So, you're saying HITMAN's locked progress of the game is the same with the in-game Galaxy t-shirt in Cyberpunk 2077 and the other silly things under My Rewards.

OK, I'll entertain the idea just to see how far you're gonna take this. All that's left now is for someone from you lot to sue GOG for false advertising, which is a serious offense.

The term DRM isn't poetry. It's clearly defined. Good luck changing its definition in court.

And since you won't even consider the possibility that you might be wrong, there's no point in arguing. Maybe GOG's legal department knows less than you guys, and they're in deep trouble now.

Hate to tell you this, but gog has had "drm" since shortly after its inception in 2008, when online multiplayer required game keys to function.

This is nothing new. The skirting around the issue is by the drm free installers you get to keep, even if you only download the game once, as long as your media drive(s) survive.

Inclusion or exclusion of pieces of content not deemed necessary for the main game have long been a point of contention, discussion, people on both sides digging in their heels, and eventually, surrender.

There is no such thing as pure drm free anymore, there hasn't been since the 80's and early 90's. Even back then, there was "drm" in the form of hint guides and instruction booklets, and iconic spin wheels you had to line up.

Even Leisure Suit Larry had a series of questions you had to answer before you could play the game.

Semantics being what they are, the clearly defined version of "DRM free" that gog uses is that you get to own your copy of the game you purchase, without galaxy being required to download or play it.

If there are exceptions to that policy, I am unaware of them. Additional content has never been guaranteed nor implied to be guaranteed, though back in the day, the said game keys provided by GOG support for multiplayer, were done out of the goodness of their hearts, not because they were obligated to.

If people wanted drm free to be more front and center than it is, perhaps more people should have bought games on gog over the past 15 years more frequently, and perhaps the many, many, many publishers who refused to keep version parity and constantly blamed GOG for it, despite GOG's evidence that they have an upload portal very similar to Steam, should have actually kept version parity so they didn't have an excuse to delist their games here.

Oh stop it with the courts and the lawsuits. Nobody took them to court over Hitman and nobody will take them to court now. Suing takes money that average people don't have. Suing is only for the rich.

DRM stands for digital rights management. it's a system that determines whether a user has the RIGHT to access whatever content that they are trying to access. Did you check my attachment? Or heck, even read the FAQ?
Is MY REWARDS also available on the local version of Cyberpunk 2077 — which can be downloaded via GOG and installed separately from GOG GALAXY?
Because MY REWARDS requires an internet connection, the local version of Cyberpunk 2077 that you can download via GOG will not support MY REWARDS.

GOG galaxy is needed to check the RIGHTS of the user, otherwise "My Rewards" will not be granted to them. This authentication cannot happen on the offline version of the game. My Rewards use DRM by definition. You are the one reading DRM like poetry.

The percentage of the DRMd content is irrelevant. Whether the content is 50% DRM-Free, 75% DRM-Free, or 99.9812% DRM-Free, it is still not 100% DRM-Free. I come to GOG to play my games 100% DRM-Free.

Funny, because almost every discussion about DRM degenerates to an argument about its definition, which nobody with authority has so far been able to conjure. Courts least of all.

Instead, you can find tons of vague, non-exhaustive descriptions of the term, which leave it to someone else to interpret what it actually means.

It never fails to amaze me how these threads come down to "well, technically it's not DRM" and "this stuff doesn't impact the single player experience", when the mere ongoing existence of this discussion arguably already should be seen as a failure for the company championing FCKDRM, "Making games last forver", and "a platform we, as gamers, want to use".

That's b/c there's so many DRM variations.

To me, anything regulating what I can do w/ my game, expansions, DLC's, etc - yup, DRM. Don't care if it's server-based, client-app based (like Steam, Epic, and even GOG now), classic disc-based, Securom/Tages Internet DRM style, whatever - if I can't run my game offline with no client-app's going properly, it's got DRM.

Classic disc-based DRM from the 90's to early 2000's were basically disc-based. You need the disc in the drive for the game to boot - and often, this DRM was Safedisc, Securom, Starforce, Tages, or some other program also on the disc to make sure you don't run the game without it. Disc was the key.

This got worse, as Securom's Internet style DRM happened, which often limited install counts, so you didn't install or it too many machines and/or so you didn't give it out to friends. Mass Effect 1 long ago on PC used this. You had to activate the game once installed & do it online, and you needed to revoke the activation to gain your install count back. So, say you started w/ 5 installs total. Well, activate it on one PC - down to 4. To go back to 5,you'd need to use their Revoke procedure or Revoke Tool (like EA had). Many others followed this Install limit things, such as Tages and SolidShield. Often, you didn't need disc in the drive - just do the activation and/or game-boot and you'd be done. Some games, you were forced w/ disc in drive AND needed to follow the Internet DRM rules, which sucked. You also could lose some of the install count, if you changed hardware like GPU's, CPU's, etc - which was crap. Then you'd need to contact support to get the count numbers back - especially if you exhausted them. Crummy system.

