Gilozard: It could easily be that GOG got the developer to remove the DRM-check at one point, than the dev made a patch and forgot to set it up separately for GOG, so the patch also patched in the DRM.[...]
Having working in development, this seems the most likely explanation to me.
jsjrodman: I have the same suspicion, which is why I pinged Introversion to suggest they proffer a very brief text comment on the cause and correction being offered.
The ball is in their and GOG's court to clarify the situation. A lack of clarification isn't really good enough IMO.
After reading what Ciris said again, I think this exactly what could have happen:
DRM check in DEFCON has been removed by the developer.
The game still does seem to try calling home at startup, but that in no way influences single-player mode.
This probably means the dev did something on the backend (ie server side) so that the single player mode can't be blocked via a key ban or it could mean they lifted the universal key ban, however based on the "
The game still does seem to try calling home at startup" part this makes it sound more like they did something on the backend to remove the key check for single player so it won't happen again but the game still checks regardless and just won't find anything.
micktiegs_8: Anyways, I checked last night by installing the game without internet connection then starting it up. It showed down the bottom 'authentication status unknown' however I had no limitation on gameplay this time.
EDIT: Misread what was said here, my apologizes.
This is DRM check was enabled by a mistake by the DEV.
Self explanatory, but clearly says the check was a mistake NOT the banning of the key was a mistake.
We had a similar problem some time ago with DEFCON but it was fixed, it's back now and we've just been made aware of it.
Meaning they could have asked the dev to remove said check before and it was re-added in an update or a newer build of the game and they didn't know.
We've asked the developer to create a custom build for GOG in which this is prenatally fixed, unfortunately it will take some time for that to happen.
Meaning create a build that does not have the check so this can't happen again even if they fixed the issue server side and so that users can't complain about them re-introducing the DRM later.
We apologize for the inconvenience - this is a situation that should not have happened. You are of course entitled to request refunds for the game due to this situation.
Self explanatory, we don't want bad PR.
HypersomniacLive: As for the patching part - from the posts Ciris made, the DRM-check was never removed, it's just that the pre-activation key used to pass the check, until the dev revoked it, twice. It may seem to be the most likely explanation to you, but it's still not much of an excuse on GOG's part, as they knew that the DRM was never removed, just worked around, and in a way that the dev could revoke at any time.
It could very well be that they only needed a pre-activation key to get around a cd key type check that was implemented as DRM by the dev, and that they did indeed ask them to remove the online check after the first time this happen which could have been re-added again in a patch and missed by GOG in testing. Based on what Ciris actually said in that post and other post, that is possible. Cirs never said the online check was never removed before or that that they implemented the pre-activated key
just to get around this online check, it's not clear if an online check was the only DRM this game had.
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Not saying that is what happen, but it is indeed possible that that is the case, and I don't expect a company like GOG to go into detail on what really happen as that's not something companies do as it can bite them in the ass later. Lol