Well Drakan has nearly 6 thousand votes. Both GOG and SNEG reference the community wish list. If we approach this from a pessimistic view, why even bother having the wish list? I find something like Drakan far more realistic than GTA, for the sake of the argument. That doesn't stop people from voting on GTA.

rip GOG :(

but hey maybe Civ 5 will show up :)

GOG can't "fix" DoW2 by just "hacking" DRM out of it, as the problems with that game's GOG release are not related to any actual last minute added obstruction layer that serves no other purpose than to determine whether or not the end user is still allowed to play their game in which case bypassing it could have boiled into just changing a few bytes in the executable, but to one or more far more early made DRM-free incompatible design decisions that could easily require replacing more or less huge chunks of old code with at least as much of new code and then doing a lot more testing than what would be required to verify that an actual DRM check has been dealt with properly.

In another words, because with all true single player games the removal of the DRM almost never affects negatively the overall design of the game, it may come as a nasty surprise for many that this is often not the case when the developers have made DRM-free incompatible multiplayer related design choices, as they may have spend a sizeable portion of their budget implementing those decisions and therefore they might need to spend at least as much or more money to come up with a DRM-free compatible alternative, so by the time their game is eventually getting made ready for a GOG release, the window of opportunity for a DRM-free multiplayer support may have already been closed for good, as the estimated sales on GOG could easily fall short of the estimated cost of coming up with a multiplayer mode that doesn't rely on the Galaxy API.

While we can of course keep arguing whether or not some of us are too pessimistic or too optimistic about GOG's ability to coerce publishers to make any expensive alterations to their games, it doesn't change the fact that superficial DRM checks are always a lot easier problem to deal with than what could be compared to replacing a staircase with an elevator in order to allow wheelchair bound person to reach the second floor, especially when many of the customers here likely would go ballistic if they would be told that the "wheelchair friendly" GOG version would have a higher base price than the Steam version that uses a "staircase" for accessing the multiplayer portion of the game.

Without the classics, there would be no modern Gaming at all...

Your right, the classics did lay down the foundation...

The problem is that people get tired of playing the same Games
over, & over again for so many Years.

I just gave up Mario Brothers & Other NES Games in 2020,
I feel like the Nintendo should be added to a Meuseum now.

The other problem is?

Modern Games are created out of Control & Corruption Today.

-- Color Loss
-- Bugs Galore In Video Games
-- Some Games Don't Even Work At Launch Anymore
-- The Idea You Don't Own What You Pay For

Forget Modern Games Like GTA, If I Can't Even Own What I Pay For?
Games Are Full Of Bugs, & May Not Even Work?

Screw It, I'll Stick To Good Old Games, & I Don't Need Games Like That Anymore...

& Companies Are Worried About Piracy?

With Corporate Greed Like That, You Aut To Be Pirated...

Do you have proof of this? (I believe the DRM is not in the game, but in GOG's code) If you think there's something in the API that cannot be easily made DRM-free, would you please post a link to the SDK documentation of that API?

I've looked over it a while ago and didn't see any real challenges.

With or without Galaxy, with or without Steam, the AI bot matches and the human vs human matches are the same concept in this game, not a proper separate Skirmish single player mode. It should be online in any case.

The game was reworked to use their own infrastucture via Steamworks and their own Relic Servers, in GOG it uses Galaxy.

Would it be more "DRM Free" without the Galaxy Requirement?

If Galaxy should not to be needed people would be complaining as well because it is not Direct IP connection. Because that mode was also removed after the migration

I happen to believe that the "GOG" Galaxy client is destined to have its prefix eventually replaced with "CDP", as that would make a lot more sense than GOG itself having decided to go out of their way to sabotage all of their ideals.

So while it in theory would be possible to turn the Galaxy client into an independent P2P VPN client/server that could even support tunneling old network protocols between users, none of that matters if GOG's corporate overlords have already abandoned any pretenses of having ever been ideologically in favor of DRM-free gaming and have now started to fantasize about becoming a major online platform by getting more and more people using their client, which is a lot more likely scenario than them still holding DRM-free believes close their heart while still allowing GOG the freedom to undermine those believes.

And in the end, if the developers had not likely used some third party libraries with expiring licenses in the first place in their implementation of LAN support, they could have added Steam integration without scrapping the LAN support in the process or perhaps still had the option to brought it back with minimal expenses when it was time to migrate from Steam API to Galaxy API, so my main point about a few byte flips with a hex editor not being even close enough to fix multiplayer related issues with this game will still stand.

