i am super appreciative to you for providing these links. somehow they didn't come up in my searching, but this thread -- and your post in particular -- did.

I get it: the most prevalent type of DRM in gaming is a game phoning home to check that the game, or some of its features, are allowed to be used. Online gaming can be done without this, but the solution involves fiddling with router settings (which may not be possible in, say, public spaces), and does not allow for 3rd party servers (unless they are set up privately). Sort of like the LAN set-up, but more of a WAN setup.

That is how you get multiplayer gaming that is truly DRM-free. The soul of GoG lies in how games purchased now can be played just as easily into the future, no matter which servers get shut down. When key features of your game are tied to a server that could be turned off in the future, I can see how people interpret this as DRM.

Of course, I can also see why people who otherwise oppose DRM would prefer just to have an external server handle things, instead of having to set up port-forwarding.

There's also an element of privacy. When a game requires the use of Galaxy, this means GoG has to share information about you with the game's publisher. Plenty of people would prefer to game without game companies tracking who is playing their game.

Very well said.
I'm one of the people that don't like drm because of my history of buying a game and not being able to play it years later because of server going offline. It wants to check if I own the game and can't because of server down yet I paid for the game. It was single player game as well.

If I may add, you also have to 'connect' to Upload your discoveries and get Nanites for them - but you definitely do not have to do that - in fact, you do not have to have Multiplayer, or 'connect' to Online at all, in No Man's Sky. You can download the "Offline Backup Installers" for the game and even install/run it Offline if you want.

The game seems to live up to the "no connection needed" statement, no?

Sometimes, especially when you have no idea what ppl are talking about, you shouldn't post on a forum.
Noone is talking about the multiplayer, and yes, everyone will be quite aware that one has to play 'online' for that feature.
You are not that smarter than all these, as you seemingly think, 'stupid people' in here.
This is about any of the now countless things, like void-eggs/ships and stuff (look it up on other threads on this forum), which are not available for ppl playing offline, for no valid reason. This, the "you want to play the full game, get online" policy is what we call drm. You can argue now about the definition of drm and how aggressively one has to force ppl into connecting online either by denying startup completely or just cut them off from lot's of content for this to count as drm, but for many of us, it's drm enough to be called it that way. You may thing differently about that, don't call as stupid. Thanks.