It isn't true so far. They haven't even removed the DRM from their own (or rather CDPRs) product. Which would be really easy to do. As long as they don't even do this very, very simple step towards returning to DRM-free, all their words are just words, not even worth the bits they are written with.

Further things they should do, if they actually want to re-commit to their drm-free roots are:
- contact all the publishers of the games on the list of DRM-ed games to make them remove that DRM.
- stop selling DRM-ed games through Galaxy

But they don't and probably won't and as long as that is true, and they even keep the DRM on their own rewards DLC, their "re-commitment" is nothing but a marketing lie.

In this case it's not even a marketing lie, it's just peoples not knowing how to read and making them say thing they never did.

I’m not a MMO player, so I could not give a big list. But I know there is at least Khaganat providing both the server and its source code: https://khaganat.net/

If we’re going for a broader "MMO-like" category, I would give the example of Neverwinter Nights persistent worlds. And this time this is a closed-source game, so DRM-free massively multiplayer games do not imply open-source.

Anyway, even one single game would be enough to show that it can be done. So all of the others not giving the ability to host a server (at least not legally, cf. World of Warcraft private servers) are making a choice to artificially restrict the ways you can play your game. That’s DRM by the book ;)

GOG deserves an achievement for recommitting to whatever it was they were committed to.

The question then becomes why did they never say it. Certainly, it is not because they have been "committed to DRM-free" this whole time?

Won't happen. It might sound good for GOG users, but what if those developers and publishers just decide to not do GOG versions then because they're now forced to implement Galaxy features into a GOG version that everyone knows isn't going to sell well? GOG's game catalogue is bad, so missing out on games because of that would be very damaging.

-

As for this topic at hand, what do you expect GOG to say? There's literally no reason for GOG to exist if it isn't a DRM-free store.

GOG already has little to no marketshare and do you think them supporting DRM'd releases would help that? Lol, no. It would just make them a horrible Steam, or Epic Games Store with even less reason for anyone to buy here.

GOG is just treading water in the deep end and trying to stay afloat while not bleeding money. In the meantime though the service is turning to absolute crap because of it. This is the life and future of GOG. If you like it then that's great, but it's never going to get better here. DRM-free is not worth the issues and lack of releases here, or dealing with a store that has a very questionable future. This Winter Sale has been one of the worst ever, don't you think? I mean, the Steam winter sale is just as garbage, but at least they have a library that isn't lacking in some many areas like GOG's is.


GOG is standing in their own grave right now, and the only way they're getting out of it is a miracle. Cyberpunk was a disaster that did far more damage to their reputation than I thought possible. They burned so many bridges with that release because of greed. So many gamers aren't going to cut them any slack or give them the benefit of the doubt on anything in the future. They took advantage of and deceived so many people during COVID when everyone was locked down and stressed out. Everyone was looking forward to the game and the promises CD Projekt made with Cyberpunk. And we all know what happened...

Agreed. In fact, I thought I read on these forums that's why Axiom Verge didn't arrive here...because of an insistence on Galaxy achievements/features. Now I wouldn't say that's a must-have title imo, but it does go to illustrate the point. Curation would be its own separate topic, but the fact remains that there shouldn't be a "proprietary client roadblock" to getting DRM-free games released here.

"We apologize for shifting away from 100% DRM-free content and have corrected the mistakes to the best of our current ability" (i.e. I don't know how feasible it is to cancel the partnership where DRMed Epic Fail games can be sold, but certainly Cyberpunk can and should be corrected to not lock any content behind Galaxy/online requirements...btw this is one of MANY examples that need to be fixed and should have not occurred in the first place).

If other companies (famously Domino's Pizza) can admit they messed up and make goodwill gestures to customers, why can't GOG?

I agree; the problem is that I'm not sure GOG/CDPR/shareholders agree. Companies can and do make losing decisions. One would think that in any kind of "recommitment" statement (see above), GOG could also mention this point of how they need to focus on their reason for existence.

Could not disagree more. If it wasn't for DRM-free, I wouldn't be gaming on PC at all. I will not buy any DRMed release. If the option is "take DRM or don't play games", I will choose don't play games. I am quite literally refusing to "play games" with scummy companies that want to control everything! The winter sale releases were not really what I was hoping for, I'll admit that. Also, most of your post references the importance of GOG being DRM-free then you go on to say this about DRM-free not being worth it. I can't really make sense of that.

Has philosophy DRM too these days?

So Crates will be revolving in his grave.

Why would they ? the question, for investors, not for customers, was what they plan to do to improve Gog financial status and their answer was concentrate on their core business, nothing less nothing more.

"Now we wait" is a very nebulous concept, which therefore needs to be given specificity and made concrete with a precise time date.

It cannot be used as a license to give GOG a free pass for doing nothing about their DRM problems forever into the future (but that's the risk that comes with taking an extremely vague "now we wait" approach).

How long shall we wait for, exactly?

We need an end date by which we can determine, if no action has been taken before that date, that this promise has been unfulfilled because it was meaningless PR speak fluff talk.

How about we have a consensus agreement that if the DRM hasn't been removed from Cyberpunk 2077, and the EGS-DRM deal canceled, by March 2022, then we all agree that the promise to recommit to DRM-free was absolute nonsense?

First there is no re-commitment, again the actual sentence has been posted on this very thread.

Second the "promise" was made during an investors meeting, to investors, not customers.

Third they already took concrete action, hence why peoples received the notice that account information from Gwent will be merged/moved from Gog to CDPR, following what they said during the meeting about moving devs / support of Gwent from Gog to CDPR.

And that's it, the rest will most likely be internal reorganization, maybe some layoffs, if you want to see anything more concrete wait next investor meeting to see if Gog is still losing money or not.

Because GOG sells games to customers not to investors; I understand investor questions/concerns must be addressed in some form, but that is not the end of the process when it comes to doing business. Now, on the subject of the customers, customer trust has been eroded, in part because of GOG's continuing shift away from DRM-free gaming. The biggest news story involving GOG this past year was arguably regarding a release that had online DRM blocking out huge amounts of content and player progression. This issue has still not been satisfactorily resolved insofar as that there is still no explanation of why GOG (apparently) thought this release was acceptable to the customer base here, or how we can be assured our existing purchases will be safe from DRM/online requirements being added in updates. Several customers are actively boycotting purchasing on GOG due to DRM whereas no quantifiable number of customers are avoiding GOG due to "lack of DRM." In addition to current boycotters, many previous customers had stopped buying on GOG for years now even prior to the recent debacles, for various reasons, but including GOG's shift away from DRM-free. Do these occurrences not suggest it would be helpful to GOG's business to recommit to DRM-free?

For as long as it takes. Meanwhile, I buy my games elsewhere. If GOG ever actually returns to being DRM-FREE, I'll buy my games here again. If they don't, I won't.