Gilozard: 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.
SirPrimalform: Yes the game did work offline, but when you had a connection available the game was still asking the server if it should run. This is what gave the developer the power to deactivate everyone's game and it shouldn't have been on GOG.
You're right about refunds, they'll probably come out of GOG's pocket but I don't see a problem with that. Either they knew what the game was doing and accepted it, or they had no idea because they didn't check it enough. Either way they didn't do their job properly.
At least one person has been saying that the
dev will be the one making refunds, so I simply wanted to make it very clear that that was not what was happening.
From my perspective, most of the reasons I require DRM-free were still going to be fine, so while it's utterly unacceptable that this happened and it needs to be fixed asap, I'm not going to flounce straight to a refund.
I can see why GOG trusted the dev and then had problems when it turned out the game wasn't really DRM-free. I can see their efforts to remedy the problem now and in the long-term. It's upsetting and disappointing but sometimes people make boneheaded mistakes, and I don't think punishing GOG is the right answer when they're trying to fix the problem.
Gilozard: 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.
mchack: ok thanks for clearing that up. Still I want gog (and the dev most of all) to notice that I find this not acceptable. The thing is I am always online and deactivating the key was obviously done deliberately by the dev since this is not something that happens via an update but has to be done on the backend. The very Idea that the dev can deactivate my single player game whenever he chooses to do so, is enough reason for me to request a refund.
That the refund firstly hits gog is a shame, but I hope that they can get their money back from the dev and if not at least remove the game from the cataloge until this situation is clearly impossible to happen ever again.
Glad to clear that up! Make sure to email the dev too - they very likely don't follow GOG's forums, but they'll probably notice an email or a thread in their own forums. Direct communication is always the best way to get something through to people.
EDIT: I can see how the key deactivation happened accidentally - the dev probably forgot it was the GOG key, saw a whole bunch of people using the same key, said "PIRACY!!" and deactivated it. There could even be an automated system that tracks this and flags keys for deactivation, so the dev wouldn't be involved much at all. That's typically how keys are handled afaik.