I don't know who is in charge of taking decisions over at gog.com but whoever it is, you are only making things worse and worse by the day, frankly that guy needs to get fired asap. You are pushing your customers to other platforms. Remember reputation and trust is build over the years, and all that can be lost in matters of seconds. Besides the DRM part that was the only reason to buy gog games, you have no real features to offer unlike like other platforms. Is it so hard to stick to the main thing that made this site bloom in the first place !? You have to address the issues in an open transparent way, related to the Hitman problem, related to the Devotion thing you still haven't addressed you know the thing that you blamed the " gamers " for being removed. Well now real gamers want this Hitman game removed and it's pretty obvious gamers actually want it removed or fixed :). You move to make what's right, and not push people back to Steam, Epic or even transfer to Zoom.
Be big boys and admit you where in the wrong and the community will appreciate it, stop trying to have attitude. Remember no business lasts forever if it's customers GTFO.

I started buying games in GOG exactly because I was tired of Steam DRM policy.

With Steam:
Turn PC on > Connect Online > Open Steam > Wait Steam Update > Update > Restart Steam > Open Library > Select Game > Click "Launch" > Wait game Update > Launch game

With GOG:
Turn PC on > Open game shortcut

If you're not one person that stays connected 100% of the day, with Steam and everything else open, connected and running 24/7, this is annoying. Really annoying.
Sometimes we just want to turn the pc on, offline, and open a game to relax a bit.

So, yes, it's weird when the drm free store we love decides to push online only content to it's users.
Im really getting worried with GOG's 'offline gaming' / 'gaming preservation' policy safety after the Hitman situation...

I just want to know one thing: Are they running the place into the ground on purpose?

It's no big secret that gog is not exactly a money printing machine and every time CDP releases one of their financial reports, gog is habitually either in the red or barely breaks even. Is it possible that the shareholders have had enough and demanded that this money sink be closed?

I'm watching Major League right now, and it gave me the exact same idea :D

If that is the case, then CDPR really needs to find a buyer for GOG asap. Doubling down on this path of opening up more and more to DRM is a failed strategy.

Why not just sell it then? Why ruin it instead of just selling the GOG branch and at least recouping some of the investment?

Good. My DRM doesn't work unless you have yours.

And who is going to buy it? EA? Epic?

That's a very good question.

If it hasn't happened yet, chances are it might in the not-too-distant future, especially if GOG continues going down this DRM-embracing route that they are currently on.

My impression from GOG's recent financial reports to their shareholders was that they were making lame excuses for why they lost money in the first half of this year.

If I were a shareholder of GOG (which I'm not), then I certainly would not be believing those lame excuses as being the real reasons.

And after GOG goes belly up, Witcher 4 is announced as an Epic exclusive, the whole thing having been orchestrated by Tim Sweeney :D

What other platforms?

I pretty much switched to GOG in 2019 when GOG Galaxy 2.0 beta came and I could link other accounts to it. Before that I hadn't much checked what GOG is. I think I had something like 3 games before. Not many. And then I checked GOG more closely and realised it's DRM-free. Now I buy from GOG if available, other shops if no GOG version exists. Came for the account linking, stayed for the DRM-free.

Of course with the account linking you can still buy from elsewhere and see them in Galaxy. But since Galaxy is the first launcher I actually use to launch games instead of shortcuts I am already at GOG when I want to buy a game, so...

You're conveniently missing the part where all this takes a minute or less. Not exactly a big deal. But you also conveniently missed the fact that you have to access a web browser, sign into the website (and hope it is working) to download your GOG game. It's not better really. At least Steam keeps your game updated. We don't get a lot of that here on GOG.

He was talking about when a game is installed already. Since steam is drm you need the client which can cause updates which can get annoying when you have limited time to play.