Im pretty sure I read in the past GoG still sells you a license to a game in perpetuity, rather than ownership Of corse, practically there is little difference since they provide offline installers, so its much better to use GoG if you care about this.

The reason they also do this is because of copyright, the license allows games to forbid you from redistribution more copies

If Im wrong about this please let me know, I read some articles claiming this is the case but I am not sure if they truly were correct.

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3uruiueijjj 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Lots of (most?) Steam games don't have real DRM and you can run them just fine without the Steam client. So if you want to, you can usually download the game and then back up the files yourself.

GOG giving you a standalone installer saves you some effort compared to that, but in neither case do you really "own" the game.

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SirMaster 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>practically there is little difference since they provide offline installers

Well it makes it hard or impossible to sell your copy of the game to someone else after you are done with it like we used to be able to do with console game discs and cartridges?

Seems like a pretty big and practical difference to me.

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rvnx 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You can also buy boxed things and have the problem. For example FL Studio, you buy the boxed edition 300 USD, and all you get is a serial number. Once it's linked to an account, it's over (and it's actually the only way).

If legislators want to do something good, they could force platforms to allow transfer of games between accounts.

	▲	knollimar 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Doesn't this fly in the face of Vernor vs Autodesk and other lwgal precedent? Not that they can't change this, but legislators have a vested interest in protecting software rights

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daedrdev 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes but if you set up a website to do this they could sue, which I think is reasonable as many if not most people would be happy to both sell and keep a copy

	▲	SirMaster an hour ago \| parent [-]
		But it was so much simpler when you had the disc. Whoever had the disc had access to the copy and it could be sold and resold as many times as people wanted. I don't think people are so against DRM, because a disc like that was essentially a form of DRM. They are against an online DRM scheme which could change in the future. I know there were sone disc DRM that could like revoke the disc license, but let's go back before that was a thing to like the Xbox/360 and PS1/2/3 era style.