Projekt Management - Part Two

I think there is a huge difference between shipping a game totally DRM-free, and applying the protection that certain titles have. Personally, I think that extra content will get more people to buy legitimate copies of a game. We've always wanted to remove DRM from The Witcher, and as soon as all factors fell into place, we did it. It's always up to many sides to decide upon things like anti-piracy protection, or lack of it.

In the end though, DRM is always connected with some sort of discomfort for the end-user. Nothing has been decided for The Witcher 2 yet, but we'd love to take things lighter this time.

The lack of DRM is of course one of the main features on GOG.com. We decided to do it that way not because keeping it in would make optimising games harder, but because we hate DRM ourselves. We are gamers and we hate all the hassle that comes with all those copy protection schemes.

In our opinion most DRM systems, if not all, make legitimate customers feel like criminals. Just look at how many things you can't do if you buy original games. You have limited number of installations, so you won't be able to install it on all computers you own. You need to connect with a server each time you want to play your game, so you can't play it on your laptop during a flight. Also, you can't make a backup copy of the game, so if you lose your disc you have to buy the game again. Compare that to those who download the illegal copies of the games from internet; the game is already cracked and is deprived of all those copy protection schemes and all of those restrictions.

We understand that developers and publishers need to protect their work, but in our opinion implementing draconian DRM won't help in this. The right way to fight piracy is to offer good games at a reasonable price with cool additional material which will convince people to spend their hard earned money on original copies.

We believe that gamers are honest people and if they find a product that meets their expectations, they will grab it without any problem. Gamers are fed up with being treated like criminals, so if you want to earn their respect you have to treat them with respect. It works in our case: you won't find GOG.com installers on torrent sites.

The DRM-free approach definitely doesn't make our job of adding more games to the catalogue easier! To be honest, it's the main reason you can't find some of the most famous classics from PC gaming history.

It was harder at the start but, with time, when more and more publishers joined our "DRM-free revolution", more publishers started thinking about selling their games via our service. The opportunity we're offering trumps DRM concerns.

In most cases the older titles aren't sold by such publishers at all. We're giving them a chance to monetise their old brands without any work on their part. We're optimising the games to run on modern operating systems, we're preparing all the materials and we're promoting the games ourselves. How could you miss such great opportunity, right?!