If you’re the type of person who looks at a 95% chance of success as too high of a rate for failure, then boy do we have a delicious surprise for you. One of the few video game titles where you place your rifle barrel in the mouth of an enemy and still miss fifteen shots in a row has just arrived to GOG, bringing the misery simulator that is XCOM 2 to an even wider audience. Along with the base game being available is the entire package of DLCs ready to be purchased along with it, at a pretty staggering discount near 90%.
GOG has been slowly continuing to curtail favor with players in recent months as they become increasingly frustrated with their apparent lack of digital rights on Steam, the pinnacle online game distribution platform, as titles seemingly go missing with neither rhyme nor reason offered to users.
"You have a 99.5% chance of surviving coronavirus as a healthy young person"
XCOM players: pic.twitter.com/5eNw81iwMm
— Goose (@Fujyno) March 12, 2020
GOG, however, is a different story. This is primarily due to their adamant rule of only hosting titles that do not incorporate digital rights management, colloquially known as DRM among the industry.
That stance against DRM allow GOG to simply offer titles to be downloaded, and then its the (relative) property of the purchaser. Without GOG having an inky tendril inside of the user’s libraries, there won’t be any sudden surprises when users want to play their favorite game and find it unceremoniously removed.
GOG has another claim to fame beyond the DRM-free practice that is heralded increasingly in gaming communities; it’s run by the ever-popular CD Projekt studio that was in charge of the masterpiece Witcher 3, along with the beyond-hyped upcoming Cyberpunk 2077.
Four years ago, we emerged from the shadows to reclaim our world from ADVENT. 👽
What's your favorite moment from #XCOM2? pic.twitter.com/e2n35nHlsZ
— XCOM (@XCOM) February 5, 2020
Yet many studios find that releasing their works into the wild with little to no protection in the form of DRM is a frightening prospect, with all of the ‘evil pirates’ that are apparently jumping for joy every time CD Projekt puts out another critically acclaimed title. This bears little semblance of what many have found to be true, however; some studios have claimed that releasing torrents of their titles actually results in greater purchases, although the greatest nail in the coffin of the ‘piracy’ argument is likely CD Projekt Red themselves, with The Witcher 3.
The Witcher 3 released with no protection, and enjoyed strong sales even to this day, capturing the ‘Most Popular’ title on Steam for months as fans were eager to give the studio their hard-earned dollars in exchange for stepping into the well-worn boots of Geralt.
Regardless, it’s unlikely to change the mind of various corporations that herald DRM as the next best thing since sliced bread, so we’ll all simply have to make do with the wonderful service that is GOG. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.
