Lingxin: I do not believe they look that closely on every game which gets published nowadays on their platform.

Mori_Yuki: 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.

samuraigaiden: Since the earliest days, GOG built the entire identity of it's platform around being DRM-free.

Even now, in the game page for Hitman 2016 it says "DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play."

Unfortunately, it has become clear that this is simply untrue. Hitman requires an always online connection to have access to basic single player game progression, such as unlocking new weapons, outfits and new starting locations.

To anyone unfamiliar, Hitman is a stealth sandbox game. The claim that the base story content is playable offline is meaningless given that is a mere fraction of the experience. This is not a Telltale adventure game we're talking about.

The state in which the game is being sold not only contradicts the information present in the game page, it contradicts the entire identity that GOG built since it's inception.

This is not just about a specific game. It's about a website luring people for years with the promise of only selling DRM-free software.

Hitman 2016 creates a terrible precedent for more games to be released on GOG with only a tiny slice of the single player gameplay actually DRM-free while the bulk of the experience requires an always online connection or some other form of DRM.

If we are to look at this situation in the wider context of recent controversies surrounding the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, the big picture is even more worrying.

It is clear that CDPR management needs a wake up call.

My suggestion is that like minded individuals participate in this thread to use GOG's own forum to gather evidence to be used as the basis for a class action lawsuit against the website.

I am saddened that it has come to this.

GOG is in a path of self destruction and the only way to save is by making our voices heard.

nightcraw1er.488: 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...

tfishell: Unfortunately I imagine the takeaway is more likely to be, "DRM-free is not a sustainable business / not worthwhile," possibly resulting in issues like the DRM-free stores that remain having much greater difficulty getting products onto their store. That's part of why I still buy older DRM-free products here: currently GOG still offers DRM-free products that I want (like the recent TR releases, and hopefully Serious Sam 2 soonish) and I think things will only get worse if/when GOG goes out of business. (Of course if DRM-free is the most important quality to someone in a game, and they aren't picky about genre and whatnot, they may be fine with Zoom-Platform's, FireFlower's, itch.io's, etc. limited selection. Or you go mrkgnao's route and just use Steam and download through the method he's mentioned before)

I guess another viewpoint (similar to what you said) is many users that care about DRM-free would move to someplace like Zoom if GOG dies, grow Zoom (and show that DRM-free is still viable but there's a limit to growth), and hopefully steer it away from the decisions that lead to GOG's downfall.

Orkhepaj: how is it not sustainable? they dont make all the money in the world ,but it doesnt mean it is not profitable

tfishell: Unfortunately I imagine the takeaway is more likely to be, "DRM-free is not a sustainable business / not worthwhile," possibly resulting in issues like the DRM-free stores that remain having much greater difficulty getting products onto their store. That's part of why I still buy older DRM-free products here: currently GOG still offers DRM-free products that I want (like the recent TR releases, and hopefully Serious Sam 2 soonish) and I think things will only get worse if/when GOG goes out of business. (Of course if DRM-free is the most important quality to someone in a game, and they aren't picky about genre and whatnot, they may be fine with Zoom-Platform's, FireFlower's, itch.io's, etc. limited selection. Or you go mrkgnao's route and just use Steam and download through the method he's mentioned before)

I guess another viewpoint (similar to what you said) is many users that care about DRM-free would move to someplace like Zoom if GOG dies, grow Zoom (and show that DRM-free is still viable but there's a limit to growth), and hopefully steer it away from the decisions that lead to GOG's downfall.

lexluthermiester: Third, a class action would only apply to one class in one location. Are you going to file in the USA or in Poland? The laws in Poland are different in key ways to the laws in the US. A class action in the US wouldn't be very effective as CDPR is located in Poland. There are no treaties between the US and Poland for civil court actions, so even if a victory was obtained, how would you enforce it? Granted, injunctions do work, but that only affects the USA. It does nothing for the rest of the world.

samuraigaiden: I wouldn't expect too much from Zoom. They have been moving in a glacial pace for years, so it doesn't seem like anyone's priority.

I wouldn't be surprised if that Jordan dude has a day job and Zoom is one of his hobbies.

Mori_Yuki: 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.

StingingVelvet: There is zero chance at all this would pass muster. Leaving aside the subjective definition of what DRM is, there's the fact the base game does in fact run with zero DRM. Everything outside of that could be considered an online mode. That's why GOG agreed to sell it in the first place.

I disagree with that choice, as the game's offline mode is way too limited to count as "the singleplayer experience," but a lawsuit? Some of you guys need a Xanax.