I remember the issue. Completely different situation to me.

I would ask for a refund on DEFCON but not on F.E.A.R. (if I owned any of those titles on GOG)

I also just remembered Far Cry 2 had something in it as well....I think Punk BUster or something kinda useless. But whatever. Your question-

Xenonauts had call outs and missing game content. But what really pissed me off was the game also would toss some files at the root of the drive the game was on while it ran. such as X:/bleh-bluh.h <-purely example. When I asked the dev/owner directly about them, he said he had no idea as he didn't have access to the source code of his own game.

In short the behavior was, the game is executed. Launcher comes up and calls out. Then if you started the game some scripts would run and dump a file onto the root and delete it so you couldn't see wtf it was up to. While I figured...meh, just a game... I thought, well wtf is it exactly as it shouldn't be doing that! I think the dev guy paid some one to make his game for him and that explains his responses. The engine the paid person used was garbage and he had to use scripts to do something I found similar to how another program works, which I can't think of at the moment. Its a free 3d art package....damn....Well in any event, that art program does something similar and I assume the game works the same way. I think, don't qoute me though, it offloads the memory of the save file into a dummy/temporary file before it saves whatever you were up to in game. But I got paranoid as I was only at the title screen and "alt-tabbed" out to the desktop and it would do this....was never really resolved. Nor did I get much flat factual info.

It'd show that GOG is taking this seriously. The game isn't DRM-free, therefore it has no place on GOG, full stop. It shouldn't have ever been here but we can't change the past.
No online checks? Have you even read this thread? The game has been checking the entire time it was here.
That would have been fine if they'd pre-activated a one time activation, but the game basically re-activates itself every time it is started if given the opportunity. Even if the developer hadn't banned the key, the game was still repeatedly asking the server if it was ok to run. The fact that the server was saying yes at the time didn't make it DRM-free.
I don't understand this weird apologist thing you've got going on, the game clearly has DRM and GOG defines itself as a DRM-free store.

That depends on how you define an online check and what they (GOG) were referring too. Typically to me that means you have to check in or be online in order to play or check in on the first install/launch in order to very/activate the game (ie Steam). This was not the case here, the game happen to check your key if you happen to get online, you were never forced to in order to play. Clearly this is up for debate though what they meant by "no on-line checks".

Many games connect online for a variety of reason if you happen to be online while playing, it isn't always because of DRM... so I don't think this is what GOG was referring to here otherwise a game that checks online to grab game stats could constitute as non DRM free based on what GOG stated.

DRM is the code/mechanism that gives them the power to control your use, not the use of that power. The fact that at first they hadn't stopped people playing didn't make the game DRM-free. The DRM was there, not being used but they had the power to disable the game. So it wasn't DRM-free.

That basically what I said... If they developer did not have the power to ban the key this would not matter and that is were they went wrong. It's not what they did, it how they did it that is the issue. Using a pre-activated key is fine as long as it not being checked against a server, which was not the case here.

How am I apologetic? I said very clearly that the game in this form is not DRM free. Been saying that, I just don't agree with a butch of the comments and bashing that was going in the thread because of it. Not when they are at-least attempting to rectify the issue.
Again who says... there is NO standard definition on what is and isn't DRM. We could argue this point all day. As I said I tend to go with the more popular definition which is restriction after sale, and in this case there was no restrictions up until the key was banned.

How is it up for debate? It wasn't a mandatory check, but it was still checking and asking the server if it should carry on allowing you to play. It did this every single time you ran it with an internet connection. The fact that the server was giving a thumbs up before didn't mean it wasn't checking. There is nothing to debate.

I agree that not all phoning home is DRM. It could just be to tell you if there's an update or any number of other benign reasons. But in this case it was checking the key on the server and deciding whether you should be allowed to play. Again, there is nothing to debate.

Did you or someone else send a message to support? (not that i think it will do much)

I don't get it, nowadays developers like to get away with stuff like this, Heavy Bullets has this framerate problem for almost a year now and the dev promised a patch but it went missing for months, i had to tweet to Digital Revolver (and they're awesome) so that he finally appeared on the forum.

