While I must admit, my opinion of GOG has plummeted in the last year or so, I still expected better than this given that they threw away the flat pricing in order to place more focus on the DRM-free principle ("if we accept regional pricing then we can get bigger games DRM-free!"). Besides, the DRM in this game has been here the entire time this game was being sold. It just didn't become obvious that the developer held the power to deactivate your game until the developer deactivated everyone's game. It's been here for years... and while I appreciate that your expectations of GOG are very low, the more people lurk on this thread, the less GOG will feel like they need to deal with this. We've got to make some noise!

There's no way I'm getting a Facebook/Twitter account!

I'm naught but a tiny ripple of sighs slowly fading away in the vast GOG ocean of indifference...

I meant noise in this thread, but whatever. It's just that a couple of people appeared and owned up to lurking and it makes it seem like fewer people are bothered by this than actually are.

What a mess.

This should have been sorted out long ago. A store that constantly advertises itself as DRM free is still selling a game with DRM!

There is no excuse. This needs to be fixed ASAP.

(just adding my voice)

I know. :)

It ought to be so simple... if a publisher of a new game can't/won't deliver a completely DRM-free version of it they can sod right off and go push it elsewhere.

Mmm, but at the moment GOG isn't exactly showing that that's how they feel... Not sure what DRM-free means to them if it doesn't mean DRM-free.

Thanks for making me aware of this!!!

Just requested a refund! This is unacceptable. Hope the developer notices the refunds.

They already fixed the issue and are in communication with the dev to make sure it doesn't happen again. Plus, they're offering refunds. Screwups happen, and this is a pretty comprehensive fix for something that GOG didn't do. It doesn't really lower my opinion of GOG - a small business with overworked, mediocre devs is going to have problems like this, the important thing is fixing it asap and preventing the same mistake going forward. Looks like that happened, so I'm good.
Dude. Did you not see that the problem is fixed? And that GOG is working with the dev to get a GOG-only build going forward?

There's no reason to request a refund at this point. Before it was fixed, sure. Now, not so much.

I miss the days when we had The EnigmaticT here. At least he would have had the decency to be upfront and honest about matters like this. Now, all we have is contradictory and ultimately meaningless double-speak like, "Wow, now the online DRM in our DRM-free game works the way it should! You should be so happy now!"

I still keep wondering why he decided to quit. :(

It could easily be that GOG got the developer to remove the DRM-check at one point, than the dev made a patch and forgot to set it up separately for GOG, so the patch also patched in the DRM. GOG is now asking the Dev to set up a special build for GOG with the check permanently removed from the code to prevent patching the DRM back in in the future.

Having working in development, this seems the most likely explanation to me.

I don't see as this is a mistake on gog so much as on the dev. He must make sure this can't happen in the future and has to have an incentive to do so, therefore I am very keen on getting my money back from him. It's not acceptable in a drm free game for single player to phone home. Simple as that. Say in 20 years his servers are down (and they will be)? Then you can't play your single player game anymore. A pre-activated key for the gog version just doesn't cut it. It just mustn't try to phone home before giving the full single player experience!
So I have a very good reason for the refund, as far as I understand the situation.

Dude, if you read the thread properly you'd see that it is in no way fixed. The problem that alerted us to the DRM is fixed, but the DRM is still there.
No. The issue is that the game has very active DRM that gives the devs the power to deactivate your game. That has not been fixed yet, all that has happened is that they've reactivated our game using the power that they shouldn't have. The was sold as DRM-free, it wasn't DRM-free and still isn't.

Whether or not the current situation is acceptable to you, it isn't DRM-free and shouldn't currently be on GOG.

Your scenario already doesn't apply. Even prior to this, if the game couldn't connect to the servers nothing happened.

Only when 1) Game could talk to the servers, and 2) Key was deactivated did a problem happen.

I agree that single player games shouldn't phone home. But given that the typical scenarios (offline computer, server down) were already accounted for and an updated build is in progress I don't think it's worth causing all the hassle of refunds.

A refund request will hit GOG, not the developer. Maybe they can get money back from the dev but probably not - refunds don't typically work that way. What you're doing is pulling money out of GOG's pocket, the dev won't notice a thing.

I wouldn't call that 'fixed' just yet. Besides, it appears the users have to send a message to the head honchos at GOG about not owning up to their mistakes and not taking their responsibilities seriously and what better way to do this than requesting a refund?

Whatever the initial cause GOG is ultimately to be held accountable for this embarrassing situation.