GOG.com to publishers: “Pirates aren’t your customers. Forget about them.”

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In a forthcoming interview with IncGamers (coming up later this week,) GOG.com’s Trevor Longino reiterates his site’s opposition to Digital Rights Management (DRM) and expresses dismay that publishers still insist on using it as a method of preventing piracy.

“What we’ve been saying for years is true: some people will pirate, and they aren’t your customers. Forget about them. Spend your effort on taking good care of the people who actually pay you, and you’ll be successful,” Longino says. “Adding DRM to games is like adding DRM to books or music–it’s been done, but both of those industries are learning that it doesn’t actually make any difference in piracy.”

He adds that GOG’s stance against DRM has always been as much an ethical as business decision, even when the site was just getting started.

“We were already opposed to DRM, and when the founders started the company, we knew that if there was one thing that would be sure to anger people who wanted to play classic games–which don’t have DRM, by and large–it would be to add DRM on top of them. Making a game substantially worse for the consumer and then selling it? That sounded like madness.”

It seems like a sizeable proportion of the PC gaming public agrees, as with a reported 2 million site visits per month GOG.com has a fairly hefty following. “Our well-known stance about DRM is something that, I think, has helped inform that audience about what DRM is and why they should care,” says Longino.


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