No, I am just pointing out that nothing you do, or even government does is going to change things. Do you get the cookie notices? That is software house giving the middle finger to government rules. Eula’s, much the same. The only thing which matters is money, you are either making it or not, that is how business works. I totally agree, and you can tell from plenty of my other posts, that I fully disagree with gog’s standpoint, have done since they released galaxy and started down this path, so you can call me all the names, and words I don’t even understand, it’s not going to change a damn thing. Whilst gog makes money, that is all there is. Ultimately the best outcome would be gog go fully out of business, as does CDPR, and the rest of the industry takes this as a wake up call, and future proper “drm free” stores don’t follow this path and invest in crappy clientwares or bow to industry pressure, but that is not going to happen from law, it is only going to happen by having the money taken away. Money is god, god is money, law is money, breath is money. Try for example to get a laser to do your lawsuit for free and perhaps you will then understand.

Honestly, buddy, who the heck do you think you are talking to? Go get a prostitute or a psychiatrist, but avoid dumping your lore on randos in the web.

That's not how things work. GOG going out of business would cause everyone else to go "hey look, selling DRM-free makes you go out of business, let's double down on DRM from now on."

Lasers that practice law?

Lawyer, auto type correction as normal.
I see, you are just going to try your best to insult anyone who agrees with your point, but not you methodology. Well, good luck failing.

For anyone who actually wants change, stop buying from gog, there is a thread here:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/boycotting_gog_2021
The more that stop providing them money, the more they will think about the direction they are heading and perhaps change.

For it to be binary it would need to have a clear definition, preferably a legal one, of what DRM is or isn't, ask 10 peoples on this forum what DRM is and you will probably have 10 different answers.

It might, but if the reason is highlighted as being as they started selling drm products then it might have the opposite. But yes, I think drm free is dead, has been for a while. Not just in the gaming world, but everywhere else, tv being split up into hundreds of different streaming services for instance. The whole concept of ownership has been degrading for quite sometime. Either way, you won’t effect change in gog without removing what they want, which is money. They look at sales figures and present that to investors, they don’t take threads of the forum and present those to investors.

I know one consisting of volunteer lawyers and IT experts who successfully defended consumer rights against such giants as FB, Google and other companies but also Amazon and other well known companies. This group is just another option besides the Ombudsman.

I also wholeheartedly agree with you that a complaint about DRM measures, however we define it and wherever we draw our personal lines, would equally come to naught directed to a consumer rights group or Ombudsman as it would before a court of law. It would be a baseless claim because practically every company is allowed to protect their product from theft. Ye and I don't have to discuss the effectiveness of such measures looking at the reality of how things are.

A complaint can only be about asking whether GOG or IOI are allowed to bar access to paid content. Whether that be items, single-player online content, user created content, basic offline functionality that's locked, in single player games. More or less the same questions applies to multiplayer components, which can also be part of a game, but access to it is locked by a third-party client, GOG Galaxy. Since Galaxy doesn't offer any multiplayer functionality by itself, all it does is gating access to a game's publisher/developer server, for which in some cases you need an additional account to access it, whether that's legal. Considering that the only purpose of GOG is a business selling games. It is not their task to offer an environment for publishers and developers to lock parts of content behind a client of their own making.

GOG also promises that a game can be played offline, in full, and there is a reasonable expectation that this entails full content, always offline, without major parts of it necessitating an account and online connection, all parts of which can be considered single player content. As I also explained, or at least tried to, GOG developed their client whereas before you could access all content without. There have been offline installers and to access multiplayer servers all one needed was an account at most and an active connection. Titan Quest as a case in point.

No way they can explain why use of a client is now necessary as opposed to before Galaxy even existed. Not in games like TQ, Grim Dawn, Victor Vran, Mini Metro and so many others. And that's where I think a consumer rights group or Ombudsman will be able to intervene and that it's not just about whether we as customers are entitled to demand DRM-free games without traps and pitfalls like use of a client or always online connection as GOG promises.

It's always within their right to change the policy to sell DRM products. All they can't do is locking away parts of a game they had no involvement in their creation, unilaterally, behind their client. It's not like Steam where from the beginning the purpose was clear and the way things work for publishers and developers. That games published on their are going to be bound to a client, consumers get the right to access their libraries and the option to purchase games, etc. This is not the case with GOG and, again, there is no reasonable explanation why this is the case now.

In short, there are numerous potential rights we would otherwise enjoy, having been violated and are violated at the time of this writing. It is easy to proof that this is the case because examples abound. Again this is then up to the experts to clarify and what's been said above will form part of the basis of my complaint.

Good luck with that. Which country are you going to file it in, by the way? you are aware that different countries have different laws?

This part is wrong, Galaxy does provide the framework for multiple online services, be it multiplayer, achievements and cloud save, and very often when the devs provide their own multiplayer feature it works without needing Galaxy. For example you can play AoW III multiplayer without Galaxy as the multiplayer is handled by the devs. Other games having direct IP support also doesn't require Galaxy to work online Divinity Original Sin 1 & 2 for example. And it is still the case today, Galaxy is usually not mandatory for Games that have their own multiplayer implementation. If you want a recent example Aragami 2 can be played online without Galaxy.

