Some of us knew this 30 years ago [LWN.net]

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 25, 2013 23:38 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Some of us knew this 30 years ago by shmerl
Parent article: Android 4.3

GOG (a huge digital distributor) discuss piracy and using the nonsense of DRM in general.

And how much it sells when you compare with things Like PlayStation3 or XBox360? Or even Steam?

Another *obvious* example is the music industry which dropped DRM for good.

Puhlease. Rental services like Pandora are still using DRM. And it's not clear which way situation will go. Music industry "dropped" DRM when it found out that DRM actually puts Apple in change, not them. I'm pretty sure pendulum will swing the other way at some point.

The only one that still heavily uses this idiocy is the video industry.

And again you state your wishes as facts.

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Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 26, 2013 2:13 UTC (Fri) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link] (5 responses)

As GOG users and what they think about DRM. Most of them have no respect for DRMed services (this subject is often discussed in GOG community section), and GOG is smart to utilize that to their advantage. I.e. they compete on being DRM-free. Others aren't smart enough to do that.

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 26, 2013 10:39 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (4 responses)

I.e. they compete on being DRM-free. Others aren't smart enough to do that.

Yet others are much, much, MUCH bigger then GOG. Does not it say something about number of people who will support some endeavor because it "DRM-free" vs number of people who will support alternative which is heavily DRMed but more convenient?

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 26, 2013 15:19 UTC (Fri) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link] (3 responses)

> Yet others are much, much, MUCH bigger then GOG.

GOG is much younger. It will grow, don't worry.

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 26, 2013 22:49 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

GOG predates both Google Play Store and Amazon Play Store yet it's much smaller then either of them. And iTunes Store started offered apps at about the same time as GOG started offering them. So your argument does not fly.

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 27, 2013 0:12 UTC (Sat) by raven667 (guest, #5198) [Link]

I know you can come up with a better argument than that, GOG doesn't share a platform with either of those so it's not a fair comparison.

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 28, 2013 6:09 UTC (Sun) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]

As raven667 pointed out, your comparison is not valid. GOG's area is PC gaming, not mobile applications. So it's valid to compare GOG with other PC gaming distributors.

Here is a more appropriate example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com#Market_share