Yeah but those were principles held by people who no longer work here, modern GOG is clearly run by suits and the majority of staff are hipsters and minions who won't rock the boat, and CDPR are at the mercy of the public investors they were stupid enough to give control of so much of the company to.

Nu-GOG would probably toss DRM free under the bus entirely if given the right opportunity...

I blame Witcher 3's success for this change. Its our fault for giving them way too much money and attention that the mainstream noticed them, and once your noticed by mainstream, you change to fit them.

Thanks for posting this. I had a look at CDPR's Q1 2021 report and it is very interesting reading. Yes, you are certainly right that Cyberpunk has also had a very distorting effect on the numbers.

I find Chart 1 on p.42 interesting, showing the effect of various releases on their revenue. You can see there that the release of Witcher 3 is what really got them noticed and where the money started rolling in. Cyberpunk massively outsold Witcher 3 in it's first quarter (by 3-4x), but Q1 2021 revenue seems to have more or less reverted very sharply to what it was doing prior to that, being only a small amount higher than Q1 2020.

There are some quite scary overall numbers for CDPR on p.27. Revenue has increased very little compared to a year ago; however costs have increased hugely. Particularly 'Cost of products and services sold', 'Selling costs' (aka Marketing) and 'General and administrative costs' (probably includes salaries). So, it looks like Cyberpunk did very well in its first quarter, but is not bringing in anything like the level of ongoing revenue that they expected. I agree with you that they have over-invested in the expectation of higher sales from CP.

In the case of GOG (pp. 28-29), it seems their revenues are up around 10% compared to Q1 2020, but their operating profit has nosedived. Again, it seems to be due to those selling costs and general and administrative costs. So, I don't see any sign here that GOG's revenues are taking a hit, but it seems that overall CDPR has over-invested in Marketing and possibly new hires. I'd expect them to be making some fairly heavy cuts in those areas over the next several months (if they haven't already).

It'll be interesting to see what Q2's numbers look like, which should be coming out soon. I wonder if we will see a further cooling off of the afterglow of CP?

What games have DRM on them? I can still download and use the offline installers like before.

The only game you can argue that has DRM is Gwent, however that is an online free-to-play game so it needs an online connection to run and ensure people are not cheating.

People have been stretching the term of DRM to fit there needs so you need to watch what titles they claim as they keep saying Cyberpunk has DRM when it doesn't, a cosmetic goodie pack is available if you use Galaxy which gives you a Galaxy and Witcher shirts and one sword, but you can play the entire game beginning to end without having to go online. I don't see that as an issue I it looks more like an Advertising campaign and I have no interest in advertising so I'm missing nothing.

Yeah that doesn't sound like DRM to me either. DRM to me is having to satisfy a bunch of requirements before being able to play the game to begin with. Well, other than purchasing it and having the right system, that is.

See here: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/drm_on_gog_list_of_singleplayer_games_with_drm/page1

The big question is: do you want your games DRM-free? Or just DRM-reduced? Is it enough, that the base game is DRM-free and DLCs can be DRM-ed? I don't think so. For me, free means free. A game either is free of DRM, including all parts, including DLCs and 'bonus' content, or it isn't DRM-free. By now, GOG has started to sell games where parts of the single-player game are DRM-ed. No fully DRM-ed games yet, but we're getting there step by step.

And if you look at multiplayer, DRM in the form of 'Galaxy required for multiplayer' and/or mandatory third part registration is already standard on GOG.

A lot of "DLC" in this thread is from outside sources, you can't accuse GOG of DRM when the content in question is not even available on the website, you would have to complain to the developer/publisher for not making it available DRM free.

It's not tham I'm actively boycotting GOG... I simply lost all and any... from the lack of bettter word let call it 'a drive' to buy games here. The last game I got from the store was in late 2019 and to be honest, it was a freebie.

As a person who (for job-related reasons) spend 6+ months/year in VERY remote places with minimal (and often zero) internet access, the fact that games I want to play while being there are free of online/drm/client/social/dlc/etc. shenanigans is of paramount importance for me.
But other thing of equally paramount importance for me is that if I'm paying my (hard earned) cash for a game, in return I'm getting best, checked and full-fetaured product.

And this is where GOG is - sadly - falling short. And in the hard way.

