Indeed, you do appear to have a short memory and have forgotten the time, not even very long ago, that GOG was actually a DRM-free storefront. You appear that, yes, it has been a "death by a thousand cuts" slow movement of shifting goalposts from GOG to get us to this point where, they're publicly declaring, "DRM's fine with us! (So long as one of us on the team declares it not DRM or that what's gated is optional)]".

I do really appreciate it that you, yourself, recognize some people's short-term memories.

This problem has been years in the making, and entirely in the making by GOG themselves.
Not really. Sure, GOG has a much higher rate of DRM-free releases, but they're making it a hassle. It's people who are OK with DRM -- like you appear to be -- that are the ones who are sinking GOG by reinforcing them that it's OK to destroy themselves, to give up on their successful niche, to give away their one competitive advantage.

Do, yes, please do stop helping GOG to shoot itself in the foot. Take a stand against DRM.

So there's this famous saying about PR: It's better to be loved by a few than "eh, like I guess?" by many. GOG's doing its best to shed any of its loving clientelle (you can see us in this post) in an attempt to court the vast, apathetic "Wherever there's a sale going on" unwashed masses. That's a great way to ensure a stop to word of mouth, etc. Heck, a lot of games only come here because us "old guard" regularly politely ask developers to consider GOG, and, in many cases, get replies back "What's GOG?" even from those developers.

And I definitely remember all the complaints about Gog version being gimped because the multiplayer was removed, some cosmetic DLC were not included or other features weren't supported; and that very long before Galaxy was even first mentioned. I also remember several games requiring online activation or third parties account to be played in multiplayer.

Dude, as mentioned in the part of my post you skipped, you are talking about six games with optional skins / items several of them being years old, one with a new multiplayer feature added four years after release and one with a lacking offline single payer section... out of 4000+ games! It is hardly them saying "DRM's fine with us!".

That you disagree with those game being sold here and would like Gog to fix that's fine and as I said I would even agree with it, that screw-up like Hitman are not acceptable again fine, but going all hysterical as if Gog suddenly announced that tomorrow they will put Denuvo on all new games is silly.

Games are made with online connections in mind: Steam, Epic, PSN, etc all other storefronts have an online option and require it. GOG is a hold out in that regard and needs more of an incentive to get titles here.

For them to stay in operation they need to adapt, making sure the entire single player can be played offline without compromise sounds great to me. This is the Hitman (remasters) issue... since that needs online to work it can never come here without changes from the devs.

So I 100% support this move if it means we get the singleplayer part without DRM and 100% working offline, it makes sense and it fits with the changing game landscape. Because no one else is providing an offline store like GOG.

Change happens, things evolve you ether adapt or die. I am very happy to see GOG adapting as I still enjoy buying from them and having offline backups I can use. They will always be my first choice when I decide to buy a game.

Now if only GOG would allow us to sell or trade our games...

Honestly I'd say the opposite. A lot of the AAA industry is DEvolving...

Never going to happen due to massive abuse that would happen once you could download offline installer files and trade games you own for games you don't own at the same time.

We both know that you were here when people said something like 'you are talking about N games with regional pricing... out of 1000+ games! It is hardly them saying "regional pricing is fine with us"'. And we both know that you were here when GOG's CEO posted his "good news" post --- not dissimilar to this thread's OP --- that implied that GOG will limit regional pricing to new games as much as possible --- and certainly not apply it to old games.

P.S. I haven't been following this thread too closely. Could you tell me which six games you refer to (or point me to a list)? Thanks.

On a slight side note, I'm very excited to see where all of this leads. Was this update a precursor to some big releases (in whatever form) or was it just another update?

I think there's a lot of speculation about what direction GOG really intends to go, and I can't wait for them to actually show us.

There's been some recent stuff going on I didn't like too much, but as long as you maintain those 3 points, GOG will be my #1 gaming platform.

thank you for this. i wholeheartedly agree with these sentiments.

