DRM can be a gamer’s worst nightmare, as the requirement to be online can be a problem in certain titles. Last year’s release of SimCity, for example, was plagued with all sorts of problematic issues when it came to logging in online, to the point that EA eventually had to offer a patch where players weren’t required to do so.

GOG.com never really ran into such an instance, though. Good Ol’ Games (that’s GOG for short) has found a stance where it’s offered its customers a non-DRM service, meaning that they aren’t required to play online. Now celebrating its six years in the business, GOG.com is ready to take its gaming service to the next level.

At first, the plan for going DRM-free wasn’t looked at with much positivity, recalls GOG’s managing director Guillaume Rambourg. “Everybody thought that this would be a doomed project,” he said.

However, the site has grown in popularity over the years, thanks to its fair treatment of customers and the lack of the restrictive DRM. “We want to treat (gamers) like humans, not like wallets standing on two legs,” he said. “That’s not how we see things.”

Rambourg elaborated with greater detail. ” Well, when we launched GOG back in the day, so back in fall 2008, the initial goal was to revive classic games and to bring them to modern gamers. And the other mission we had, which we still have, is freeing games and gamers from the chains of DRM. Because, to us, DRM is like a prison. And whether it’s for classic games or new games or even movies now, our goal is to free digital content from every kind of locker. I think we managed pretty well, because when we launched GOG back in the day, everybody thought that this would be a doomed project, a niche project, and in the end, as you might know, we have over 800 games without DRM and we operate with over 200 publishers and developers, including some big ones. So I think we convinced many people in the industry that DRM-free was the way to go when it comes to convincing the gaming community to buy games.”

As far as how severe a problem DRM was with games, Rambourg stated, ” I remember the good old days, I mean the good old retail days, where anybody could buy a game, a movie, a DVD, and you were simply the owner of the product. You bought it and you could enjoy it at any time, from any device you owned … the way you want it. And that’s exactly the experience we want to bring to digital gamers or movie fans. These guys, we would like them to become the owners of what they buy digitally. And the approach we have on GOG is simple; if you buy a game, it’s yours. You should be free to install it on any device you own; you should be free to make up copies if you so wish. Nobody should be telling you how you should install the game, access the game, play the game; this is not freedom. And you know, we have to give gamers good reasons to buy games, not to pirate. So the freedom we have in the whole GOG approach, the freedom is the essence of how we believe gamers want to buy games and truly enjoy them.”

GOG.com already has a number of features laid out to entice more consumers, including the introduction of an Early Access program and the inclusion of a new partner in the fold, including the possibility of Disney, Take-Two or Microsoft . . .though Rambourg wouldn’t say who.

Source: Gamespot