Taking into account the CDP Group's potential role in these matters is what has kept me from being so quick to jump blaming GOG over issues that the upper management could have easily forbidden GOG to do if they so wished, like for example giving us more details about who exactly made the decision to shield the rest of the CDP Group not only from CCP's wrath, but also from everyone who could not take a few steps back to see the entire CDP forest behind the GOG tree?

Ok, sorry, I thought your main point was what your post started with:

And I guess we get to what is my main point: ... have decided that their client must have DRM.

It looks like we are in agreement then that the DRM is there because GOG put it there, and GOG isn't going to remove it even if they easily could.

Only if you really want to twist my words to mean just about the polar opposite of what I was trying to say, as I refuse to automatically assume malice or even incompetence from GOG regarding any Galaxy client related issues when attributing either one to the the upper management of the CDP Group could just as well explain everything, like for example why we had for a while the entire client embedded with a secondary set of offline installers until it was no longer possible to ignore the fact that doing so would indeed more than double the needed storage capacity, which may have only happened when the upper management got to review GOG's data center budget proposal for the next year.

And I was also objecting how the insistence to call everything one doesn't like in game development as DRM tends to then lead to people casually demanding GOG to just "remove that DRM" even with cases where there is no actual DRM to remove, but a multiplayer patient with one or more missing vital organs that is hooked to an external life support, so being a bit more specific about what should be the outcome of the "removal" wouldn't hurt at all as then at least everyone would know what others are actually demanding and then decide if we wish to support any of those demands...

Ok, I think most people attribute the actions of a company to that company. The upper management and owners represent the company more than anyone else does. I feel like you're playing a weird game, pretending that owners and management are somehow separate from the company and yet actions of the company are attributed to management and owners. Well, in this case there is obviously DRM. Simply calling it multiplayer doesn't stop the mandatory sign-on with a third party service and the following license check to not be DRM.

There is clear, obvious, and demonstrated malice in how the Galaxy API was created. Ownership checks exist. That alone is damning without the other elements (that make it even more markedly worse).

Ideally, GOG curation would take care of this problem by using their discretion to reject such games from being listed on this store. I'm not recalling if they even have to give a reason, but if it were me, I would consider such games to have poor and unprofessional design, thus they don't belong on a boutique storefront. Say what you will about the Whale Rock Games; I'm not aware of any having these modern "features" in their design.

Just look how well blaming just GOG worked with the Devotion fiasco, as somehow nobody who was upset enough to boycott GOG could ever figure out the possibility that if GOG was permitted to release Devotion after the Weibo announcement had already challenged CCP's authority, the retaliation could have easily come in the form of CCP going after all platforms selling CDPR's games and therefore enraging a small number of GOG customers to only boycott GOG over the "many gamers" excuse was likely the least risky option the upper management of the CDP Group could have taken as it kept them out of the spotlight while also leaving GOG powerless to explain who was actually behind the cancellation decision as they were only allowed to release group level approved statements about that incident and it simply would have been stupid for them to approve new statements once the gaming news media had moved on to cover other topics as new statements might have become new headlines and possibly force them to issue a new statement, which is exactly the kind of vicious cycle you want to avoid if you have any idea about crisis management.

If it is not enough to get multiplayer related features to work with just bypassing the sign-on and license check requirements, then we are not dealing with any last minute added obstruction layers, but with far more extensive DRM-free incompatible design decisions, which is why we should actually acknowledge that fact rather than insist calling everything in gaming we don't like as "DRM" and then proceed to simply demand the removal of it, as if pretending that there is never any need to be a bit more specific about whether the goal is to just keep all DRM-free incompatible stuff away from GOG at any cost or to actually try to convince publishers to turn any multiplayer related functionality in their games DRM-free compatible.

Actual DRM is also always deliberately added, whereas DRM-free incompatible design may some times be totally accidental, so if we stop mixing these two together into a same list so carelessly, some of the current and future game developers might actually end up less often innocently forgetting to first get an offline LAN test setup running before adding any online hub functionality in their game, saving them from the near impossible task of getting more funding from the publisher to later fix than mistake, as the publisher would be only interested in ensuring that most of the modern multiplayer audience will have all the online only features they can't live without.

Except nobody here ever seems to be calling out the rest of the CDP Group for anything, even with the Galaxy tied extras for CDPR's games the blame is always laid on GOG for "allowing" that, as if GOG had any other option than comply with or without some of their own staff getting fired or reassigned elsewhere from whatever position their had that could have allowed them to do more than just voice internally their objections.

Clear, obvious, demostrated, objective, malice...

Considering that you misundertand your tastes and hates with what DRM means, all those dramatic adjectives do not mean anything




Galaxy api was designed to invade poland,