First, some backstory (not required reading):

I bought Neverwinter Nights here at GOG.com, noting the very fair price and lack of DRM as positive aspects.

I played through some singleplayer modules, then decided to run NWServer on my LAN server so me and my brother could play cooperatively.

To my dismay, we could not join the LAN server at the same time: all copies of NWN from GOG.com ship with the same CD-key. NWServer checks clients' CD keys against each other, and won't allow duplicates to join.

Not exactly DRM-free, now is it? But that's beside the point.

I Googled around a bit and quickly found the solution: request a new key from GOG. Easy enough, I sent a support ticket, sat back and waited.

Roughly six hours later, I received an email with a replacement nwncdkey.ini file, containing some unique CD keys.

Overall, I was quite impressed with the process, I had no problems and I'm not here to complain about that particular aspect.

What's my point?
My point is that about halfway through the entire process, I got tired of waiting and decided to scour the Internet for CD-keys to use.

You'd be surprised (maybe not) at how many places offer lists of static CD-keys, applications with which to generate unique CD-keys, and even cracks to remove CD-key checks entirely.

Having just bought the game, I felt completely justified using a combination of these tools to prepare a few versions of nwncdkey.ini, all of which possess unique CD-keys.

My point (or more, accurately, my question) is: why doesn't GOG.com do this? I doubt many people would care (or even realize) that methods of circumventing DRM were being used. It'd surely make a lot of peoples' lives easier.

Many of the CD Keys found on old lists or produced by key generators are banned on some older PWs (Persistent Worlds). If its just you and your brother, there's nothing to worry about. If however, you attempt to join a PW, you could find that the key you used has been banned. I've also encountered cases where 2 or more players on a PW used keys from a generator or listing of "valid" keys and ended up with the same keys. Then, whoever logged in first would unintentionally block the others. Many PWs also block the generic GoG keys to prevent issues down the road.

Key generators like to have trojans, also. I'd never go that route on a PC I cared about.

I'm hoping that once Galaxy is finished, they'll implement auto-CD-keys for NWN. We'll see.

When NWN came out on GOG, everything was like this. Request and get a CD key. But the newer games (like NWN2) automatically come with CD keys to put in.

Lastly, many folks consider CD-keys for multiplayer aspects to not be DRM. They consider multiplayer gaming a "service." I disagree whole-heartedly, but I also see their point. Multiplayer gaming has a lot of complications that single-player gaming does not. NWN was built to reference each character with a unique identifier and they used the CD-key as that identifier. So you have to have a unique key so that the game can figure out who you are as you play. Also, many modules use CD-key for various purposes (including banning and account protection security features).

So, it's useful. But it's be more useful if we just got a key when we got the game.

I don't know why they haven't updated the older games to automatically include the CD-keys. I suppose there's some internal conflict between the new and old procedures? I can agree with the "CD-key isn't DRM" stance if and only if the CD-key is used only to authenticate with a propriety service, and features not directly dependent on that service are unaffected by it. The fact that the unique CD requirement for NWN interferes with LAN play means it doesn't quite meet that standard.

With that said, I can cut GOG some slack on this one. We have the tools to work around it, it's just an accepted fact of life in the NWN multiplayer community, and ultimately it's less annoying than "secret question" stuff that is pretty common in 90's era games.