It's part of the license agreement. Granted it's using the honor system, but legally they can only be installed on systems you own and only one copy running at a time.

Thanks for the answer, guys (I can't quote your replies, I get a formatting error message). I guess it's because I am too tired and sleep deprived at the moment, but I can't find any mention of that in their terms of use.

Anyway, I find that too restrictive, and it should be rephrased to say it's a household licence. In the off-chance that my wife wants to play one of my games, I am not going to buy another copy for her.

It's legally gray point. T gave us semi-official statement where he said we should treat our GOG-s like physical games. If you borrow them you can't play them at the same time. It's mostly honor system, as no one can limit you as games are DRM free.

In the old days, when you had a physical copy of the game, you were still expected to use it for personal use only. Sometimes games had some form of protection, and other times there was nothing stopping you from copying and installing indefinitely. Either way, your software was intended for personal use. People just never really gave a damn about the licenses back then, but DRM has made that a tad more necessary than it used to be.

It's still the same here. Nothing is physically stopping you from using the software as you wish, however. If you wanted to, you could install your DRM-free games on all of the computers in the house. It is against the terms, but GOG would have no way of finding out, and there's not too much harm in it either, seeing as your wife likely wouldn't want to play one of your games enough to buy a copy of her own. It's based on the honor system. Start burning dozens of copies for everyone in the neighborhood and uploading torrents everywhere, and that's when you're outright abusing things. That's the sort of behavior that led to things like Steamworks and SecuROM in the first place.

So, you know, just use good judgement. You're not supposed to share your games, but you can. You weren't supposed to copy video tapes back in the day, but everybody had two VCR's for doing just that anyway. If you do share some of your games, though, you should at least try to encourage folks to check out GOG and maybe buy their own copy.

Because you keep throwing in installing. I don't consider unlimited downloads part of 'the point' for DRM-free downloads. Freedom to install on unlimited amount of computers, sure, but not the download part, which is all he asked.

I think using common sense is ok. I personally consider it ok that I install it on PCs that I maintain, even if I wasn't the main user of the PC. In practise that means those machines are in my household, at least most of the time. I presume GOG and the IP rights holders of the games are ok with this, I hope to know soon if they aren't. :)

I don't give games to friends, distant relatives etc. And if I got such an urge (which I don't), I think it is a much better idea that you are the one installing the game for them, not to pass the original installation files around (which they can then pass to their friends, and they pass to other friends, someone puts it to torrent sites etc.).

You are the one who bought the license, so you should try to control at least somehow how, where and when the game is used. Not your friends etc. Hence, passing around the actual installation files is a no no in my mind, even if it may be quite possible to extract the needed game files from the completed installation.

That's the reason why I'd personally like it that DRM-free game purchases were somehow watermarked to the original buyer. That would curb most people from passing the games to people they don't trust (not to pass them around even more).

Agreed. It is a no-brainer. For example, the Strategy First games I bought from their site in the "SFI Super Bundle" are definitely DRM-free (no online activation etc. needed for installing or playing the games after obtaining the game installation files the first time), yet you don't have an option for unlimited downloads for them, but only certain amount of times (I don't recall how many times).

They actually expected you to keep local backups of the games you buy/download from them. So I did exactly that.

Don't worry - there's nothing wrong with your wife sometimes playing the games you bought. Who you allow to play the games you own in your own home is really up to you. The point people here are trying to make is that buying a game doesn't make you entitle you to hand copies to all your friends.

Check out #9 in this FAQ to see GOG's official stand on that. In fact, the FAQ says it is a household license and it's legal to install the games on several rigs in your home. :)

Technically you still buy. Effectively you rent. ;-P. Generall we can throw this into the 'what is drm bag'?

People think of DRM as a thing on their discs or installers that interfere with the normal workings of a game for the sake of making sure it's not a pirated copy. I think of it as an umbrella term that includes all the small technicalities that limit your licenced purchases one way or the other. Or rather manage them. Hence the term Digital Rights Management.