Same here with the MacVenture series (Uninvited, Deja Vu, Shadowgate) that's been on Steam for awhile.

So basically they want to drop support for it, but don't want to stop selling it. And even worse is that GOG is letting them, even going as far as to help them try to spin it as something positive.

Sounds like the perfect situation to also get a Steam key with your purchase here. (No, it's not about handing out DRM, it's about "Choice")

There's probably very little standing in their way of doing so.

I sent a refund request already but didn't get any response from GOG :S

They are essentially saying that they cannot support the game anymore because GOG doesn't allow DRM to check dlc ownership. Which is a given and should've been accounted for.
Is it time for GOG to drop the last bastion on its expendable set of principles?

Anyway I believe it's fair to aknowledge that customers who purchased Armello on GOG did in the reasonable understanding that it would be supported like any other version, otherwise the could have chosen differently. Changing support now it's inconvenient for those customers and the developers should do something about that in the form of offering a steam key to the one that are fine using Steam, and figure out what to do with the others.

A DRM-free edition on a Drm-free(for now) store is quite an ironic name as it was drm.free before. A best fitting name should be Armello Abandoned Edition.

The issue could be fixed by letting people purchase dlc and not check for ownership, like many other garms do. About the inventory that use steam feature to trade game content, they could drop it or implement it in a way that allow ownership but not trade.

In any case, good luck founding another game on Kickstarter now that their true color has been revealed.

[silliness] Move along.

What bad press? GOG has not posted about this on their Twitter or Facabook. All the comments are confined within this very thread, and it's no secret since long now that the forum, and its users, count for exactly zlitch in regards to GOG worrying about their public image.

Going by what was said there it sounds like the intention is for players with the DLC to be able to play against players without the DLC & still use the DLC content, which means that the DLC content would need to be provided to all players as part of the base game. So without DRM the "DLC" would just be a simple unlock that anyone could use by e.g. editing or creating an .ini file to tell the game to enable it. Hence their decision to screw GOG users.

That's a problem that should be fixed. This kind of behavior should be exposed.
Uhm... I understand. Shouldn't have they though that before selling the game on GOG?
I beleive that it should still be possible to implement, updating the base game with the additional content and adding a dlc that unlock them. If their issue is that you could "share" those dlc not having drm, that is a problem with the base game too that was not an issue before.
I would like to do a provocative counterproposal: why not release the dlc here for free. They wouldn't lose money because they are not expecting it anyway as they are not supporting or updating the game anymore.

Yes, they should, but clearly they didn't & chose instead to base their design decisions around Steam.

They could. Remove the DRM check client-side, replace with a local file check to see if the DLC is enabled or not. No need to check the DLC available to clients on the host side. Of course, it would be trivially easy for anyone to just enable the DLC without actually buying it though, which is what I guess they're worried about.

They could do that, but maybe they're worried about upsetting their Steam users by not providing them with the same content (although that hasn't stopped them neutering the GOG version... I guess GOG is too insignificant for them to care about upsetting people here).

What a mature reply. Fuck you too, asshole!

The problem for me is that not getting updates, DLCs or other promised stuff in a reasonable timeframe, outweights the benefits of DRM free by now. For an example: I bought the three Van Helsing games when they appeared on GOG, to play the Final Cut that was about to get released soon. I waited and waited and waited, but Final Cut didn't arrive. The dev's response was "You can get a Steam key to play the game there while you're waiting an indefinite time for the GOG version". Guess why I bought the games on GOG? Definitely not because I wanted to play them on Steam ;) I decided to give Torchlight 2 another go (didn't like it back then, because I started it right after Torchlight 1 and missed my Destroyer class). Before the Final Cut arrived on GOG, I had 208 hours logged in Torchlight 2. That's a lot of time with an ARPG. I didn't feel like playing the Final Cut anymore. So I basically bought the three Van Helsing games to have them (and the Final Cut) sitting on my shelf for whoknowshowlong. Lesson learned -> Don't buy "promises" on GOG.

Just to make clear how frustrating this shit was: I bought Van Helsing 3 on the 16th of September. The Final Cut was released on the 6th of November on Steam. It arrived on the 1st of June on GOG -.- That's almost seven months later. There was no communication between GOG and people who wanted to know what's going on. The dev just gave out Steam keys if you contacted them on Facebook and GOG spit out their standard "We don't talk about future releases" bullshit (probably some poor support guy who didn't know about the whole situation).

No, seriously... I have most of the old games I want from here. All that I could buy here are new releases (most games I bought here are new releases!). And seeing how bad GOG is at new games, I don't really want to take the risk to end up with incomplete or broken games. No need to take the option and back up "Armello Inferior-Edition", Slender, The Escapists, Hand of Fate, Banner Saga, Omerta, Lucius and all the other titles that don't get patches or DLC.

GOG has this problem for quite a while now and they still didn't learn how to force devs to patch their fucking games here too. They'll either learn how to fix this, or they'll lose more customers (people already went nuts and asked to get their money back because of a two day delay of No Man's Sky patches!). I'm not a religious nutcase who buys games here to support GOG and the DRM free bullshit revolution. I buy games because I want to play them. And sadly, Steam's the better place for this. At least with new games. I'll probably still buy some newly released Good Old Games here (if they're not €18, like GUN), or games from CD Projekt. But for new games it is Steam now.

DRM free is worth shit if you end up with another Omerta or Van Helsing Final Cut. GOG needs to learn how to handle new games.

Reading no-too-far between the lines, it sounds like what the devs really want to do is focus on making the game online multiplayer centric, which frankly was probably the idea all along since it appears from the reviews single player is pretty basic. Very likely part of their focus is on microtransactions and other stuff they are building using Clanking Rustbucket (or whatever GOG's competitor's framework is called), and since they have already bumped up against their ceiling of competence as developers, they can only do this on one platform.

Basically they are hoping to turn this into a kind of tiny MMO with probably a gazillion micropurchase options (new hat!). And I hope it's the profound failure it deserves to be.

That's one of the most barefaced and condescending (towards their customers who bought the DRM-free version) developer statements that I've ever seen. I will never buy one of their games again and I regret that I've spent money on this one.

Honestly, man, I don't think GOG learns to handle jack-shit. This Armello story has just proven again that it's the devs who are to blame, not GOG. Even though I'm not acquainted with GOG's methods I suspect they're just as interested in getting every patch and update for the games here as Valve is.
Unfortunately I can't see GOG staff shoving a shotgun in front of a dev's face and making him/her launch a patch for the GOG version. Such a decision rests entirely on a dev/publisher's hands.

And as time passes it's becoming clear that quite a lot of indie devs are more interested in the benefits of Steam exclusivity. If anyone is to blame that's the Steam "monopoly", not the GOG staff. It's been pretty obvious that the DRM-free customers are seen as "second-rate citizens" or "hipsters" compared to the Steam people.

If people like you want fresh new games and don't care about DRM why are you here? Just purchase everything on Steam and that's it!