AFAIK the only thing you can't do (without hacking the save game) is get the Void Egg, which you need to start the quest to get a Living Ship, which means you can't get the Living Ship.

It's completely optional, but it looks really cool, I've seen a few in the Anomaly. I don't know if the Living Ships have some advantage other than cool looks.

PS: Otherwise I would gladly join the barricades, sharpen the torches and light the pitchforks...

I'm pretty sure that aside from the living ship stuff (which I don't really know anything about, I haven't looked into it specifically so as not to spoil anything for myself if the issue is fixed in the future) it's all cosmetic. There shouldn't be any need to worry about it affecting game progression or anything.

Iirc from other posts of yours in the past, you've been around gaming for a while, right? It seems you are not addressing the "precedent" argument despite surely having seen it before. Namely, the argument is that GOG allowing this treatment sets a precedent for future, likely worse, treatment. There was a time when a lot of gamers scoffed at Horse Armor too. "Whats the big deal, it's only cosmetic, the game is massive you can enjoy it without buying the Horse Armor". Not realizing that Horse Armor effectively set a precedent for all of the piecemeal games we have nowadays.

So what is GOG to do? Delist the game, which probably cuts off all current players from further updates?

And I still scoff at Horse Armor. It has not become the norm for offline single player games. F2P and MOBA/MMO stuff is different of course.

So would it be better if GOG hadn't put that warning to the game store page, as a warning to would-be customers?

I don't see that as a sign of GOG's unwillingness to fix it, but rather as the first thing they had to do, before even contacting the developer. A bit like if you notice your house is on fire due to broken electricity wires, the first thing to do is not try to fix the wires, but to stop the fire. Priorities, man, priorities.

OK, then. Thank you. *puts pitchfork back in storage*

GOG has de-listed other games, why is this one so special? It's bad enough that stuff like GWENT gets special treatment but I can see why CDPR makes an exception for "themselves" as it were. But regardless, as another user or two put it, perhaps the developer could get an opportunity to fix the game to be completely DRM-free prior to the game being removed from sale. This of course doesn't do much for the window of customers buying in between now and then, who are buying what is apparently a DRMed game, but sounds like a fair compromise as long as the developer would not take too long in fixing it. Personally I would say DRM of any kind is cause for instant de-listing UNTIL it is fixed to be 100% DRM-free. This is the DRM-free store, right?

Games having content broken up into numerous DLCs has not become the norm for offline single player games? It certainly has become widespread, far more than it was in the pre-Horse Armor days.

Yes.

I guess this needs to be repeated over and over: In any case, no one sane could blame GOG for the game that violates their basic policy being delisted. If people should have a problem with that, they should pick it up with the devs. The idea that GOG should start allowing breaches of their fundamental policy because the alternative might inconvenience some users is insane and makes basicaly any store policy a flimsy pretense.

In the best case scenario, yes it should be removed from the store and in a way i hope it will be, i'm going to let tihs cook for a while but if it isn't resolved i guess i'm going to be forced to flood the support with tickets.

Now i'm certainly not going to let Hello Games get away here and shame on me for praising their continued work on the game, if this actually intentional by them on this store then they can just honestly fuck right off, terrible behavior and adding in online elements regardless of how minor they are puts those who have already bought and GOG in a bad position here.

I don't know the agreement between Hello games and GOG or if it's best to wait until contract runs out to pull it but honestly developers can just fuck off with this sneaky shit amd GOG has to be more selective.

It has a lot of players, and it still gets massive content updates, mostly pure single player content.

That's stretching the definition of DRM. DRM would mean they could take away content from you. Like Steam locking your account, or forcing updates on you that cripple soundtrack or censor games for your region.
In NMS, on the contrary, once you have "unlocked" the content, either by playing online or hacking the save game, it's yours to keep. I don't see any "Digital Rights Management", just a stupid decision to lure players to "community content" with something which offline players also want to have, and which they could have without breaking the game for anyone.

Paid, purely cosmetic single item DLC has become common for single player games? Well, I don't have a Steam account, so I have to take your word for it.

Correct me but one can still play 75% of the game just fine offline, right?

Yes. If the game includes DRM then it should be de-listed until the developers fix it to remove the DRM.

As others have mentioned, there have been cases in the past where people who have already bought games continued to receive updates after the games were de-listed from the store. There is also the possibility of GOG or the developer offering a refund for those that want it, in light of the fact that updates to the game since release have apparently broken GOG's DRM-free policy.

Also, in light of GOG's anti-DRM mission, it would be good of the developers to make a version available for those that have already bought it (perhaps as a separate download) that has any additional DRM-laden content stripped out, which is not required for the 'base game'.

Does the game include DRM? As in Digital Rights (or Restriction) Management?

All it does - afaik - is enable some (additional and non-essential) stuff in a shop, if you play online. It enables it only then, because the currency for the store is earned in "community missions", which you can't do if you play offline only.

I completely agree that esp. the Void Egg should be made available for offline players too - maybe create some mission to obtain it, or the required quicksilver. I'd like to have a cool ship like that too, without being forced to partake in "community" bullsh... ah, stuff.
If not Hello Games, then I hope modders fix this.

Feels like having an extremely cool weapon in a game, that would be so much fun in SP, but it's only available in MP. I wouldn't call that "DRM" either.

I wonder how many people who vent in this thread have actually played the game and know how online/offline works.

No, it may be a somewhat confusing point I'm making so I apologize but I am not making a direct analogy. I am saying that games being broken up piecemeal has become common for single player games. Which was prefaced by Horse Armor. Once enough gamers accepted cosmetic individual item DLC, such as Horse Armor, companies began pushing for more of games to be broken up and sold individually to players.

In other words supporting minor inconvenient bad practices has led to worse practices down the line.

I don't see how this is any different. Another good example of this phenomenon might be GWENT paving the way for Cyberpunk multiplayer mode with microtransactions. And please consider "opportunity cost". In the case of Cyberpunk/Witcher franchises, we have missed out on DRM-free singleplayer content that hypothetically could have been, because of how resources were/are being allocated to push DRMed multiplayer games. But I digress.