I don't think this was done by mistake. GOG fully knew they were releasing a DRM game. This was absolutely the expected next move after the previous "water testing" to see whether people would accept online-only single-player stuff in CP2077. That one passed and this one will pass too. Judging from the fact that Hitman has within hours jumped to the very top of the best-selling list, I think GOG's "boiling frog" experiment has worked just fine.

People will cry out in this thread, but when the next DRM-free release (or the next big sale) comes, they will continue buying here.

People who laughed about those of us boycotting GOG when CP2077 rewards were online-only can now enjoy the fruits of their laughter. If one continues buying any games from GOG, one is sending a very clear message to GOG that they are fine with their selling a DRM'd Hitman here.

this is honestly pretty disappointing. i was excited and bought it outright (i had some store credit so it wasn't a huge loss).

i don't really care that much about the occasional cosmetic thing here or there (the no man's sky thing, the cyberpunk thing). i understand that certain compromises will occasionally be made to get drm infested games here in a state that qualifies them as drm-free. but this... if there is indeed a sizable amount single player content that is being held hostage by an online connection, selling this here in it's current state sets a pretty scary precedent.

with all that said i'm having trouble gauging exactly the nature of the content being held captive, how much of the game it precisely is, and why said content can't be made drm-free by ioi.

i'm not going to refund yet, but i may in the coming weeks if gog doesn't somehow address this in one way or another.

A bad release by gog, hope they listen and correct the mistake. They are on time. "The drm-free home... i don´t know."

Wow, I almost bought this game!

Having good faith GoG is DRM free I didn't feel the need to read the complete game description.

Lucky for me, on the checkout page I went back to the game page to check for Gamepad support and noticed this game locks most of its features behind an online requirement. Such a shame...

It sucks, but people are just going to have to accept the fact that
GOG is going to become a mostly DRM-Free store. Their frog experiment worked. What this means is that you will still have a lot of games completely DRM-Free. However, you are also going to have games that still require online connection for extra features. I knew it was going to happen eventually.

Look, I never thought we were gonna get anime tiddy games here either, but we seriously have those now. Things change and GOG is changing to become a mostly DRM-Free outlet. Maybe this will drive another platform to compete, but I don't think so as GOG still partner with a lot of the big AAA companies. They're still the big dog in town when it comes to any number of quality DRM-Free titles.

In reality the content could be offline. The proof.
https://www.nexusmods.com/hitman3/mods/78

In my opinion it is "ioi" which refuses as long as the servers are functioning. After possible an offline patch comes out when the servers close, in any case it is possible with the proof.And can not say that we can not operate without a server the different modes.

Before -> gog : Good old Games
Now -> god : Good old DRM
i guess its just easy to throw a sloppy version out there instead of working on a proper DRM free implementation.

I haven't played the game, but here is something I copy-pasted from a good review by emme on the GOG game page:
"All progression - mastery levels, challenges, and consequently unlocks for different starting locations, stashes, equipment and weapons - is also locked behind the online mode requiring connecting to the game's servers. So you cannot ever use anything other than the default starting status, I would consider it similar to a demo. The first words of game description itself are, "Experiment and have fun in the ultimate playground" - this is more of a sandbox than a linear, play-each-mission-once style game.

I have this game on another platform, and enjoy playing methodically going through each mission to fully explore and complete it as much as I can before moving on to the next. I have 56.5 hours recorded over the tutorials + first two story missions. To be generous, that a 'default status' run of these levels took me one hour each, that is just 4 hours, or 7%.

93% of my experience of the game was reliant on content that is locked behind online-only DRM, even here as being sold on GOG."

Steam -> Cheaper
GOG -> Pricey + Hides the fact that online DRM is still a thing.

Bruh, I did not sign up for this -_-

But now they neither have the arguments or the intention to push publishers to publish DRM-free here. It used to be "You can only publish on GOG, if the game is DRM-free". Now the message to publishers is "You can publish anything you like here." There is no incentive for publishers to agree to stripping the DRM from their games. So you can be sure that the fraction of DRM-ed games will increase significantly.

GOG has basically done everything that the pessimists among us predicted. Testing the waters, going small steps into the direction of a DRM-ed store. And, if some outraged forced them, going half a step back, only to take two new small steps later. The direction was quite clear. GOG's intent as well. They WANT to be a mixed DRM-store. And they really want everyone to use Galaxy. That's the reality of this store now.

Sure, they are driving away the old customers. But apparently they hope that they have by now a new user-base that doesn't care about DRM. At least not enough to stop buying here. It's the same on Steam. The forum there is full of people complaining about Steam - which doesn't interest Steam in the least as long as the same people keep financing it by spending money there. The same is the reality here on GOG. Many complain, that GOG has abandoned their principles and many predict, that GOG will lose customers about this. But very few are willing to be those lost customers who stop buying here.


Only that the Cyberpunk thing wasn't a compromise with some publisher. The publisher was GOG's parent company, who could do whatever they want on GOG - and they wanted to release a small part of the game DRM-ed. As test and to get their customers used to it.

As others have said, it's the boiling frog method. First DRM some cosmetics or irrelevant bonus content. Then some side missions. Then a major part of a game (this is the step where we are). Then entire games. It's only a small step to that. HITMAN is already reliant on always-online DRM for most of it's content. One of the next big releases will be a single-player game that has no DRM-free part anymore.

The game was literally in my shopping cart (familiar with the Hitman franchise already from the older games, figured what can go wrong?): went to Steam, saw user reviews were ok, added it to my cart on GOG, then had to do some work, then went back and saw all the one-star reviews on the game page (probably why they removed it from the banner, the review section of that game is one gigantic round of tomato throwing at GOG, probably didn't want that on their banner, bad pr).

The community saved me from an awful purchase there.

From now on, I'll just have to wait for the GOG reviews to pile up to make sure the game is not a DRMed sh*t show.

fair point. indeed the slope is slippery.

We may want to GOG a little, I can understand that the words are a little strong, but we must not forget either IO Interactive to offer us a game per season, linked to online ... a real mess.

Unless there was a big technological gap between Hitman 1 and 2 / 3 I would say it should work roughly the same. But there seem to be very few mods for Hitman 1 so maybe there was.