Yup, seems like CDPR is adamant in disintegrating any goodwill they had with their customers

This is less than ideal and needs to be fixed asap, pirates found a way so I'm sure IOI can also.

If they were gonna throw their principles out the window for "big money" I don't think they'd pick a 5 year old game that was given away for free not long ago.

It's almost heartbreaking having to witness how those corpos at GOG obviously can no longer resist tasting the sweet DRM honey, that they have been objecting to for so many years. Too many developers and publishers have offered it to them, and demanded them to try it.

And now that they're about to become addicted to it, GOG suddenly feels the need to justify DRM, use DRM in CDPRs own games, and tells us why it is good for us and for the store and for everyone else. Either this or they try to poorly deny it, and claim that it is “not DRM” or “it is only a little bit of DRM”.

Just a tiny little bit of DRM wouldn't hurt, right? Yes, we can be absolutely sure they would never do any more DRM than this!

This is our intervention for GOG. Seriously, if GOG doesn't go into DRM detox in a rehab clinic soon, they will lose me as a customer. That may not sound like a big deal to them, but nonetheless it is what it is, and that is the least I can do.

I disagree.

I may be stretching it a bit here but that's exactly what they'd want you to think. "Huh, but this game is old. If they wanted to sell games with DRM they'd sell something more recent and popular."

Yeah, they may fix the game up or delist it and apologize for the whole situation. Then a couple of months pass, a year maybe, and they try it again with another game. Then what? They made a mistake again? "Oh, but it's just this one challenge locked behind an internet connection." "It's just these two missions / quests that require you to be online."

I find it hard to believe that GOG just accepted to sell the game without doing a research on it. You can literally look up the game on PC Gaming Wiki and it tells you that it needs internet connection for a lot of the features. There are also numerous reviews about the game that mention that, discussions on forums etc.

If they really wanted to they could've done their research on the game and find out exactly how much is locked behind an online connection requirement.

Yep, that's my view too. A company where the founder or founding group is firmly in control can hope to have some sort moral fiber (yes, the books need to be in the green above all else, but after that is achieved, some financially sub-optimal decisions might get made based on moral grounds).

Companies beholden to investors become faceless money-generating automatons.

If GOG was legally bound to its original drm-free motto, there would be that, but at this point, I think the only thing binding the company to its original business plan is the drm-free leaning of the existing customer-base and the fact that Steam has pretty much taken over the rest of the PC gaming eco-system (although it is my strong intuition that if GOG could replace its DRM-free community by twice the amount of regular customers poached from Steam and other stores, they'd do it in a heartbeat).

Its nothing personal, its just the way of the world.

However, for the drm-free community, I think our best hope at this point is not so much to steer GOG away from DRMed gaming market (I think the temptation is just too strong for GOG not to tap into that market in some way... its a losing battle for us). Rather, our best hope is for GOG to afford us as much clarity as possible and give us as many assurances (ex: that at least part of their catalog remains drm-free, now and always) as we can get as they attempt to tap into that market.

*deleted*

To be fair I updated the pc gaming wiki page. It was almost the same as the warning on gog before I updated it with more info.

Seems GOG messed up letting something through what their customers are clearly against (for most part). Makes it bit disingenous considering how much they are supposedly against DRM but ok seems it's partly inevitable to not test waters from time to time.

Regardless this needs to be adressed, since customers, publishers or GoG aren't satisfied. Otherwise same might happen with other titles suffering from the same issue. If it's ok to have abysmal rating and selling fraction of copies with same happening to other "not so DRM free" releases so be it, but GoG should have known by now that there is better way...

For me, not going to buy copy unless this is adressed. I hope it will, but also don't mind ignoring it if it won't/

Yeah, I noticed it covers a lot more than what GOG tells about the game on its store page.

Heh, DRM-free is in quotation marks. :D

Why not try taking your own advice? Every post you make here has that underlying sneering arrogance of "You're all children compared to me", and yet you are by far one of the most childish people here. Perfect example from yesterday:-

So anyone who complains about a broken game is "autistic" and all people on the autistic spectrum are "screeching haters" are they? My son actually has Asperger's. Far from seeing you as some beacon of "maturity", your post is literally the single-most childish and insulting thing I've ever read here, and the first person who needs to listen to your own advice of "grow up and start acting like an adult"... is you...

I disagree. That sounds like an over-generalization logical fallacy that forum regular are somehow 'completely different' to other GOG customers. We really aren't. In fact, after re-reading all 4x pages of Hitman reviews for a second time, I honestly don't recognise 80% of the review authors as forum regulars at all. It's almost like GOG customers who don't post to the forums are here for exactly the same general reasons regular forum members are - they want DRM-Free games to actually be DRM-Free and for offline installers to actually work offline (without half the game missing), and to be able to call GOG out when they make a mistake without being smeared with personal attack labels such as "zealot" or "autist"...

I would much prefer it if this situation here was discussed in a more civil way.

I have been with GoG a long time, my catalogue of purchases here is endless. I have gifted GoG games to random strangers and received some in return. I love this platform and what it stands for.

Personally, I am of the opinion that Hitman is a brilliant game too, marred by a ridiculous online-drm as-is.

Therefore, as much as I would like to avoid it, I strongly oppose the inclusion of this game in its current state into the GoG store but I also fail to understand how insulting others and the staff makes any sensible contribution here.

Removing the game from the store is one option, an even better outcome would be if this situation finally triggers the implementation of a proper offline mode into the Hitmen experience (all three games). All of this can the stated, including the fact that the game "does not belong here".

But degrading support staff and everyone else is not helping.
Obviously, this is the internet and it is full of hate but that is simply not productive and not helpful.

The people reading these forums and posting replies were certainly not involved in the decision to release this on GoG. They do not deserve your hate.

Releasing this game is was a mistake but mistakes happen and can be rectified.
I would immediately purchase this game if the offline experience was a proper one.

Seems most of the personal attacks and namecalling (or "hate" as you describe it), is coming from gog and the users defending the release of drm'ed games, tbh.

Review bombers, autists, zealots, drama princesses, elitists, etc.

The majority of the criticism has been quite civil, well argued, and has been focused on the issue, not the individuals.