"Reasonable expectation" is not really a clear definition, it's rather subjective, what is reasonable expectation ? That you can play the single player story/campaign from start to finish ? in this case even Hitman qualify, or that every single content / feature that could be played in single player is available offline, but in this case does it include what was in the game when it was originally released or does it include every single content released afterward ? I am no lawyer but I don't think that the line is as clear cut as you think.

Again that's not true, as I said earlier games that have their "own" online feature still work fine without Galaxy and before Galaxy those who didn't had their online feature disabled when released on Gog. If you were on Gog at that time you probably remember that it was a huge subject of controversies as peoples felt that Gog version were gutted (as the multiplayer was totally removed) compared to Steam ones.

It's refreshing to see some common sense.

Unreal Tournament, Red Faction, and Unreal Tournament 2004 are three video games that have multiplayer that have 100% Digital Rights Management (DRM) free multiplayer and both the gog.com versions and the Steam versions work cross platform play perfectly.

You do not need to log into a email account, you do not need to type any CD Keys at all for Unreal Tournament, Red Faction, and Unreal Tournament 2004.

This is how multiplayer for video games that have multiplayer should be done.

No it isn't wrong, and, again, I don't disagree with you. Yes, it does offer a framework for achievements and cloud saves and that's where it should end. It is absolutely true that there are games you can play without Galaxy and all content is available without use of the client. Then there are cases where this isn't true, Offworld Trading Company, you can't access singple player online challenges and MP without their client. This got nothing to do with the game, this is feature complete as it is, client code is available and would be accessible, while in reality it is not.

That's basically my whole point. So if you at least agree with me that Galaxy should be completely optional, in the sense that certain features like achievements, which otherwise could not be shared with one's personal profile on GOG, be it with or without client to access and view this social content, is acceptable - no critique or reason for complaints there. The same thing applies to cloud saves, GOG provides it, it is only available using their client, all good and fine. Of course I could argue that a wrapper could do the same rendering Galaxy completely optional.

The main point of all this is, when I purchase a game, and the main draw of GOG is to allow me to play a feature complete game and access all content without their client, that when they put an artificial block in the way, this is what matters. This should be possible with all games.

A reasonable expectation to me and in this case is, that a game sold feature complete is accessible without artificial barriers, the full content, without signing up for a shop service, without use of a client, without artificial barriers locking content that is otherwise accessible. They promise this, they advertise it, so this is what can be expected.

Some do, some don't, while all should. I've been following the goings on on GOG for a very long time before I decided that it was time to sign up in 2015. So I am aware of such discussions and many controversies. There was never a reason why MP was stripped when the games always offered it natively. It is the fact that it is a part of the games, it is a fact that it can do without, so there is no justification whatsoever to block access, demanding use of Galaxy. Or, indeed, that in case of IOI which this is all about, they lock and block essential features, in a game that's promised to work 100% offline.

Please understand it isn't clear cut either which way we are looking at it. There are things both justified and acceptable and there are others which clearly are not. I can't say anymore as I already did and you may disagree with parts or all I have written here. It's also clear that neither you nor I can decide where rights are violated, where to draw lines, and whether or not any rights have been infringed. All I can do is leave this conversation and all I wish to tell you is that I don't disagree with anything you said, because you are indeed correct I'll just wait what the Ombudsman and the aforementioned consumer rights group has to say to this come Monday.

Have a pleasant weekend. :)

My impression is that the core of GOG's customer base doesn't matter to GOG, because they seem to be under the very mistaken impressions that:

1. Millions of new customers will flock to GOG because they desperately want to have Galaxy 2.0's one client to put all your DRM'ed games into the same place feature

2. GOG thinks "a curated selection of games" is a great selling point for them that will also create legions of new customers, even though, really, no one cares about that, and in fact many people think they shouldn't 'curate' anything

Of course, in reality, GOG's apparent beliefs that they can replace their core customer base with tons of new ones because of these points are completely false and it's not going to happen, since actually, DRM-free is GOG's only viable & good selling point.

But that doesn't mean GOG will necessarily stop making bad decisions in accordance their apparent incorrect beliefs.

That's a moot point though, because everyone else already is doubling-down on DRM (other than a couple of non-viable stores that sell almost no quality games, and hence are irrelevant anyway for that reason).

Hence, GOG going out of business wouldn't change any darn thing whatsoever about how any other stores operate.

Right now the main hurdle with the Stock option is the number of people you would need to get on board to make a dent

https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/investors/shareholders/

Based on this you need 1 million shares for 1% ownership in CDPR/GOG as an average, so you would need to go through the free float stocks as well as the people listed to find out how important DRM-free is to them and will they support pushing that even if it is at the expense of profit/increasing the value of those stocks.

With 1 share going between $50-$60 CDN this would require a lot of research and a lot of communication to get enough people to acquire enough shares and form a united group to have there voice heard over stock holders who care more about profit than DRM-free.

Not saying it isn't possible, but it will take a great effort to achieve.

On the webpage above it states the numbers are based on shareholders who control at least 5% of votes at the general meeting.

I will say I have been looking into buying stock, but this does give a moment of pause if you are buying stock in an effort to change the direction of a company.