This feature proposal from the VNDB beta has made it into the live site! We can now start tagging VNs known to have DRM:

Alrighty, still not really polished or finished yet, but it doesn’t look like the main data model or guidelines will change much so I’ve pushed it live now.

If you want to filter for DRM-free visual novel releases, you can do that now.

I consider this mission accomplished. \o/

The wording “Digital Restrictions Management” was almost snuck into the guidelines proposal, and unfortunately I can’t claim to have had anything to do with that :)

The official guidelines are available here. Interestingly, the final wording is:

Some releases have DRM (Digital Rights Management or, more accurately, Restrictions Management)

Now for the fun part: documenting which releases are encumbered with DRM. If you know one of the VNs you’ve purchased has DRM or is DRM-free, please help by editing the VNDB releases entry to reflect this!

Hopefully, we’ll all be able to make more informed purchasing decisions now.