This ^ . The focus of the boycott thread is not to get hung up over some strict semantic criteria, but to gather a list of people who are stopping and/or reducing their spending on GOG, in order to send a message to the management that GOG is heading down the wrong path. If someone is reducing their spending by 80%+ of what they were before, because of GOG's poor decisions and crumbling standards, that will have an impact on GOG's bottom line and I would consider that totally in line with the goals of the boycott.

As for free games, I have no problem with people who say they are boycotting picking those up. They're not giving money to GOG, so it doesn't really matter. I have avoided them myself for the most part, because I want to support smaller developers, and as far as I am aware they get no money if I snag their game for free. I did grab Ultima Underworld and Syndicate when they were being given away free though - those are sold by EA, who are big and obnoxious enough that I can stand taking a couple of free games from them ;-)

I've always thought "boycott" does describe what I'm doing. On the other hand, GOG have redefined what they consider DRM-free to mean to get away with selling DRMed games, how is anyone supposed to take them seriously?

No, they can't. I have never considered it immoral to get free games from a shop I'm refusing to spend money in.

Just like "DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play" does not mean some "DRM and online activation if we don't think it interferes too much with the single player experience", it means no DRM or online activation.

(The quote at the end of your post has got mixed up. The "I think is more much hypocritical to say..." post was by LiefLayer, not me.)

If you both prefer, let's call what I'm doing "not shopping at GOG" rather than "boycotting GOG".

Would be great if GOG could engineer a solution with IO Interactive and then restart the sale to give an opportunity for those who refused to purchase another chance to enjoy the discount. Will be watching

Agreed but only if the solution means all previously online-locked content is made DRM-free. Under normal circumstances, that would be a must-have, but I need more information on what led to this release arriving here with all the online-locked content first. Whose idea was it to bring it here? Was GOG aware it had online content? If not, why not, considering that I thought the idea of curation was to carefully handpick games that fit the GOG audience? These 3 questions at minimum deserve answering. Speaking of curation, we have seen in other topics where actually-desired games were rejected with the reason of "too niche". It speaks volumes that, apparently, GOG didn't think this Hitman Online Content Extravaganza release was "too niche" for GOG.com audience.

I bought and tested the game. Yes, the game launches and plays without Galaxy or Internet just fine. You can save and load your game as you like. All levels and cutscenes are accessible from the start, but if you attempt to skip ahead the game will advise you to continue where you left off to avoid spoilers. Then I tried the online mode. First, the game prompts you to accept IOI's terms of service. You can go into options later and choose to decline, taking you offline again. The game will also recommend creating and connecting an IOI account to get some exclusive surprise, but I didn't try this. If you try to load save files made offline, the game will warn you that you will need to go into offline mode to do so. Equipment unlocked online can be used offline later on. All the Elusive targets are listed as 'Missed' and I don't think there's any chance to complete any of those, I'm not sure what doing so would have unlocked or accomplished. The game slows down too much on my computer, FPS in some cutscenes dropped to <1 FPS, so I uninstalled it for now. But from what I could see, the game is such a tangled mess of online connectivity and design that I can't begin to imagine how much work it needs to fix. Both GOG and IOI have said that it's going to take weeks to look into, but given the ongoing pandemic delays, I expect we won't hear something definitive until close to the end of the month. If the game gets any updates I'll keep you informed.

It's a loophole that GOG created and maintains, by virtue of there not being an unambiguous definition of DRM-Free. It's subjective, which means it rests entirely on GOG's "curation" to determine what is/isn't acceptable; so no, it isn't the fault of IOI, and GOG is just as manipulative as everyone else is these days.

Which is why it should be delisted until it gets cleaned up.

What's your source for this?

I have once encountered a mistake in the game card. I don't remember all details but I think it was a claim that GOG had something that other stores didn't, and I pointed out that DotEmu had it.

I believe it was someone from GOG who fixed that information, not the developer or publisher.

I don't know if things have changed a lot since then, but I believe GOG has the power to change their game cards, especially if it's something about technical aspects or other things that relate to their own service.

Of course who wrote the disclaimer isn't that important, but I simply can't buy the theory that has been presented here and elsewhere that GOG wouldn't be able to change information on their own website.

So you are saying that if, let say 25% of GOG users stop buying games on GOG, but get only FREE games that GOG sometimes gives, GOG would be fine with that, somehow (according to you) make money and survive?!

LOL so we are not "boycotting" we just "do not buy games on gog"...
Like Hitman "does not use DRM", it just require to be online for like 95% of the game single player content...

WTF Man, I hate people like you mastyer-kenobi.
We are talking about important stuff here a DRM game on gog, and you try to confuse people with this kind of shitty talk, that's the same thing gog does with Hitman, are you part of the gog staff?

I don't care what you want to call it, I will not buy games on gog, but I will continue to buy drm-free game even on Epic and Steam (and like I said, no I don't think Epic is bad).

According to CDPs own statements CP2077 support does not explain the higher H1 2021 costs of GOG. You can find CDPs explanation (etc) in this post: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/boycotting_gog_2021/post2870

Edit: Simple explanation attempt here: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/boycotting_gog_2021/post2886

About GOGs growth: You can see quarterly sales development nicely in this image: https://www.gog.com/upload/forum/2021/09/5179f589a6e176182c8c58d6d585e27a2da28e46.png

~42% (not sure about exact value, you can try counting pixels yourself) of 2020 GOG sales are due to CP2077. See for example this image: https://www.gog.com/upload/forum/2021/09/5179f589a6e176182c8c58d6d585e27a2da28e46.png

Hey man i have some FPS issues as well however i am playing on laptop. Could you tell me your specs, settings and what your performance was in Marrakesh crowds(if you remember that is)?

I'm on Windows 10, Processor's Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790 CPU @ 3.60GHz, 8 gigs RAM, GFX card is a GTX 1060 6GB. I played with all settings at max, resolution at 1920x1080. The computer is pushing 5 years old, but I don't want to compromise on graphics settings, so I'd rather wait to play this on my next computer than turn the settings down. I only finished the Paris level and played a bit of Sapienza, and I had slowdowns both online and offline. I think it's due to the size of the maps, since the ICA training missions ran smoothly.

win 10
i5-9300h
8gb 1ch
gtx-1650 4gb
hdd
medium settings 1080p

The reason i was asking was because Paris and Sapienza ran relatively smoothly(45-60fps) for me but as soon as i loaded Marrakesh it was powerpoint city(17-25fps). Thanks anyways though.

Here is the definition of Lukin. It is absolute evil that brings torture and nightmare to others. Time4tea can testify on the zoom discord ^^.

but if not for the boycott what I said about the real boycott is what I think. Not something where I defend gog or the release of hitman. Because I am also disappointed by this release.