I'm just saying a 2% loss in CPU resources isn't something that's going to rile up the masses. Some might complain on the Steam forums after they bought the game, but it's never going to effect anyone's purchase decision. It just is what it is, same with client-based DRM. Not enough people care to change things.

A consumer rights argument coupled with loss of access to a popular title is about the only thing I can see changing the general acceptance of DRM in the gaming industry.

I don't know why you keep bringing Steam into the equation or DRM.

And games are usually what pushes PC hardware advances. That means that a PC bought even just 3 years ago, is gonna struggle with some new games, and every bit of overhead counts, and might mean the difference between smooth and jerkier.

In any case, like I said earlier, we are talking common denominator. So for many, systems specs will be lower than others, and within reason that should always be taken into account. So whether support fro virtual drives is built in or standalone, is just a matter of degrees of overhead.

P.S. Did you go back and look at the first posts of mine etc in this thread, so that you are conversing in the right context?

Then one could find other ways to save more system resources more so than the ones taken by using such things.....or buy newer hardware....or not play said games/play them on lower settings. All are also options. :)

It's still a bit important how much those degrees are.....I am guessing a built in virtual drive uses a decent bit less resources than one you have to install and keep running(simpler for most to use, too).
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As for SV: He is bringing DRM and steam up because it's ontopic/what the thread is about to some degree and it relates a bit to what you said....as showcased in this bit: "It just is what it is, same with client-based DRM. Not enough people care to change things." In that bit he shows how he used steam/drm as an example to prove his point a bit.

Perhaps GOG had made a mistake by letting some rookie support guy too early to respond to tickets without any supervision?

I once had a very interesting experience with Shroud of the Avatar's support after the launch that eventually escaled to a practically instantly denied refund request as I finally asked if I needed to ask a refund to get them to stop trying to repeatedly close my ticket and actually ask the developers if the offline mode is coming in a later update... ...and as it indeed was restored somewhere between me sending the ticket and the refusal to refund the game, it makes me wonder if my ticket was even once read by a real person instead of some automated process that wasn't even aware of the term "offline mode"?

"We are terribly sorry about the way we delivered the bad news, ktxbye!" If the apology doesn't come with confirmation that the DRM has been or is been removed, it would just throw gasoline to the fire, so unfortunately staying silent about this might be best strategy especially if GOG still hopes to get the publisher to agree on fixing the issue or allowing them to do it.

GOG probably is not in any postition to force all publishers to agree on GOG's standard contract form without some case by case adjustements, so it is totally possible that in the case of F.E.A.R.'s expansions the publisher is arguing that since GOG failed to report on the issue within x monts and that the problem isn't "severe" enough to meet the requirements in the contract to grant GOG the permission to step in and fix it themselves, so the case is closed until GOG can provide more convincing arguments to them.

What makes you think that once a publisher agrees on releasing a game on GOG that they would just give GOG the complete freedom to modify it on a whim?

Hopefully they have learned to put more effert on checking if any leftover DRM can be found and if so, then they need to allocate their most experienced hackers to figure out how much trouble it would be to remove it completely and if doing so would increase the performance, make the game more stable or stop any future problems like this:

It seems that they indeed removed the whole Bin32 folder, so there goes the hope of restoring the 32-bit support by downloading a cracked executable assuming of course that someone even has already cracked the 32-bit version properly.

I guess because not enough us kept demanding to have the original DOS executables included with the ScummVM releases, GOG is now starting to also regard 32-bit executables as something that is not worth supporting for games that also have an 64-bit version?

I should have stopped to think that when were are dealing with thousands of games, even maintaining over 99.99% success rate on removing the DRM, that is still going result in GOG having at any given time multiple games having some remnants of DRM and some of them may turn out to be not so inert as was thought.

As it would be statistically impobable for there not being such cases from time to time, our main concern should be to keep GOG on their toes so that the situation doesn't get worse and worse as time passes.

