistic, the vast majority wouldn't stop buying... certainly not enough to make a message clear.

I for one salute projects like GoG for bringing back "dead classics", now I just wish there were a project like this which brings the same "anti DRM" position to modern games!