This is extremely interesting.

By the way, thank you for taking the time to explain all the business side of the decisions that you chose to undertake for the direction of your studio, the creation of your games, plus a few things about the industry. I don't know why you've decided to do so (as most devs think gamers are "unfit" to hear these stuff), not to mention, GOG is the one responsible for answering questions, since they own the store and it's gates, but it's a genuinely kind and welcome gesture on your part.

hmm..... you might need to consider a name change. HItbox Team have been working for 4 years on a FP exploration game called Spire. It is set to be released later this year.

http://spiregame.com/
http://hitboxteam.com/mystery-and-mastery

"Spire of Sorcery" should not be any problems. Good to have distinct enough names anyway, to avoid confusion (and trademark mess...)

Much better.

This question has been completely ignored in every thread (including this one) by every dev several times which to me just shows that in truth it's about the usual nonsensical argument "protection against piracy" which can't be stated here of course since it would indirectly be diametrically opposed to the whole DRM-free principle of the site.
I'd be quite surprised when there'd ever be an honest answer to this once.

Even online play can be DRM-free as soon as players can directly connect via IP or make their own servers and don't need a client or some authenticity check from a central server which was the standard once.

I understand your points and game design probably evolved a lot since I dabbled with it, thus the old direct connection client-server model isn't that popular anymore, yet as I said there wouldn't be much of a downside from my point of view. Let me exemplify with the game I've recently ported (mostly) from PC to Android, Birth of the Empires (4x TBS). The original was purely multiplayer oriented, everything built around that. However at the time I felt that the single player part is more important to me than the multiplayer, thus I reworked it to SP only. Now I'm mostly satisfied with the SP, I've even added a lot of features, so I plan writing MP in. In the hindsight it was a mistake to handle it like that, but it's not a biggie, when I have time (since it's a hobby project, and now I have a more important project), I'll write it in. In my case even though Google provides matchmaking etc., I face a difficult choice: 4x games take a lot of commitment from players so random matchmaking might just annoy people. So I decided that I will first implement TCP/IP direct connection where one player is sever and the others are client. When done, I will think about matchmaking. As you can see it's a different philosophy. Although as I said it wouldn't hurt if people would've first implemented the simple stuff (direct tcp/ip) and then extend it.
Sorry about the rambling.

I've played Screencheat, Terraria, Hammerwatch, Scorched3D, Xonotic and others without problems cross-platform (Linux/Win) without any third party client or DRM.
BTW: Where's Linux support?
Not? PR-person then?
What does this have to do with TCP/IP?

I'm sure those little obstacles would surely prevent your team from allowing players to set up TCP/IP or LAN connections.

At first, I wanted to only say thanks for the reply and leave it at that. I just have a lot to say about DRM / online / multiplayer trends going on right now, and thought it'd be a novel for the ages... Then I simply decided to reply to what you said wherever I had anything to say. So here goes...

The problem I have with that, is that I paid for a product to enjoy it at my own pace and for however many years I want (not talking about multiplayer here). I don't want a developer, a publisher or other players telling me the expiration date has come and I can't play it anymore. The enjoyment I get from it is personal, and I feel, shouldn't rest on other people's perceived necessity to move on to something new. Tetris in its original form is still fun to play, Mario is still fun to play , the classics available here are still fun to play. The fun doesn't expire because a company or the masses has move on to something else.

I have nothing against the Kickstarter route of funding a game. I wouldn't use it though. I prefer to use my money to buy a product, instead of investing it in the possibility of a game. I'm a consumer, not an investor. EA (IN DEV on GOG) has the possibility to mislead the gamers "investing" in it (from my point of view). It blurs the difference of investing in the making of a game and buying a finished product. Having games continually in EA, never truly stable and with teams that move on to other projects without finishing the one they started do not reflect well on the practice. I recognize there are people with the nerves to back those projects, and that some of the games I love come from Kickstarter / EA.

For me, we're talking about a game that's been made available as a standalone DRM-free offline product before, I wouldn't mind a multiplayer online product being added to Galaxy. But if the reality was that FTL did not release as a standalone offline product and the developers wanted to bring only a multiplayer online product on GOG, I would hope GOG would not accept it. I value offline with no DRM quality (subjective, I know) games.

I don't have a problem with it per se. The fear though is that we'll have "gimped", "bugged", "tacked on", not polished versions of the online mode. That fear might also come from the fact that GOG's updating process is less than stellar (so we already have outdated versions of games here) (an observation, not a judgement of GOG's process, which I know nothing of).

I won't speak to that, since I'm not one of the person you're referring to. I don't adore the DLC trend either. I always read carefully what the DLC includes, check the price to make sure it fits what I want to pay and buy it for games / developers I feel gave me a good base product. I did not buy your DLC and have no intention to.

As for all the rest that was said, I can't fault a developer for having a developer's perspective on all of it. But trends do change. You're (company) bound to follow them or not, just like we're (consumers) bound to follow them or not. Nothing says there won't be a backlash toward online-only in the future and things go back to something akin to what we knew in the past. You can say that's hopeful thinking, but I'd say the future is never set in stone and the future is not a technology or a trend, it's just tomorrow (you don't know what it'll bring anymore than I do, but hopefully I'll still be able to play the games I love). I think the more vocal DRM-free community on GOG just want a place to find what they want to buy / play. And that's getting rare... And part of us are ready to "fight for" / "defend" it.