The way I see it, your reply here is strengthening my point to at least some degree. That is, if GOG is able to have so many games that we all agree are DRM-free with no gray area or debate, then there is seemingly no need to cement this newer direction of "DRM-free, except...". The only argument for relaxing the standards would be to bring in newer games that are designed in such a way (i.e. poorly) that they require various online/client dependencies, yet there are still many old (from the 2010s decade) games that could come here before having to worry about that, no? That is the gist of what I was trying to get at with this point.

What matters for the GOG storefront is what GOG, not the devs, considers DRM. The whole controversy of this topic is the relaxed standards by which what many of us see as DRM or DRM-like schemes are now being said to not be DRM. But I would go even beyond that and say reality, not what GOG says, is what determines if something is DRM or at least in some sort of gray area.

Last September, the Hitman Lame of the Year release was apparently not considered DRM by the devs or GOG. Cyberpunk "My Rewards" requiring the "optional" client has been discussed several times in this topic as well as in the end of your reply here (which I didn't directly quote).

If you don't approve of the Hitman release as it was, or the Cyberpunk Galaxy requirement continuing to this day with no end in sight, then it doesn't really matter what a corporation decrees is "DRM" or "DRM-free", does it? Rather, the reality of how it functions (or indeed, doesn't function) is what matters.

Yes, I do, or at least to accept "DRM-like" systems such as online-only multiplayer reliant on their own servers, especially if it requires creating a third party account and/or transmitting usage data. More/related point on this towards the end of my comment below. And again, Zoom-Platform doesn't seem to struggle with this issue, and you have pointed out there are a vast majority of games on GOG that don't seem to struggle with this issue. Why settle for less?

If GOG allows them in the first place, admits they don't view the content as DRM, and you say the devs don't view stuff like this as DRM either, then how does GOG attempt to convince the devs to finally include them? All parties except the customer are apparently in agreement they're not DRM, therefore no problem! If devs are free to design games how they want and offer whatever optional rewards they want, then there is nothing GOG can say to persuade them to include the content.

I believe it is useful to these greedy companies in so far as that they want to maintain control at all costs, so if they eventually loosen up too much on this, some customers may be capable of deductive reasoning and demand new games don't have such bs requirements. You'll notice that companies remove some DRM but rarely remove all DRM...they might remove something like Denuvo but will keep Schemeworks DRM intact, even a decade later in some cases when several new entries in a franchise have been released. Imo, the arguments against leaving DRM in an older game are the same as the arguments against restricting content in an older game.

and therein lies the problem.

i understand that you think i'm an old guard person and that my perspective is crazy and nonsense.

but gog COULD BE more than what it is.

we don't have to settle for "the best we've got."

if gog listened to it's userbase [or the bit of the userbase that feels that drm matters] then they could have something unique and interesting on their hands. but they want to be a steam-light. and that's NEVER going to work out for them the way they think it will.

[steam has all these other experiences on top of just being a store that it will take gog YEARS to replicate, given their timeframe on some of the developments that have happened to the site - and even then, those developments are going to be half-baked and wonky. witness the robot problem gog has. it's never solved that. that's not a /terribly/ difficult thing to spend time thinking about. and that's just ONE EXAMPLE of a feature that they could fix/change.]

How many resources have GOG poured into imo wasteful endeavors like the client? I see you left that factor out of your financial analysis :) Other users can clarify better but I recall hearing years ago GOG replaced all the installers to include Galaxy, only to then undo all this work. In other words a colossal waste of time and probably money.

Additionally, this is admittedly anecdotal from my interactions with certain users, but it seems to me the old-school-minded users generally tend to have some of the biggest libraries here and buy extra games to giveaway. Or, at least they did until GOG keep messing up and compromising on the idea of DRM-free.

Care to take on a friendly challenge related to the above point? I dare you to name a single "new style" user that has bought Epic Fail games through the new app on GOG Galaxy 2.0 who also has high-triple-digit or even quadruple-digit number of games or buys extra copies of any GOG game (even on sale) to giveaway.

And if someone had a cancerous tumor, should they only have the doctor remove some of it? After all, they wouldn't want to seem like one of those wacky toxic people who would insist on complete removal. What are they, some kind of weirdo...better to be moderate and only remove some of the cancer, right?

Maybe the offline installers are getting phased out for galaxy only so people can play drm free with spyware and make it harder to back them up.



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