Then there's client-app DRM - which Epic, Steam, Galaxy, UPLAY (now UbiSoft Connect), and others use. Namely, to run the game - this client-app must run in the background period, at the least. This could also include you need to activate the game online once (whether once evert PC or per every boot of the game) and be signed into your account to do so, which also is annoying.

Some games protect the DLC's w/ the client-app, but not the base-game itself. See Outer Worlds - as base-game on Epic works fine, but DLC's don't work if you don't have Epic Store Launcher running. Basically, Cyberpunk 2077 has been getting screamed at for having this issue and

Of course, you also got DRM like MMO's, MMO-lite games, and always-online games use - you have to be always online to play your game on their servers, like it or not. If the plug gets pulled like Tabula Rasa - forget it, your game's a rental.

Regardless, DRM is any time your digital rights are managed by some kind of software, client-app, disc, or whatever you supposedly need to play - and you don't have access to stuff you paid for at any time b/c of the DRM.

What did I miss? ooo

Nothing, because we've had this discussions so many times here I'm not even sure if this one is real, or if I'm just having the GOG forum equivalent of a 'Nam flashback.

But without having a definition of DRM, we cannot really even argue about what is a variation of DRM. It's like arguing whether whales and dolphins are fish without a definition of fish.

You jump straight to "classic disc based DRMs" but there's so much older stuff out there; maybe you're ignoring it all for no reason, or maybe you think that they are not DRM. And the next person has their own feelings so.. isn't it quite futile :/ Point in case: one definitions includes the clarifiation that DRM does not mean management of digital rights, but digital management of rights. https://www.w3.org/2000/12/drm-ws/workshop-report.html

I love how you like to argue semantics.

CD Projekt RED is the big boss here.

tfishel is correct. CD Projekt Red is a sibling company of GOG, not their boss. CD Projekt S.A. is the big boss here. Source.

Looks like you did not read my comments above where I did mention CD Projekt SA. In fact I will repeatedly keep telling you CD Projek SA is CD Projekt RED on the Polish stock market, but you know keep telling me gog.com is not CD Projekt RED and CD Projekt RED is not gog.com. May be I can poke my ears a little bit harder to not hear you. So keep going keep telling me they are not owned by each other.

Imo the whole definition thing - which of course will lead us in circles as always - is unnecessary. You can name it DRM or you can name it anything else. Question remains:

If I buy a game here on GOG and if I refuse to subscribe to any service will I get the same that I would get if I'd be willing to subsribe to certain services or use certain clients? The answer is a big NO. So buying on GOG grants me the game but none of the additional stuff that would be nice to have even though it is not necessary to play the game itself (let's for a moment forget that several people right now are unable to launch the game without Galaxy). So to get these rewards and additional items I STILL would have to subscribe to certain services and use certain clients and I just don't understand why this is the case. I thought buying here would give me the same experience (if technical possible) without having to do any of those shenanigans but this is not the case.

So DRM or not, to get these additional (necessary or not necessary) items GOGers who prefer to not subscribe to services or use clients should be pushed to drop their principles. This comes from a guy and company who apologized for releasing CP2077 in a sorry state and thanked every one of the customers for still supporting them. I am asking CD Project RED: "We GOGers have continued to support you, why don't you support us the same and give us access to the additional items without having to jump through subscription loops or forcing us to use a client?" CD Projecr RED wants trust but does not give us back the same treatment in return. Everybody knows that adding those items in a seperate offline installer would be a joke for them - it would not even be much work ... but they are forcing us to use modding tools or clients or get this stuff on some dark sites of the internet ... that's the kind you treat customers who still supports them after the audacity CP2077 was at launch? This is NOT the way to keep the trust of customers.

So I could not care less if it is DRM or not. I also don't care if CD Project RED is GOG.com or not - they KNOW how GOG customers tick and what they want (and what they don't want). They virtually kick them in the face with these rewards and drops ("We know that you don't like to subscribe to a service or use a client because we know what GOG is about ... so here is what you DON'T get if you stay true to your principles") and continue to ask for support. Shame on you CDPR that you can still look at yourself in the mirror when you talk to GOGers and ask for their forgiveness and support.

I agree with MarkoH01's comment,
I'll add that having this launch featured during gog's annyversary event, just reinforces the idea that gog continues to see nothing wrong with the "my rewards" and alike system, specially bad coming from an "in-house" product. All those newsposts about game preservation, are just sand thrown to our eyes.
This trend continuing, just makes gog harder to support from me, since other stores also feature drm games i want. Sure, no offline installer, but zipping the installation folder works close enough, at least untill a windows OS change.