DRM Free Sites

I've purchased DRM Free games from several legitimate sites - which allows me to burn the game files to disk and so not have the files taking up space on my drives when the game is not actually in play.

So far I've used :-

GOG

Humble Bundle

Itch.io

Fireflower and

DotEmu .... [Although I think this one is now closed ?]

And was wondering if anyone knows of any others that I've not listed here ??

Thanks.

Mad

DotEMU's online shop is closed, but DotEMU is still around, and is still in the game business as a publisher/developer. Their old website is gone, and if you didn't download your games when they warned you, you're out of luck. You can read about what they're into now at the Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dotemu

Unfortunately ShinyLoot and the Adventuregamers shop are closed. They offered an interesting selection of games when they were still around.

Most games I've looked at at HumbleBundle have Steam DRM, and Humble has made logging in such a pain in the butt I don't bother buying there anymore. When I emailed them about it, they gave me the boilerplate, so I'm done with them.

Even without a "DRM-free" restriction, sites that specialize in Adventure games have had problems and closed up shop. For example, ***Adventure Shop*** (archived link), which Gameboomers used to advertise and which had limited online activations for games purchased there.

As far as I know, GOG, Fireflower, itch.io, and occasionally Humble) are all there is except for developer-owned sites like
https://www.mdna-games.com/
http://www.shadowtorstudios.co.uk/store/
http://www.darklingroom.co.uk/store/

Thank you very much, Jenny100

I thought the ones I listed might well be the only ones. But it was worth asking.

[And yes, I have to be careful at Humble Bundle to not choose a "Steam" release !!]

Really quite sad

As Jenny100 so elegantly put it, logging in to certain websites and accessing the games that you've already paid for is indeed a pain in the b***. And since DRM hasn't had any effect on piracy whatsoever, why do they even bother?

It should be mentioned that Steam actually has several DRM-free games. There are some gems there, but only a few adventrue games.

Thanks for the link to that very comprehensive list, Mikael, but the few on it that would appeal to me I already have - and without the assistance of Steam

There's an Italian store too, you probably know the name, but it seems abandoned and they are not responding to developers, no-one knows who owns/runs it anymore, so I'm not gonna link them. The one contact we all had (Roberto Bertoni) abandoned and "didn't know" who took over, (that's "professionalism" right there..!) then tried to flog us all marketing from some other company without any closure on that Italian store. So would also advise (or politely ask) that you don't buy adventures from them, as no-one will benefit from it. If someone here does know who owns/operates it now (seemingly no-one, but someone is still paying the server bill) please do speak out! It's effectively a scam store at this point.

Sorry, m0ds, I don't know which site you are referring to. If you care to PM me the name I can ask some friends I have who do PR in Italy that may know.

https://gamejolt.com/ is also DRM-free.

Another good site is allvideoclassicgames.com for old games that, for the most part, are unavailable anywhere else, and they all work on the latest operating systems. Yes, a bit pricey, but well worth it, I have bought quite a few of games there, such as "Amber, The Journeys Beyond", "Blade Runner", etc.
Each purchase gets you, not only a download, but a physical disc, shipped in two days.
HAPPY GAMING, fellow Boomers
Sandy

Thank you, CaptainD and Sanford

Hmm... just looked through allvideoclassicgames's list and I would just say to check if you really can't get a game somewhere else first - no disrespect to them or their service, I'm sure it's good, but Beneath A Steel Sky is available for free on GOG instead of $15 there. Looks like it is a good service for games that you genuinely can't get anywhere else though.

(It's possible that this is the only instance of a game freely available somewhere else, I'm only picking up on it because it immediately jumped out at me.)

Hi CaptainD,
In my post,I said "Unavailable games for the most part". I would like to play "Morpheus" again but any copy of that game requires downloading a program such as Daemon Tools Lite which I do have, but I can't get it to work, so I'm going to contact Allvideo and ask for adding Morpheus to the list.
Sandy

Hi Sandy

Never played that one, hope you can manage to get it working somehow!

Morpheus ??

I'm hoping THIS is still being worked on ....

When I play a game on Steam I usually test if it's DRM free or not. With DRM free meaning that the the game after downloading it through the Steam client doesn't need the client to work. Quite a few adventure games are indeed DRM-free in the true sense. Pretty much means you only need the client to download but are then able to move the folder with the game freely to any other computer or burn it on disc never having to bother with the Steam client again. Almost even more DRM free than GOG, with their proprietary installation files.

The advantage of GOG for me, frazap, is that I don't need to use a GOG "Client".

I log in, buy the game, download the game files using my browser, burn them to disk and off I go

[However, I have no intention of setting off yet another GOG v Steam discussion !!]

Does anyone know if it is ??

I respect that.



Wasn't my intention either.:)

I contacted Chris at Allvideo about adding "Morpheus" and he replied: "I did have Morpheus to offer, but had complaints that the game was crashing. I wasn't able to fix it, so I removed it. Too bad since I have had so many requests for it lately. So sorry."
Sandy

If you want Morpheus to work on a computer with a 64-bit operating system, you'll have to run it in a Virtual Machine with Windows 95 or 98 installed.

You do not need Daemon-Tools if you have a CD or DVD drive and the game discs. You only need Daemon-Tools to mount CD drive images if your computer has no CD or DVD drive. Daemon-Tools takes the place of not having a CD or DVD drive.

Daemon Tools won't magically make a game that contains 16-bit code run on a computer with 64-bit Windows. You'll need a Virtual Machine to separate your 64-bit Windows from the game -- and if you're using a Virtual Machine, it will mount drive images anyway, so you won't need Daemon-Tools unless your drive images are .bin/.cue pairs or some format other than .iso files.

Using an old Windows 95 or 98 computer with processor speed around 200 Mhz would be the easiest way to get it working. Virtual Machines aren't made for games and may not work 100%. But they're the best we have.

And as always, don't confuse 16-bit code with 16-bit color depth. Any computer can run 16-bit and 32-bit color depth. 64-bit operating systems won't run 16-bit code outside of a Virtual Machine.