The maintenance of product updates in general and offline installers in particular is a fucking disgrace.
Pushing barely working beta dumpster fire of Galaxy 2.0 on EVERYONE without asking for a permision was not only annoying but borderline impertinent. The state in what Galaxy is now, over a year after that borked roll-out is an insult added to injury.
The absolute screw-up in the field of communication with the community here - on their own offical forums - is so massive that it probably need a new adjective to be coined for proper description of such a failure. Instead, we have social media bullshit with all it retarded glory, which mean you have to dig thorough pile od social and digital manure in order to find out anything important or meaningful.
The ticket system - does it even work right now? Yes, we have the SHTF in form of COVID in the meantime, but there was plenty of time to spruce oneself up and introduce some solutions to COVID related problems. From my (aka: User) perspective it seems that nothing was done.
Surreptitious introduction of DRM-infested games and hilarious justification of such decision when called out on this ("It's Galaxy, not GOG! These are two different things!") was so surreal that it was almost funny. Or actuall will be funny, if it wasn't such a failure in comapny integrity.
The list goes on, but that post is already quite long, duh.
The bottom line is, that for me - a person who absolutely adore the idea of games being free of DRM bullshit that is tretaing me like a potential thief or fraudster and denying me access to them because I have a particular job - it's now much more comfortable and better (in terms of value for the money I spend) to rely on Steam and its 'offline mode' or on one of many 'Steam emulators' to play games while I'm outside of internet coverage. And for times when I'm able to go online, that other platform it's also much better in terms of support, communication, updates, functionality, pricing...
And I'm saying this as (also) a person who genuinely think that Steam policies and market practices are a fucking blight on digital games distribution...

For CDPR there is an explanation on page 45 of https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/wp-content/uploads-en/2021/05/consolidated-financial-statement-of-cd-projekt-capital-group-for-q1-2021.pdf Also: As per their new business plan they want to develop multiple AAA titles in parallel. Far as I remember/understood this was the primary reason for their new hires. (This may have been postponed though due to CP2077 fixes and them first trying to make a generic engine or sth.)
Business plan presentation - not much info: https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/wp-content/uploads-en/2021/03/cd-projekt-group-strategy-update-1.pdf
Conference call - more info: https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/wp-content/uploads-en/2021/03/trascript-strategy-update.pdf And 'Honest and direct communication with gamers' is still one of six important parts of their business model: https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/capital-group/business-model/

--

For GOGs selling costs there is an explanation on page 8: --

There were some sales(*) of CP2077 though I dont know/remember how much off and when. That may have gotten them some more 'afterglow'.

(*) Edit: To make it clear 'sale' here in the last part refers to 'you can buy the game cheaper than before for a short time'.

False. Almost all games sold here come from 'outside sources'. It's up to GOG which they sell and which not. So yes, we can and must accuse GOG of DRM when they sell DRM-ed games. Otherwise, if you say 'Hey, it's up to the publishers what they put in their games!', you get a DRM-agnostic store, NOT a DRM-free store.

It is GOG's decision what they want to be. A DRM-ed DLC used to be a deal-breaker, leading to the exclusion of the offending game. But it isn't anymore. Especially not since one of the offenders is CDPR themselves, who own GOG. So, in effect, GOG decided to become DRM-agnostic. But they still market themselves as DRM-free. Which is false advertising.

As I mentioned in my post, I do agree the movement away from their roots is concerning. I have to wonder if the original business model simply wasn't viable. There are many changes that I haven't liked, but for now I'm sticking with GOG.
That's true and the movement away from that era stinks. Time will tell what GOG turns into in the future.

One of the main takeaways for me from the many discussions over the past several months about games on GOG that may contain DRM, is that 'DRM' means different things to different people and people seem to have their own personal definitions.

There is no globally agreed definition of what constitutes DRM and GOG unfortunately does not provide a definition of what they consider to be DRM. To some, DRM includes any single-player content that is locked behind a requirement for purchase authentication or to connect to an external server. No matter how insignificant the content may be, including cosmetics. Some of the games on Lifthrasil's list definitely fall into that category.

Some also consider a requirement to connect to a remote server for multiplayer games to be DRM (myself included), since it has the same effect as DRM on game preservation. There is another list here of multiplayer games on GOG that do not have remote server requirements (i.e. they provide options for LAN and/or direct IP connections).

Yes, wanting Gog to change its decisions to become "good" again sounds reasonable, however, that's not how life works. You see, while Gog could make changes to change for the better, nothing good ever lasts. If GOG went for good old drm-free games, the company could last for some time, but with how many publishers want to have more power and control over their game availability, maybe it is becoming increasingly harder to find publisher who would release their games drm-free. Maybe this move was to allow Gog to stand on its feet for longer than it would have. Yes, it might lose attraction for customers like you, but it might gain more attraction from newer and other customers which will allow gog to function properly. In order for the boycott to work, it has to be like strikes, where many people come together and cause huge problems and show visible issues that make them have to change. While your movement has a crowd, it does not have a big impact for now to actually hinder Gog. I am not attacking or being negative, I would just like to see your thoughts on this whole issue. :)