Sorry for the awkward title, couldn't think of a good way to word it.

Basically, imagine a world where Steam and other Client DRM, as well as performance-debilitating DRM were not a thing. What if we went back to serial numbers on the back of manuals, or copy protection in the form of code wheels and such... Would you still ONLY accept DRM-free copies of games?

For me, it's definitely only the Client and Performance-impacting DRM that makes me want to buy primarily from GOG. Otherwise, I didn't really mind DRM in those other forms because I do believe that it is fine for companies to want to "protect" their games at least to some degree to keep at least the general consumers from copying and distributing their games (literally everyone copied floppies because it was so easy). I do believe in a balance between the customer and the seller, it's just that we live in a crazy world where general consumers accept being forced to create eight different accounts for eight clients that might go offline in less than eight years that makes me so anti-DRM nowadays.

I am ready to be convinced to change my perspective here though!

Leaps ahead in time to GOG's future questionnaire:

It depends how you ask the question. GOG found that if you ask "would you accept any form of DRM" then the answer was overwhelmingly no, however they interpretted that as a typo on "Now!". When they rephrased it to "would you like free stuff, and some things you might have to pay for with online content" then the view was much more positive. Furthermore when they phrased it as "do you want your available games to be the same as other stores" they found that there was an overwhelming desire for DRM'd games.

Except that's not how it works, because it only takes one person to crack a game and then it's DRM-free for all intents and purposes. Also floppies had some pretty intense DRM, which at best required specialized copying software, and at worst physically damaged the drive, so that's really not a good comparison.

I don't want any DRM. Why would I want any? It does not help me in any way. It can only hurt. Stop trying to hurt me.

Since you mention serial numbers on the back of manuals..

Back in the day, I got a legitimate copy of one of the The Sims' expansions for Christmas. Only problem was there was no CD key in the booklet, just a blank rectangle showing where it should've been. I had no internet access at home back then, the game was bought from a brick & mortar store in a different town (weeks ago), and it took weeks to resolve the issue with the publisher and get me a working key. Sigh.

Also, CD keys have been used to fuck with people trying to play multiplayer.

No, I won't. When DRM free exists, that's it.
As for that silly "protection" argument, DRM only harms legitimate buyers anyway. And that's even when just sticking to "market" arguments and not going to my views in general, which would do away with any profiting in such a manner and such "rights" other than the one of those who actually did the work to be recognized for it (so basically don't remove or alter credits).

In this theoretical future, as it’s never going to happen, there would not need be any drm, user would trust developer would trust user. As however is mentioned, this is nonsense. Greed drives everything, need for revenue from the product, from the data harvest, from advertising. DRM (and clients, online only, streaming) is less about protection (as most games are cracked on day 1 and run far better because of it), but more to tie you, harvest your data, make you reliant on the companies. So if anything, it’s going to get far worse as streaming becomes the norm.

Really? I didn't know about that, that's pretty awful. "No thanks!" to that then. Hmm never thought about DRM like that, you changed my perspective. I thought DRM is always just about protecting the content from being cracked Day 1, but what you say makes more sense - It's just about making you a ever-flowing fountain of money that can never leave their garden. F*** me...

And here is my annual "Yeah, I was always fine with offline disk/ printed serial key DRM" answer.

I was thinking about The Sims when I wrote that because I remember it being painless and unobtrusive. Your situation definitely shows that even that can mess you up and keep you from legally playing the full game that you paid for.

Insane how just a few responses already made me hate DRM more and more completely.

I see anything offline as copy protection, not DRM. To me DRM means the company manages your access AFTER the sale, which I consider a much different thing. Not everyone agrees with this opinion though, which is fine.

Anyway... I accept Steam style DRM when I have to, so obviously I would support disc checks and whatnot. It's funny though, I remember when Dragon Age Origins first came out and I was a regular on the Bioware forums. People were SUPER mad that game had a disc check if you bought it retail, and complained endlessly that it should have been a Steamworks game so it didn't need the disc. it's a universal truth that people prefer convenience over almost anything else with these things. There's a reason GOG 2.0's focus is on making the multiple client future more convenient.

The one DRM I have boycotted and will not accept is always online. I did not buy Assassin's Creed 2 or Splinter Cell Conviction until Ubisoft patched that out, and I still have not bought Diablo 3 to this day. There are also online games I might play solo like The Division 2, but I refuse to buy them without an offline mode. This is why I'm confident I can boycott game streaming without much internal conflict.

Actually, I still have the game.. so here's proof :)

Regarding floppies, there was a huge campaign for the time from computer magazines against those hardware copy protection, enough to convince some publishers to release non-protected floppies, even to mention it in front of game boxes.

I have the example of Koei, which was used to sell protected floppies in the japanese market (pc-88, pc-98, FMT, X68k...) and first sold their games in North America with protected floppies, such as the the first Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

But a bit later, their NA division released unprotected games, clearly mentioning it in front of the box, while the japanese division was still trying other copy protections :
when CD came, I believe they thought that having CD extra was enough for a time as copy protection - which is still a problem if you want to play old MacOS CD extra games since CD extra emulation for Mac still doesn't seem to be full operational, whether you use BasiliskII/SheepShaver or Qemu. And then they moved with DRM since early days even to that ridiculous situation: take the example of a few old PC-98 games of theirs, they cracked the floppies, made a custom PC-98 emulator, packaged all of this, and added a DRM in top of this, to be sold as a single CD for ¥2,000 or a three games-compilation in the 25th aniversary editions.

