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rjbuffchix: 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.
Bethesda's Horse Armor was laughed off the yard. Did anyone really spend money on this? Not anybody I know.
What maybe paved the way for endless content additions was MS Flight Simulator. I remember whole shelves lined with boxes for single planes or airports, and they weren't cheap either. Someone must have bought all those little expansion - shelf space was valuable after all.
I guess companies like Paradox and Slitherine were inspired by that.

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rjbuffchix: 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 look up "opportunity cost". In the case of Cyberpunk/Witcher franchises, we have missed out on DRM-free singleplayer games that could have been, because of how resources were/are being allocated to push DRMed multiplayer games. But I digress.
Well, after Witcher 3 people were begging for a stand-alone MP Gwent game. I guess it was too tempting to cash in on that. At least it's F2P. I doubt it drew serious resources from SP game development - it even spawned Thronebreaker as SP version.
In case of CP2077 we simply don't know anything yet about how it'll work, and will be paid content. Frankly, I'm not interested in it anyway. I'm pretty sure SP and MP are made by different teams. Art assets will be double use anyway, game design is vastly different, and story telling... well.

One thing that serious binds resources is MP infrastructure, and that is managed by GOG. No wonder they don't find the time to fix the website and Galaxy development is so slow and bumpy.
Please stop using the downvote button on posts that don't agree with the consensus. We're better than this.
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toxicTom: Bethesda's Horse Armor was laughed off the yard. Did anyone really spend money on this? Not anybody I know.
And after Oblivion, Bethesda (the publisher) became probably the best out there when it comes to substantial and worthwhile DLC packs, after CDPR.
I went back to play No Man's Sky yesterday after the newest update. I've been playing offline and didn't notice anything different about the game. Thanks for this topic for lettimg me know that there might be content that I'll need to go online to access, but I doubt I'll get far enough in the game to find it.
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rjbuffchix: GOG has de-listed other games, why is this one so special?
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toxicTom: It has a lot of players, and it still gets massive content updates, mostly pure single player content.
In other words, the applicability of GOG's DRM-free policy should be determined by the game's popularity. I guess GOG should just bring on in all the AAA titles with whatever DRM the publishers wish. After all, those games have a lot players.
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Breja: In other words, the applicability of GOG's DRM-free policy should be determined by the game's popularity. I guess GOG should just bring on in all the AAA titles with whatever DRM the publishers wish. After all, those games have a lot players.
Do they work offline? Because NMS does work offline, start to finish. The only thing you can't get is an item which leads to a single mission which leads to a - admittedly - cool looking ship, which is still afaik not more useful or important than any other ship in the game.
All other stuff you can earn with "community missions" are decorations for your base. Should those be forbidden too? Because it's "DRM"?

Have you played the game? I have the feeling most people here don't know what they're talking about.

If there was a racing game here, with dozens of cars and tracks, all available in SP, complete with a campaign, different modes and all that. And the devs adding tracks and cars all the time - all SP. Except for one (nice looking, but otherwise not special) car, which you only can earn by winning an MP race (and can than use in SP too), would you scream "DRM!"? Should the game be delisted?

Again, this has nothing to do with real DRM that prevents you playing the game or enforces censorship. It just hides a bonus item from you, which you can earn in "community play" as a reward. Compare this with people losing their Steam accounts, GTA soundtracks being crippled, Germans forced to play censored versions, Amazon removing 1984 from people's Kindles. Because that is DRM working.

If they removed the Living Ship completely, would it be fine?
If they had added the Living Ship as free or paid DLC with a remark "MP only", would that have been fine?
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toxicTom: Have you played the game? I have the feeling most people here don't know what they're talking about.
Yes, I see how you might get that impressions seeing how you are the only person here constantly either misunderstanding or intentionally misrepresenting the issue.

I'll try to explain once more - the content in question is not inherently connected to online play. It is only arbitrarly made an online only feature by the decision of the devs and GOG. How "important" the content is is entirely immaterial. It is really. Very. Simple.
Post edited September 25, 2020 by Breja
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Breja: the content in question is not inherently connected to online play. It is only arbitrarly made an online only feature by the decision of the devs and GOG. How "important" the content is is entirely immaterial. It is really. Very. Simple.
OK, so said content is made an online only feature. Thanks for clearing it up.

I'll probably buy NMS in the future, sans that online feature, as I prefer single player, and said online feature does not take away from my single player/offline experience.
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toxicTom: Have you played the game? I have the feeling most people here don't know what they're talking about.