What a redundant statement. It basically boils down to, "if the game was DRM-free, then it would be DRM-free!". Yes, if the game couldn't be remotely deactivated then this thread wouldn't exist.


Well for one, you think it's fine for GOG to carry on selling a game that we know has DRM. Ciris said they've been in contact with the developer for some time trying to get a properly DRM-free version. So, not only did GOG already know about this, but it doesn't sound as if this DRM-free version is exactly imminent (it might be considered a higher priority now the shit has hit the fan).
The restrictions were there, they just weren't utilised until the key was banned. The potential for them to disable the game was the DRM, not the act of disabling it.

The fact that it was checking is not what is up for debate, as I clearly said, what GOG meant by "no online checks" is what is up for debate which is what they advertise as being DRM free. For instance MP checks a key before playing, if we agree that GOG also meant no key checks online by saying "no online checks" then every MP game here is in violation of GOG DRM free stance since MP keys are always checked against a server. This is why I tend to say GOG was was referring to not having to be online in order to play or check in on the first install/launch in order to very/activate the game.

It's not so black and white... also this was in response to the fraud/illegal comment, not rather if this game really is DRM free or not. I've already stated the game isn't really DRM free in it's current form, that I agree with. Doesn't mean wasn't DRM free based on what GOG classifies or advertises as DRM free.

I wasn't saying that for your benefit, I was saying that for those who want NO DRM in GOG games not even pre-activated keys that don't check against a server. If you have read through this thread you will find many who are against even that, they don't want tricks that effectively make a game DRM free even if the DRM is still technically there but it is DRM free by what GOG advertises. I was also saying that in the terms of this being fraud or illegal for those who are claiming that. You took that out of context to the rest of the post.

I think it's fine for GOG to continue to sell the game so long as they deliver on a proper DRM free version as promised in due time, I don't think this should continue to happen in other games or that they should not remove the DRM and continue to sell it. If that was the case, I would agree with you that it needs to be removed from sale immediately.

I have the same suspicion, which is why I pinged Introversion to suggest they proffer a very brief text comment on the cause and correction being offered.

The ball is in their and GOG's court to clarify the situation. A lack of clarification isn't really good enough IMO.

good luck with getting anything from Introversion. Last time I contacted them about this game they said 'what game are you talking about again?'... 'Defcon', I say and heard nothing afterwards.

Anyways, I checked last night by installing the game without internet connection then starting it up. It showed down the bottom 'authentication status unknown' however I had no limitation on gameplay this time.

Yeah, I sent them an email the same time I sent GOG one. While GOG took a while and weren't very helpful, I've yet to even hear from Introversion.

After reading what Ciris said again, I think this exactly what could have happen: This probably means the dev did something on the backend (ie server side) so that the single player mode can't be blocked via a key ban or it could mean they lifted the universal key ban, however based on the "The game still does seem to try calling home at startup" part this makes it sound more like they did something on the backend to remove the key check for single player so it won't happen again but the game still checks regardless and just won't find anything.

EDIT: Misread what was said here, my apologizes. Self explanatory, but clearly says the check was a mistake NOT the banning of the key was a mistake. Meaning they could have asked the dev to remove said check before and it was re-added in an update or a newer build of the game and they didn't know. Meaning create a build that does not have the check so this can't happen again even if they fixed the issue server side and so that users can't complain about them re-introducing the DRM later. Self explanatory, we don't want bad PR.

It could very well be that they only needed a pre-activation key to get around a cd key type check that was implemented as DRM by the dev, and that they did indeed ask them to remove the online check after the first time this happen which could have been re-added again in a patch and missed by GOG in testing. Based on what Ciris actually said in that post and other post, that is possible. Cirs never said the online check was never removed before or that that they implemented the pre-activated key just to get around this online check, it's not clear if an online check was the only DRM this game had.

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Not saying that is what happen, but it is indeed possible that that is the case, and I don't expect a company like GOG to go into detail on what really happen as that's not something companies do as it can bite them in the ass later. Lol

Wow... ever since the introduction of regional pricing and then regional locking I'm just waiting for stuff like this to happen.
Hopefully GOG.com will react appropriately and remove either the game or the DRM.