Just in case someone thinks that I don't mind at all about GOG not removing DRM completely from all of their games, that is not the case, it is just that even what little I know about this stuff is enough to understand that if DRM is embedded too deep into a game and the source code is not available, we may sometimes have to tolerate a compromise where some of the internal local integrity checks are left in the game while the online verifcation is bypassed and the driver/service level stuff is taken out or isolated from affecting the rest of the system if we are not willing to buy such games elsewhere and then suffer their DRM in its full capacity.

I'm okay with DRM that is used in the early days of a game release, as long said DRM get's removed. But this rarely happens unfortunately. In relation to GOG, I'd be willing for accept GOG having their own non-intrusive DRM, similar to Steamworks DRM, as long as all publishers sign a contract that gives GOG the authority to remove the DRM within a certain time frame, say six months to a year after initial sales have died off. There could even be a separate listing on the site for these games.

Something like that would help GOG secure newer releases, while still fulling the ultimate goal of having all games DRM free here. But beyond that, no I'd prefer DRM free.

Then they should say such and issue a statement or even just a reply in the thread he made or somewhere else on the forums so we can know that.....keeping us in the dark/staying silent suggests(a small bit) that they advocate for that person's reply and stand by it.

Who knows....it reminds me of the latest YT debacle with Markiplier(spelling) though, where some of his users got their google accounts/YT accounts closed due to posting emojis to one of his chats when he did a game.....people kept asking to get their accounts back and so far no one(that I know of) has gotten theirs back.

They could easily make a brief..."we know about this and are trying to work on it" statement that would likely calm more down than it would upset.

Except that most of them likely like gog to do the work for them and don't mind them using such methods...heck iirc some companies even used cracks/etc themselves when releasing ports of their games for new systems, or based their new game versions/ports on said cracks/etc.

Hopefully....but if they don't bother telling us such things as the FEAR example and the Crysis one then what else could they be hiding and not telling us?

That's what worries me and likely others, to some degree.

This...well as long as they don't blow people off with such replies again, that is.

(Yes, it might've been an unofficial reply in the case of FEAR, but by not replying to the accusation they are letting rumors develop which hurts their image)

They could've easily removed the DRM in FEAR with cracked exes which are already made by others, so them not being able(technically speaking) to remove such doesn't apply here.

I have nasty suspicion that the way we laymans think that these matters should be dealt with is likely not at all in line with how any experienced PR people tend view things.

If a publisher has been too accustomed to hold the power to invalidate your license just on a whim, getting used to the idea of not having that control might take some time and the transition may involve the legal department making it as hard as possible for GOG to mess with their IP without their approval.

If GOG can't yet confirm that a fix is on the way, they would be in risk of more or less directly throwing their business partners under the bus as ultimately they are the ones who added the DRM in their games.

I am likely to be far more irritated than most people to find out that games they liked to play can't be replayed anymore thanks to DRM, as I would then actually want to be able to erase all memories of me playing those games. All I needed to be able to boycott all Steam exclusive games was to think how difficult it could become to future-proof them if even a few games per year would require having this or that version of the client in offline mode for their cracks to work.

And yet I am able to recognize that I can't expect GOG to be infalliable, so I just have to hope that whatever games I buy here don't have any issues and if they do, it will be rather hard for GOG to try deny my demands for a refund if it comes to that.

The rumors have clearly not yet become loud enough to force the PR deparment to reconsider if making a statement is worth the risk of it being just as likely to pour gasoline instead of water in to the fire...

But are they allowed to do so if the publisher happens to be such a control freak that they themselves "fixed" the expansions and their legal deparment made sure that GOG has to follow very strict rules to be permitted making additional changes to the game?

They are still human like the rest of us and prone to making mistakes....as such I don't give them as much credence(though I do give them a bit here and there) with such each and every time.

They've had FEAR for a bit of time now, and they've(gog) changed things on many games before....I wouldn't doubt much(though am not sure of 100%, of course) that they have it as part of their standard contracts by now.


They could issue a "we know about the problem and are seeing if we can find a solution" non-answer and avoid most of that.....also c'mon, those pubs/devs are already hit with bad pr by using DRM/doing other bad things....how much more "under the bus" can they get in some cases?

