Time4Tea: The point that they made a poor initial design choice that is difficult/costly to undo changes nothing.
I am not going to argue whether or not it makes any sense to consider the clearly coerced cosmetic extras as a vital part of the overall design because it is a matter of personal opinion and may vary on a case by case basis for most people, but I must wonder what made you sneak in the word "initial" to the above sentence when it would have been highly improbable that the extra money was offered before it was clear that the developer would run out of money before reaching the previously agreed level of quality?
To make this even more interesting DRM analogue of a trolley problem, what if there were all kinds of nasty contractual obligations that would only allow the developer to hold on to their IP or not get absorbed as yet another internal studio of the publisher if they accepted the extra money and time?
Time4Tea: There is no grey area there. In a similar way to how a castle either contains a lock or it doesn't.
Funny that you go for that analogy, because I consider any actual DRM comparable to a lock on the front door, as removing the lock doesn't in any way affect how the rest of the building was designed and built, not to mention that it would not be unreasonable to haggle a house dealer to remove that lock for you free of charge, whereas all other things many like to call as DRM could be more analogous to various design choices an architect is free to make if for example the client forgot to set an easy wheelchair accessibility as a mandatory requirement.
Time4Tea: Sadly, I consider such MP games to be defective by design; the initial design decisions made by the developers to be deeply flawed; and I would never consider purchasing them.
Unfortunately most modern multiplayer gamers would likely say the same about any DRM-free compatible multiplayer support as they may actually prefer 24/7 automated player rank based matchmaking over the ability to host their own servers, or think that running through a selection of maps and then starting from scratch again is just as archaic as having to schedule a board gaming weekend with a few friends compared to spending every evening with your faction the outer sectors in your territory or trying to expand it by conquering nearby sectors from other factions.
Time4Tea: (although, I suspect in many of those cases the 'DRM' issue could be resolved quite simply by the developer providing the server application to the user base)
It might not be so simple as you suspect, because for example if a developer hadn't already scaled their server application to run on home grade hardware and/or designed it to not require an IT professional to operate before they or their publisher sit down with GOG to discuss the terms of releasing their game here, the costs for the additional work hours needed to get the player hosted server support in working condition can't exceed what little profit they hope to gain from that deal.
mrkgnao: Me too. And the same goes for developers who have clearly stopped caring about maintaining a parity between galaxy and offline installers.
Update parity would not really be an issue if enough gamers would actually hold publishers and developers accountable for their misdeeds on any platforms rather than not care if it doesn't affect them at all or worse, reward them for their bad behavior by blaming GOG for it and then buying again the affected games from Steam.
On the other hand, I have no problem if developers use Galaxy users as test subjects for their short lived hot fixes as long as any time there is a brief pause in the update cycle, they do submit the latest patch to GOG's offline installer team, even better if that would leave GOG more time to request the missing change logs or start adding any older installers as unsupported extras whenever new installers break any existing older OS compatibility.
It boggles my mind that GOG has still not made it one of their main features to preserve those last older OS compatible versions of games as an unsupported extras, despite most of their competitors nowadays also selling old games, so older versions of them still capable of running with older versions of Windows could at least keep GOG more relevant with the retro gaming scene.