I don't think it's really a case of them deciding that DRM-free is not maintainable, but more that the frontier between DRM-free and DRM is becoming blurrier in more and more games.

I mean before you had clear "DRM" that was here to "supposedly" prevent piracy or unauthorized copy, but now you have all sort of online "features" that most of the time have nothing to do with piracy but are used either as "incentive" (e.g. register on our site and you will have some shiny skin) or to try to create some "community / social" feeling to increase the game life (e.g. the whole daily mission on NMS ). The Elusive missions in Hitman are also a good example of the later as in "you have to open the game everyday otherwise you might lose a mission forever"

Of course you can remain "dogmatic" and consider that if there is anything single player related that is not available offline then the game shouldn't be sold on Gog, but then you have games like X4 that are literally hundreds hours of DRM-free offline game play that needs to be removed (or never sold in the first place) because of an handful of skins that require to create an account on the publisher. Same with NMS, Cyberpunk, or Daylight.

I think Gog simply decided for a more "pragmatic" approach and if said online content is negligible (by their own subjective standard) and that the game can be played from beginning to end DRM-free then it's ok.

The issue here with Hitman is that, while it's playable from beginning to end offline without any issue, the amount of online content is very far from negligible and they visibly underestimated it

there's plenty of old drm-free die-hards, myself included, that weren't actively participating in the boycott, despite being otherwise sympathetic. there's this idea that we forgot what gog did or something. i remember seeing it around last christmas when hexen/heretic was released. those involved in the boycott would often say "gog made them forget" or "did they forget what gog did?" and no, of course we didn't forget. it's just that we're not all actively boycotting despite understanding why some are choosing to do so.

Hey, I liked that campaign :) Then again, I like "edgy". Hate Fortblite though. You make a great point of course. I have been alluding a lot lately to the "oil rig test". That is, can someone working on an oil rig (i.e. without internet) take their GOG game and access all the content?

I would love to see a PR campaign where GOG games are shown in various exotic locations...like someone scaling a mountain pulls out their laptop to play a GOG game. I think it could really catch on in more rural areas or less developed places where internet is not consistently available. It is a CLEAR advantage over DRMed games.

What's next, going to notify the Hague? People reacting to a covert change in policy =/= lynch mob. If you think this thread is "frightening," don't leave your safe space. You'll find the real world is just as scary.

Or simply as they knew it was a highly-desired game that waited for their anniversary to release it....

I think this paragraph doesn't really make sense within the context of the rest of your post. I am not a technical wizard but is there some reason these skins can't be available in an offline installer? There are games here that provide the content that way, so it seems kind of hard to believe it wouldn't be possible. It seems to me it would be possible technically; it's just that these companies want data/control/etc, which I don't find to be acceptable "reasoning".

Would have been nice to consult their customers on that one.

Probably just me being blind/naive/ignorant and not necessarily seeing the alleged sinister intent behind releasing a highly requested game to bury the HITMAN controversy.

Sure, pulling HITMAN (for the time being at least) would have come across as a gesture of good will and trying to make things right but if it actually can be fixed into something that's mostly DRM-free in a couple weeks time I don't see that much of a problem with keeping it listed either.
By now everyone and their mother is surely aware of HITMAN's questionable state on GoG and most will refrain from buying a (second) copy of what amounts to the same old always-online bullshit that's already sold elsewhere. And even if someone accidentally purchases the GoG release chances are that they will realise their mistake shortly after and file for a refund which as far as I'm concerned is one of the best (if not THE best) ways to let GoG know that they royally fucked up and need to resolve this asap.

Checking my emails for the timestamps, it has now been an entire week since I submitted my request for a refund - not only do I not have my money back, I also have no response to my ticket.

I hope it is not going to take into "the coming weeks" for this to happen either.

But remembering what happened last time, I am not very hopeful.

There is nothing technical, just that the dev don't consider that as being DRM as for them the game don't use any "DRM" (i.e. online activation, etc...) therefore don't agree / care to remove it. And the choice for Gog becomes accept it or not sell the game at all.

So even if GOG does nothing and this thread slowly dies, Hitman will still be the game with the lowest score on the store. Which shows that people here are not ready for DRM (thank god!). IO and other publishers will therefore have no further incentive to release their crippled games to GOG anymore.
If thats the outcome of this story, then you can at least be halfway satisfied.
However, this all assumes that Hitman actually sells poorly here. If not, we're doomed...

Oh cool. After one week of nothingness we get a blue one-liner with more nothingness. Thanks!

Please explain what "looking into it" suggests. This response was given in regards to Quake Enhanced, Saints Row The Third Remastered and Divinity: Original Sin missing updates. In the case of the latter, from what I gather, it's been 2 years of "looking into it". At this point, the response has lost its meaning.

Just remove this drm shit, what you don't understand about this?
There is nothing to look into, just remove it.

GOG did consult with the community a long time ago with, in my opinion, a more restrictive example, and the community narrowly voted Yes:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general_archive/new_gaming_options_followup_survey

And I'll remind everyone of what happened with DRM-free movies. GOG was in talks with a major studio, Lionsgate I suspect, that was willing to release their films here. They were also in talks with all the other major Hollywood studios, and those studios said that they didn't want to be the first, but none of them wanted to be the last. The first willing studio said that due to worldwide distribution rights limitations, the sales of the movies would have to be regionally restricted. GOG put this question up to the community, and the community said no. Shortly after this, one of the original founders Guillaume "The French Monk" Rambourg parted ways with GOG, and I think this was one reason why. We lost the fight for DRM-free movies forever, and we ended up with regional restrictions anyway. Those restrictions meant that I certainly wouldn't have been able to buy the movies, but at least the majority of users could have, and I would've been okay with that. As a movie buff, to me this was the community's biggest blunder.