Also by not replying they are already adding fuel to the fire be allowing some to speculate and spread rumors without either confirming or denying them to quell them.

Still, we must hold them accountable and demand answers/fixes to some things else they could likely become as lax in some things as other stores/companies.

If they don't want to add fuel to the fire then maybe it's because they are complicit and don't want to publicly admit such and tarnish their image.....but that could be avoided while issuing a statement that is spun the right way.

They already do it for many games in the catalog(use cracks/pirate copy fixes/unofficial tools/etc)...I am guessing either they have a clause in new partner contracts to allow for such or moist if not all ip holders are ok with it.

I am just saying that if you or me would get in a position handle GOG's PR, it might not be so easy task as you seem to think, as our "common sense" would likely end up not applying well on that type of work.

What makes you believe that the standard contract would survives intact from the negotiations? Some small indie developer might be relatively easy to get to sign that contract as it is, but the bigger publishers would likely start by throwing that document to the trash bin and offer GOG one their own contracts which then would eventually lead to some kind of a compromise or one of the parties would just walk away from the deal.

Throwing one of your business partners under a bus is likely to also weaken your relations with your other business partners and endanger any future or ongoing negotiations with them or potential new partners.

I too would like them to respond, but if there is nothing positive to tell, then the official response thread would not only bring more attention about the problem with the expansions, it would also attract queries for the status of other games that have problems, so from GOG's point of view staying silent might be the best option for them until they can announce that the DRM has now been totally cut out from the expansions.

I never said that we shouldn't keep reminding them about these issues, but the more people take a step back and try to look at the big picture before making assumptions about GOG being stupid for not doing [insert your ideas here] right now, the less likely the discussions about how to deal with these problems are to decline into a competition over who comes up with the most baseless accusation against GOG.

Maybe as a challenge you could try to write that "spun the right way" response in GOG's behalf as it seems so easy thing to get done in your mind? But in all seriousness, don't bother as even you seem to have forgotten the saying about not attributing to malice what can be explained by... ...so no matter what you come up with, GOG would still be the main villain in this for some.

And yet the only thing we know for sure is that sometimes a game on GOG has a known scene crack applied to it, which doesn't tell us anything about who applied it or if it had to go through the other party's own QA before it could be released?

TL;DR, this isn't so black and white as you seem to think...

Maybe, maybe not.....I know if I had the job i'd want full leeway(well with exceptions of course like not saying outright lies or doing illegal things) or i'd likely quit.

As I said letting gog do all the work to make games run(older games) is more easier for them to do, and gog has done it before, so it seems to be the default most partners would agree to(though yes of course maybe not all). It also saves them time with getting the games to run and saves time/money with regards to contract negotiation.

At this point does gog have much clout with them anyways? Many of them either want their own store or go to steam/epic at this point.

There is something positive to tell....that they know about the issue and are trying to solve it....that official confirmation alone would garner them good pr...and also they NEED to have attention shown on them, as it would keep them honest/on track/accountable. Right now the speculation isn't helping just as you say bringing it up wouldn't help. I still think a simple "non-answer" would quell most of that speculation for a bit and allow them to get their eggs in one basket....being quiet just makes people assume the worst in some cases.

People ALREADY sling possibly baseless accusations against gog...that is happening now, mainly due to them being tight lipped about their inner workings so much & not communicating much with the community.


I would issue a blanket "we know of the issue and regret it happening, we are doing everything we can to work on trying to resolve it" reply, or similar, which would at least make gog seem more caring than the reply that one guy got or no reply at all.

Also as said above, they are already speculating bad things about gog...mainly due to gog not wanting to communicate much with the people that keep it in business when they have qualms with said business.


By that last line and your wording so far it seems you are unwilling to even consider me right on much, so why continue this talk?

(BTW I did enjoy the civility of your replies and talking to you, but it seems you are mostly unwilling to admit gog could be in the wrong here/want to defend gog[with the seeming "gog knows better" line of reasoning used by others] so I see no point hitting my head against the proverbial wall much longer. Thanks for the talk but I am bowing out)