Meanwhile during the late 80s and early 90s, the Koei US division managed to release a good number of games unprotected, which were ported to DOS (almost none of these were ported to DOS in the japanese market prior to NA release), even ported a few to Amiga, and Mac. A distribution deal for Europe was made with Infogrammes, so the european market had benefited of these unprotected games too.

But time passed, and US division was almost shut down mid 90s, so no unprotected and thus no DRM-free games since.

It shows a lot concerning battle against DRM, because you don't see any massive campaign against DRM from gaming journalism anymore. Their "neutral" stance isn't neutral at all, because by promoting gaming "at any cost" is promoting DRM per se.
And since journalists don't move, why should gaming industry?

Offline checks are more under your control than online ones (especially "always online"), but they're still mostly pointless in a digital world:-

- Code Wheels can be lost (and are not easily "backed up" in terms of physically recreating them)

- Manual passwords, eg, "Enter the 3rd word from the 5th paragraph on the 9th page" password checks are useless today given that they're bundled electronically with the game (and would be bundled with any illegal downloads too), then it's no longer proof of physical ownership of anything at all and far easier to copy a PDF than physically photocopying each page of a 75 page manual, and thus completely ineffective. In fact many DOS games both here on GOG and still not available elsewhere have been cracked so that the game will accept any word as input.

- Serial numbers (typed in once on install) are trivial to "back up" (store them in a text file) and probably the least invasive, but as others have said 1. There have been several physical boxed titles in the past with missing keys, and 2. Pirates will simply include them anyway, so just like manuals it's no longer proof of some unique physical sticker on the back of a box.

- CD-checks are mostly annoying and many legal owners use No-CD's anyway just to be able to play them on a PC with no optical drive, when travelling with a laptop or just reduce wear & tear on the disc. However some were a lot more sinister than others, eg, rootkits or installing a device driver just to run a game now fail hard on Windows 10 due to MS deprecating certain hostile types (which they should have done right from the start), so entire swathes of certain types of DRM on discs now need to be cracked under W10 even for legally owned games, ie, punishing all owners whilst pirates are unaffected.

- Intentional disc errors, eg, deliberately incorrectly formatted discs or non "Yellow Book" compliant CD-ROM's have caused problems with some CD-ROM drives. We've also seen this with music with non Red-Book compliant Audio CD's failing to work in some car stereo / portable CD players. Half the time, when you can't copy the disc, crackers will simply repack the installed game itself into a new Inno installer file + any registry changes made. For some old games this is needed anyway, eg, NOLF (non GOTY) originally came with a 16-bit installer (for a 32-bit game) and thus can't be installed on a 64-bit OS unless an alternative 32-bit community installer is used.

Bottom line - None of these were really functional at all vs piracy. With today's games now being "digital" vs physical, stuff like manual code words / serial no's makes even less sense than it did 20 years ago. And as many people have commented in the past, DRM is really less about piracy and more about killing off the second hand disc resale market, something they're now pushing hard for with consoles.

A lack of movement from journalists seems to be the cause for many problems in different industries. I watched a long retrospective video on the history of Nvidia GPUs and their reception, and it was crazy how very strict and demanding journalists drove a company like Nvidia to keep innovating and making better deals. Now, no journalist challenges companies. In video games, journalists are too scared to even rate a game anything below a 7, and GPUs are almost always given a favorable fluff piece. Same with DRM, like you said, except there they legitimately just keep quiet and barely speak on the matter.

I once wrote an article on how DRM had broken a few of the games I had bought and submitted it to Mixnmojo.com. It got rejected on the grounds that it didn't mention LucasArts games enough, and was more about DRM in general. Sadly, I can't find said article on any of my backup drives.

This was written about 10 years ago or maybe less.

All I remember from the article was that it detailed how a store-bought copy of Scarface came broken out of the box, due to faulty DRM (had to download an official patch for it to run), how a slightly scratched Runaway 3 (or 2, can't remember) disc wouldn't run, saying it didn't pass the copy protection check, resulting in me having to download a legally dubious No-DVD patch, and details on a few other games I can't recall.

These were all legitimately bought copies. I had paid money to play these games, yet the protections they had implemented to keep out "pirates", were keeping me out instead. So, the "pirate", in this case and in pretty loose terms was the publisher.

From code wheels to hints in the manual to serial numbers to disc-check DRM software, I see nothing that makes me wanna support a product which makes my life harder when all I want is to sit back and enjoy myself with no hassle.

Having said that, modern DRM seems to have less problems, even though it still produces some nevertheless. So, for now, I can accept some DRM as long as it doesn't hinder my booting up a game and enjoying myself.

I have a bit over 200 games on GOG and a bit over 50 on Steam. Some games I own both on GOG and Steam since I bought them before they came here. Even if some DRM is "invisible", I still re-bought it on GOG, and will do so again when DOOM, DOOM Eternal, any of the GTAs, Alien Isolation or other of the games I really wanted to have in my library appear on GOG.

So, in conclusion, you can say I accept DRM as long as it doesn't "bust my b@lls", and as long it's on sale, though I still secretly wish it'll pop up on GOG some day.