I understand your thinking, do what you think is right, really.

I know this all too well, the difference is I prefer to avoid "all or nothing" and draw a certain line: Multiplayer or (rarely occurs) cosmetics is allowed, to cut others behind online is not. This comes from a different life background, don't take it personal please. On the other hand, it is possible some dishonest seller may imagine if cosmetics is allowed, a user "maybe would" tolerate further.

If only GOG was more enforning, impose that even cosmetics must be availible offline, the world could be a better place.

Not possible, certain, and pretty much any seller really. It's the boiling frog method. If it's not a firm all or nothing, it'll be a gradual move to nothing.

Added. This gets worse the more I learn about the extent of the DRM on HITMAN.

This is not correct, as stated here:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/drm_on_gog_list_of_singleplayer_games_with_drm/post526
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/drm_on_gog_list_of_singleplayer_games_with_drm/post531

OK. Sorry. I'll remove it. The original report was probably a bug then, or some mixup between storing the progression online for Galaxy users and offline for offline players.

https://www.gog.com/forum/necrobarista/neverending_loading_screen

Necrobarista need galaxy installed to go after the prologue in single player.

I just mentioned about this in the game's Discord server. Hopefully they'll do something.

Please let us know what the dev says. This sounds more like a bug than intentional DRM. But a bug that is unfixed for more than a year starts to look like a 'feature'.

I'll add it to the list provisionally and remove it, if the dev fixes the bug.

New Hitman (all three seasons) is not singleplayer game. It's some sort of async multiplayer game that mix singleplayer with multiplayer, and first without second don't give full expierience. Rankings, leaderboards, other players challenges (Contracts), time-limited events without second chance (Elusive Targets) is big part of the game. And devs consider that online connection for such async multiplayer game is required for anticheat. So it's mostly about anticheat is DRM or not. Yes, someone can argue about it, but developers never positioning this game as pure singleplayer. It was always marketed as game service with async multiplayer. They use term World of Assasination for it.

Well, it is advertised by GOG as pure singleplayer game. (look at the game page)
And it is advertised as DRM-free. Which it isn't.

Thanks for making this thread, BTW. It's extremely useful right now, since this Hitman situation puts a layer of doubt over pretty much the entire store

I think as newer games lean more into online-features; central-servers for their own games for certain portions of the game, and games lean more into using online-systems & feature-suites (i.e. Steamworks, GOG Galaxy, Origin, UbiSoft Connect, etc etc - often which online Achievements, Leaderboards, Cloud Saving, etc etc) - yep, we're going to see more of this.

We need more games made built-in offline support for games that do not NEED you to play with other players to Complete. That means, we need game-engines handling all these Achievements in an offline mode, when you're not even connected to the game.

We also need unlocks, challenge modes, etc - you know, like Hitman 1: GOTY does - to do this all while offline.

But, who knows what the chances are this'll happen, as we now have GeForce Now; XCloud and Microsoft Game Pass on PC and consoles; Stadia; Netflix with its future of games development - and likely other products, too - which have streaming features and/or subscription/rental fees.

Stadia and NetFlix will probably be the worst for so-called "game-ownership", as these all full-blown streaming-only services - and, once we all get "better connected" with the rest of the world, that's probably our horrible dystopia for a gaming future.

This is another great counterpoint to love of client-based/external/service achievements that "he of the crimson dragon who posts regularly" espouses so much. I tend to focus on the social/emotional reasons against external achievements, but have mentioned technical/client ones before. This is a perfect example to that, even if it's a bug.

The reply from the lead programmer from about 13 hours ago: On a side note, I thought this "respond in a bit" would be in 1 or 2 hours top. I wonder if the issue was much bigger than he/she expected?

I don't really know where to start...
Hitman is was and always will be manly a single player game. Contracts are not even what I'd call multiplayer since you still play alone and with a simple configuration it would be easy to replicate it offline. Elusive targets are basically single player missions that will only unlock if you are online, basically drm missions. Rankings and leader boards are online ok but you don't get there with multiplayer missions but with single player missions...basically hitman 2016 (I did not try 2 and 3) are single player games with drm for a fake multiplayer (where you can only compare scores made in the single player) that nobody cares about.

How can anybody say this is not a single player game I really don't understand... It's not like you can connect with another player and try to kill the target in the same level... You just play alone, get an end mission score and that will go on a ranking that you don't even watch...
If they really want to do anticheat (not working right now, full of cheaters on the leaderboard) they could just count missions for that ranking only online, right now you cannot even do the mastery level and challenges that are all single player missions offline. Still hitman as a multiplayer it's a forced concept made only to justify always online drm. They could even deactivate online leaderboards if you play offline mode, I don't really care, what I care about are unlocking weapons, starting locations, harder levels and be able to play like a regular hitman game where at the end of the mission I can get a score like "silent assassin" that I don't really care to share online.
All of that should be already possible. It just ask you to connect to check the drm. Hitman is still a single player game.

I agree. And the best part is the hitman series got all achievements inside the game so on that part they got it right... Too bad they just decided to fill the game with drm anyway.

Necrobarista on the other side it's a small game so they probably just forgot to check since, from what I was able to understand, if you just got galaxy installed everything works.