Again, the same is true for Steam as well, so it's a moot point.

But the same is also true for Steam, so it's a moot point.

It depends on the game and how they handle steam, if they see steam as a requirement then the game is choosing to use steam as a very rudimentary (and easily bypassed) DRM. But this is more about lazy development than DRM, essentially they're not expecting the steam APIs to fail, which is ridiculous considering they have non-steam versions, so a simple if statement would solve this issue. Also this paints those games in a very bad light to me, because if they're doing that with some API call on steam they might be doing it with another and now the game needs to be online always.

There are plenty of multiplayer games that don't require steam, iirc all of the paradox games you can just copy the folder to a different computer without steam and run the binaries.

And while not ideal, someone else pointed in another comment that there's an open source implementation of the steam API, so worst case scenario you just replace the library in your backup and you're done.

Yes, there are a couple of corner cases, I know of 1. But what I stated is still true as a general rule.

On most games yes, like I said before I've copied games from my computer to others to play in lan to convince friends to buy a game.

Then there are badly implemented games, where you need to either delete the steam library from the game folder or replace it with an open implementation.

And the rest are the ones that have DRM (which are not available on GOG anyways so they don't matter for this discussion).

Yup, GOG just has good marketing department and lots of people fall for the DRM-free (but not really) games you own (but not really) campaign.

How is that different from backing up the game folder on steam? In both cases it's true that:

• You're not doing anything illegal at the moment you do it
• You can use it to play the game on a different computer (as long as the game is DRM free which is not granted on either platform)
• The company (Valve/GOG) can't remotely erase your copy
• If the company removes the license from you your backup is now technically illegal but it's unlikely to be enforced

I fail to see how GOGs approach is any different, they still sell you a license and you're backing up the installer in case the license gets removed and/or you're forbidden from redownloading the game.

Yes, but the same is also true for Steam, so it's a moot point.

No you don't. You get the same license as you do on Steam, here's the license btw https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/16034990432541-GOG-User-Agreement-effective-from-17-February-2024?product=gog :

We give you and other GOG users the personal right (known legally as a 'license') to use GOG services and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content. This license is for your personal use. We can stop or suspend this license in some situations, which are explained later on.

Which is very similar to Steam. In both cases you can keep the files you've downloaded on your machine, and on most cases you can copy those files to a different machine and keep playing it. GOG has better marketing on this regard, but they're both very similar, neither enforces DRM nor forbids it entirely, although GOG does tend to be a bit stricter (but they still allow it) whereas steam is a bit looser but knowingly implemented a weak DRM and let's you know in the game page if the game has any stronger form of DRM.

I would lose some of my library, but I think most of it would still work.

But the APIs are public, so they can be reimplemented in open source. There just hasn't been any reason for it since currently that would only be used for piracy (in fact some "cracked" games have a mockup of the steam API that just returns the expected things as if it had contacted the servers). But the moment steam goes away I give it a couple of weeks until there's a GitHub implementing most of the basic stuff.

You can't also say conclusively that every LAN game on GOG is DRM-free on GOG either.

I read that other comment, that's an issue with the specific game. I've played dozens of games without connection and not putting it on offline mode, if that specific game tries to phone home on login that game is wrong. I wished Steam would have a DRM-free tag to be able to differentiate them easily.