What's unique about Hitman is the small percentage of positive reviews (hence, 1.3/5), but if we're just counting 1-star reviews, while Hitman has 300+, CP2077 has 1,200+. Since you don't need to buy a game to post a review, I would say that many more people, regardless of GOG's small size, were angered by the buggy CP2077 release than by GOG actually releasing a non-DRM-free game. I'd say there were at the very least 900 people who went to the trouble of posting a CP2077 1-star review, who didn't bother to do the same for Hitman (admittedly over a longer period of time).

Now obviously CP2077 was a special case, but aren't we all saying that the Hitman release was also a special case, compared to everything before it?

That is an excellent addition. well said. And yeah, the time might be "we dont want this to go to court" hell, it might be "we are preparing for court" and thus keeping their mouth shut is the ONLY option.
I dont think CP2077 is comparable. There is a -lot- of marketing hype and emotional investment in CP2077. There's a reason I do not bring up CP2077 in discussing DRM with a friend. You also have to consider how many people bought CP2077 day 1 without any reviews, and the Hitman ones that just came across it. I didn't know Hitman existed here until -after- the debacle.

Pretty much. People mostly bought Cyberpunk 2077 sight-unseen because of hype and post-Witcher expectation. Furthermore, most of the hate on Cyberpunk 2077 was just that it was released way too damned early. Hitman isn't that situation. Given how it didn't stay that long on the main page (Cyberpunk is STILL on the front page, in the featured section), most people probably only know Hitman's here at all because of all the bad attention. Anyone buying it on impulse probably already got it on Steam long AF ago. Most likely, GOG is going to fulfill its contractual obligation, but continue to bury this as far as they can, until such time as they can effectively remove the game from the store, probably in a year or two.

In short, they didn't pay attention to the contract, and deserve all the shit they get, but let's not sit here and pretend it's anything other than morons being played.

I get a distinct feeling that we are talking about two different things here. I'm not talking about Hitman.

The vast majority of the negative reviews on the Hitman page have nothing to do with that specific game per se. You would have received essentially the same reviews regardless of which mostly-online game GOG would have decided to release instead, calling it DRM-free. The reviews are about GOG releasing any non-DRM-free game. The reviews are about GOG and DRM, not about Hitman.

Now, DRM-free has been aggressively marketed on GOG for 13 years now (just check every release thread and every game page, but one) and one would have thought that practically everybody on GOG would be quite emotionally invested in it, assuming one subscribes to the popular (and oft-repeated) theory that there is no reason to buy on GOG except for DRM-free.

The fact that, for the most part, they are not is the entire point here.

Let the fire just take it's course is one sure way to set more fires later down the line

So... another Monday, another week of misleading advertising, eh? Good, good, carry on...

3 is out of the question right now, EPIC exclusive, which leaves us with Hitman 2. I expect it to be released here as a special Christmas gift for all of us to celebrate a new wave of Good Old DRM Games™! ;-)

I don't expect Hitman to be removed, I said it would be the proper thing to do. Soul Saga, Plane Mechanic Simulator, these two have clearly been abandoned, yet they are still sold here. Instead of even a BUYERS BEWARE: Project has been or could have been abandoned message would help save customer's money. It would also save GOG some time not having to issue refunds.

Since GOG doesn't do either we can still warn customers not to purchase the(se) game(s). Why waste money on DRM games here when in this particular case they can head straight to Steam? Same with abandoned projects, where at least Steam does investigate into the situation and in some cases they remove a game from their store to protect customers One of the top priorities even for an Online shop. ;-)

Not keeping an eye on a trash fire could burn GOG's house to the ground sooner or later. There are many things that are still smoldering that they have ignored for quite a while that can easily add fuel to the fire if they are not careful. They seriously cannot afford to keep acting this way, because sooner or later the smoldering is just going to lead to one big blaze that will get out of control. The amount of distrust between the community and GOG is at an all time high and will only grow bigger if they let shit like this fester. In the end though, they are doing this to themselves because cutting corners, ignoring issues and being dishonest seems to be in the new management playbook. Almost seems like they want this place to fail...

i play magic: the gathering.

i bring this up, because wotc - the company who makes magic - and their owner, in turn - hasbro - only care about the money.

if there's backlash in the community about any given thing, they literally just ride it out, because in the end, they strongly believe [and unfortunately, they've been proved as "basically correct"] that regardless of whatever storm happens to be brewing in that community at that time, any number of "more positive things" [new releases, old cards being re-released, pretty looking versions of cards, etc] will EVENTUALLY weigh down the bad publicity and hasbro/wotc will "win" in the end.

the other part of this equation for wotc/hasbro is churn: the rate at which people get into magic, play a lot, then burn out. it's become VERY clear that hasbro and wotc don't care [at all] about the entrenched players [they're just a vehicle to buy more cards - but - for the most part - the companies helming the game don't "pander" to those players.]

those companies who steer magic are literally beholden to their shareholders. the players literally don't matter. [or, they DO matter, but only as long as they're buying customers. controversy has stopped being something they care about.]

i think we're at a point in gog's history where they're "behaving" the same way.

that is to say:

yes, there are multiple, ongoing fires. and sure. that knocks gog's reputation with players and game collectors and preservationists, but for gog - and gog's shareholders, in turn, NONE OF THAT MATTERS.

literally the only thing that matters anymore is plowing forward.

plowing forward means more games like hitman.
plowing forward means doing away with freestanding downloaders.
plowing forward means more games like gwent.

etc.

to gog, we're just a nuisance. and eventually - through churn - we won't matter anymore.

and at that point, sadly, gog will "win."

[it'll be an oddly pyrrhic victory, because while i think gog will get what it wants: the ability to sell those sorts of games on the store. it will also find that it is IMMEDIATELY outmatched by steam and epic.]

but that's functionally where i think we are at.

it's been JUST ABOUT two weeks at this point.

if gog wanted to be transparent, they could have. [even if that just amounted to changing the store card for the game.]

but we are here at this point with nary a peep from them.

that just suggests, to me, that this whole firestorm is "working as intended."

it sucks, but it's not surprising. :(

I agree that they have worn us down over the years. But I feel it is important to keep discussing Hitman Lame of the Year release. It is ridiculous to me that we still have no meaningful response or even apparently any update to the page (besides more 1-star reviews that keep coming, which warms my heart to see)

I agree that this is GOG's strategy, or at least it appears that way. But I am not so sure it's going to work out for GOG.

As much as GOG might not want it's long-standing customers who feel strongly about games being DRM-free, GOG nevertheless seems to need them.

GOG lost money in the first half of this year, and I think their endless series of debacles is a large contributing factor to that.

Most likely, if GOG does not go back to their original principles and begin to hold to them very steadily, then the result will be bankruptcy for GOG, rather than churning out their long-standing customers who care about DRM-free in exchange for large numbers of new ones who don't (that latter scenario will probably never happen).

There have been forum comments from GOG customers who stated that DRM-free just a nice-to-have for them, and not a priority.
I wonder what percentage of all GOG customers, as opposed to forum posters, feel that way.

Personally, I just don't understand why anyone would choose GOG over Steam if DRM-free wasn't important.
Apart from that single issue, I can't see any other factor where Steam doesn't beat GOG easily.
There's no way I'd ever buy a DRM-infested game here. Whatever would be the point?

Do not believe that the sale of a single game is so high. For example for mechwarrior 5 since its release after the 1 year excluded on epic. Only 160,000 copies were sold. So 30,000 copies between the xbox and gog version. Maybe 10,000 galore, I think it's best sold on steam.

so on monday gog still suck. that's new