Quoting: liamdaweThere are already games on Steam that don't require steam to even be running, Steam already supports it.

For me DRM free means several things:

1. Having an option to get a downloadable installer / package which you can save and use at any time on any machine without relying on existing service.
2. No registration keys and etc. to play the game.
3. No requirement to run some shadow process ("client" and etc.) to play the game.
4. No requirement to connect to any servers to play the game (unless it's a MMORPG or something that implies on-line connectivity by design of course).

I'm not using Steam, but I got the impression that it requires #3 (running a client) for many games. And while it doesn't require it for some games, it doesn't offer a downloadable installer for any game. So there always is some DRM involved. I'd rather support services which have clear DRM free policy.

Quoting: HamishDosbox and ScummVM may be free, but the GoG products and modifications are not, and they should be treated just the same as any proprietary application. 

Do you mean they distribute modified DosBox and ScummVM? I'm not aware of that. None of the DOS games I got from GOG so far had any problems running in stock DosBox and ScummVM. It's not an indicator of course, since I have just a small subset of their games. But sure, if they need a modified emulator - the only way is to ship it with the game. On the other hand, why can't they submit their patches upstream in such cases?

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I actually would strongly dislike if they'll release DOS games for Linux with bundled DosBox and ScummVM - it's extra clutter. They can specify a simple prerequisite - have DosBox / ScummVM installed for those games. Users aren't dumb, and if they are interested in old DOS games, they already have DosBox and ScummVM installed with high probability (and if they don't, they'll easily install it from their repositories). Many Windows users are also "noobs", yet GOG don't bundle for example DirectX with each Windows game.

Anyway, this shouldn't be something for GOG to spend their time on first, while they don't sell native Linux games yet. Their DOS games installers are trivially extractable with innoextract and anyone can play them now without running through Wine.

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Quoting: HamishBesides, GoG games do not tie into one central Dosbox install when they sell their games anyway, but ship with a custom configured executable with each game purchase. Can you imagine the trouble that would cause if it did? Just because Linux has a packaging system does not mean you need to do that level of dependent insanity.

Which is rather silly and is caused by the lack of any packaging system on Windows. On Linux they have no need to package DosBox and ScummVM for each DOS game - it's pointless, they can use distro's emualtors and ship only config files.

But those games aren't really the main focus in this issue. Native Linux games are. And for them as you said, many packaging solutions are developed already.

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Quoting: AnonymousGoG is great for old Windows games, I give them that. But the way they handled this story, with one lame comment, borderline insulting if you know a bit about Linux, is a deal breaker for me for a long time to come.

In reply to this, and previous commenters who asked, why the question of Linux support on GOG is still active. The answer is rather simple - GOG is second biggest digital distributor after Steam, and in contrast with Steam it's principally DRM free. GOG don't position themselves as targeted for old games exclusively anymore. They are directly competing with Steam already and bring more and more new games.

So to answer the questions above - if you want DRM free gaming on Linux, you should support the idea of Linux games on GOG. Steam is not an option, since I highly doubt they'll drop DRM any time soon - they are too entangled with DRM obsessed publishers, and dropping DRM would mean removing all DRMed games from the catalog, or convincing dumb publishers to allow their games to be sold without DRM, which is a huge task and Valve doesn't seem to be even interested to bother.

If GOG would start supporting Linux, they can even allocate resources to actually port games to Linux. If Humble Bundle managed to do it, surely GOG can do it too.

Why it can take them a long time - GOG are perfectionists. I personally think it has a lot of downsides, but that's how they operate. They don't use agile releases and beta features. They take their time to develop something before releasing it. They have several R&D projects for 2013, one of which can as well be Linux support. The fact that "Steam does it" doesn't mean they are doing it very well. Pulling a massive runtime to enable some game is not really an ideal option.

And indeed, GOG expressed their interest in supporting Linux before.

Quoting: frostworkAs this wasn't mentioned yet, you might be interested in
http://www.gogonlinux.com (not too active, afaik it's only one developer)
and
https://sites.google.com/site/gogdownloader
I try to keep them both more or less up2date in the gentoo gamerlay btw

I prefer the second one.
Project site: https://github.com/Sude-/lgogdownloader
Announcements thread: https://secure.gog.com/forum/general/lgogdownloader_gogdownloader_for_linux

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