Again, this has nothing to do with real DRM that prevents you playing the game or enforces censorship. It just hides a bonus item from you, which you can earn in "community play" as a reward. Compare this with people losing their Steam accounts, GTA soundtracks being crippled, Germans forced to play censored versions, Amazon removing 1984 from people's Kindles. Because that is DRM working.
I have played the game. I even use Galaxy already. I didn't even know the content was online only because I'm already always online. But let's say 15 years down the road I want to start a new game. Now some content that I want to play that I remember fondly is just gone. It wasn't tied to MP in any way shape or form, it was just required to have online authentication for... reasons. It's gone now. Lost because the devs decided it should be arbitrarily locked behind an authentication that will one day fail. Further: If GOG are ok having DRMed content in a single player game (no matter how unimportant) then how far are we from mandatory clients and DRM enforced games on the service?
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paladin181: I have played the game. I even use Galaxy already. I didn't even know the content was online only because I'm already always online. But let's say 15 years down the road I want to start a new game. Now some content that I want to play that I remember fondly is just gone. It wasn't tied to MP in any way shape or form, it was just required to have online authentication for... reasons. It's gone now. Lost because the devs decided it should be arbitrarily locked behind an authentication that will one day fail. Further: If GOG are ok having DRMed content in a single player game (no matter how unimportant) then how far are we from mandatory clients and DRM enforced games on the service?
This indeed sucks. And If a game had that at launch, I would be mad at GOG for selling it. However I don't think some of us are wrong to point out that it's A) a tricky thing long after launch, and B) is far, far different from a real DRM authorization.
Dear GOG, fix the problem asap. I will not be buying games here anymore in case i have to research if a games single player component is indeed fully drm-free or not before every purchase .

Just sain in case a gog emplyee reads this.
So... From what I could gather from all this controversy, this is almost as if in "Oblivion" Bethesda had required an online activation in order to get the Horse Armor quest or the private castles, is that it?
Since I never played NMS I have no clue about the game mechanics whatsoever.
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toxicTom: Is that the case? I honestly don't know, I got the game since day one. And it's pretty crazy what has become of it - all for free.
HAHAHAHAHA! You think all of that was free? Heavens no, you paid it all in advance. 4 years too early, according to your claim of a day 1 purchase. They're just delivering now what they promised years ago. And you're being suckered into praising them for finally keeping their part of the deal. Should we also commend them for doing any other stuff that is expected of capable adults?

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Breja: And why exactly do online players deserve "rewards"? Are they paying more for the game? Can I get a discount if I check some "only interested in single-player" box when I buy it?
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toxicTom: You do realize that a game which has MP will always offer more content to players who actually use it than players who only play offline. Did you get a discount on Quake, when you only wanted to play the SP episodes?
Regarding NMS, they offer "community missions" for online players, and if I understand it right, the reward is the quicksilver stuff.
Maybe I'm just being thick here, but... why? Why does Hello Games needs to give an incentive to people who play online? Why do they "deserve" things that the offline crowd doesn't? Are they prettier than me? (Not according to my mom.) Does their shit not stink?

The only things I could think make them a more desirable crowd for HG is that
a) us offline old farts don't let their data be sold as easily (which I don't know if HG is doing);
b) the people who are used to restrictions, for example having to be online for an inconsequential SP DLC and stuff like that, are the first adopters of other anticonsumerist practices. It becomes easy to rationalize accepting an always online DRM for the whole game if you get used to doing it for their smaller parts after all.

Both reasons I could think of are inherently bad for us customers, but maybe you can think of some I did not. So fire away. I'm all ears.

I'm probably just being dumb but I'm just not seeing why this whole stuff HAS to be a "community feature" like you keep saying in the first place. It has zero interaction with the multiplayer mode other than being locked behind the MP gate. (BTW: isn't that DRM? Won't that perfectly SP-adequate content disappear the day HG's servers shut down?)

If you're going to claim I don't know what I'm saying because I never played this game... you're partially right. I never played NMS and do not want to; I was never interested in it at all. However it's not the game I am concerned about, but the erosion of Gog's DRM-Free principles. If they accept HG doing this every other publisher will push some smaller inconvenience on us and our freedom too. This would be the start* of the slippery slope of Gog's last redeeming quality.

* or another step, depending who you ask
Post edited September 25, 2020 by joppo
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Sea-Ra: So they're aware they're selling a game with partial DRM, and they're okay with it. Is this GOG now?
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Breja: Yes.

I'm not surprised. It's been creeping in slowly but surely. As far as GOG is concerned everything that will make people either use Galaxy or get lost is a good thing.

FCKDRM, eh? More like FCKOUROLDCUSTOMERS.
Gog Galaxy is great cause it has cloud saves, overlay etc. Don't see why one should not use it. Most people including me have over 1 tb of storage so installing a launcher doesn't hurt them much
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Breja: Yes.

I'm not surprised. It's been creeping in slowly but surely. As far as GOG is concerned everything that will make people either use Galaxy or get lost is a good thing.

FCKDRM, eh? More like FCKOUROLDCUSTOMERS.
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GeraltOfRivia_PL: Gog Galaxy is great cause it has cloud saves, overlay etc. Don't see why one should not use it. Most people including me have over 1 tb of storage so installing a launcher doesn't hurt them much
That's easy to answer. Because it's optional, at least yet. So I don't care how many features you like about it, it's my decision if I'll use it or not.

Now either contribute something to the point of the thread or go away.