Exactly, it's a matter of principle.

I remember when Steam yanked Agony Unrated from many people's libraries, including my own, some people were dismissing that as "Well it's a crap game, so who cares". It's the same kind of warped logic and lack of empathy. It doesn't matter what it is, it matters that it's gone, same as here. Now it's "Well I personally don't care about this content, so it's ok that it uses DRM". Well next time it might be something you may care about, so that's not a good reason to excuse sh1tty practices.

If we act indifferent to "fluff" today, the next game may lock characters, missions or challenges behind a Galaxy and internet requirement, and we'll end up with another Hitman 2016.

WTF does that mean? I get a chance to unlock the car? Well, what are the chances? Is it 50-50?
When I buy Phantom Liberty you're going to flip a coin to decide if I get the bonus or not?

I'm really hoping that's just a translation error, because that phrasing is really weird. If you get the car with the pre-order, just say that.
Did they refund the purchase price? Because if they're removing games from your library, that you paid for, and gave you noting in return... that means they just took your money. Which is stealing (or fraud if you're being generous). And that's a crime.

In this case I'm fairly certain that you have 100% chance of getting the car and that this is just a poorly-worded statement. No other page mentions anything about a chance.

It was a bundle containing the censored and uncensored version of the game. While we don't know for certain what happened, the most educated guess we can make is that someone somewhere complained and / or threatened to sue Valve that such a bundle was a means of subverting an age rating. This is why most AO games are often sold censored with an uncensored DLC that has a higher rating than a base game. In the case of Agony though, they were two completely separate versions, with separate achievements, builds numbers and all that.

Developers say that Valve themselves helped them create that bundle and then several years later deleted it out of the blue, which resulted in everyone who bought said bundle to lose the unrated version, only retaining the censored version. Those who had bought the unrated version explicitly had retained in. Steam support were completely indifferent to everybody and hadn't lifted a finger to help anybody to this day. There were no refunds either. Eventually the developers released the whole Unrated version as a free DLC for the censored version, so when you press play you get a choice of which version to launch. All the achievements that you may have had and things like that are obviously lost though.

As for whether or not it's illegal, I'm fairly certain that it is legal. The Steam Subscriber Agreement, which nobody ever reads, states that they give you a license to play games, that they provide no guarantees for any games whatsoever, that they can terminate access at any time and to change terms and conditions at any time. You own absolutely nothing on Steam, you rent for an unspecified amount of time, hence the "Subscriber", in the Steam Subscriber Agreement lol. Steam is evil. If it was up to me, I'd force Steam to replace all "Buy" and "Purchase" buttons with "Lease". That would be more honest.

At the very least we get to download our installers on GOG, to protect ourselves against this evil corporate lawyer-speak nonsense. Additionally GOG state in their GOG User Agreement that they will do their best to give us a 60 days warning to download all our games in case they went bankrupt or whatever. So GOG is not too bad, for now.

So yeah, GOG should not be allowed to go the way of Steam or other indifferent and evil corporations, and gimp offline installers. Offline installers should install 100% of the game. Not 70%, not 90%, not 99.9999998%. This is especially important for first party titles.

As for Agony Unrated, I do not want to talk about it more, for fear of derailing this topic. If you wanna know more, you can google it, as it has made the news or PM me if you have further questions.

Me too, buddy. Unfortunately this might be the only expansion CP2077 is getting. There's good news, though. They are working on a sequel - which will likely be on UE5.

Carrying over saves would be pretty sweet.

What do you think of the Mass Effect thing where they ask the player if certain save information is missing?

@Sargon
Did you realise that you are a GOG patriot with almost 3,000 games in your depo? That is really good! Thank you for supporting GOG and their DRM-free philosophy...

I'll check out if it has finally TPP added and is, as a whole, DRM free. Having no shame is one thing thats in itself bad already; but did it never occured to you that parading said lack of shame around might just cost you from ppl that prefer a more dignified approach when dealing with you?

Not quite sure what you mean?

Are you referring to the fact that at the end of Mass Effect 1 they literally have you appoint a person to a political position minutes before the credits roll and that they did not have the foresight to make an autosave AFTER that decision, so in ME2, upon importing the save, they have to "check your memory" by asking you if you remember who was appointed as a way of carrying over that unsaved decision?

There are actually people with nearly 4000 games lol. But yeah I do throw lots of money at them and promote GOG wherever I go, so that they could bring us more DRM-Free games. I may have to slow down though, if this micro-DRM "My Rewards" crap keeps expanding.

Me, too. Do not support Epic or Steam. For that, thank you, Sargon, Sir!!!

Why not? Steam (VALVe) supports gaming on Linux. They've singlehandedly done more for myu gaming habit than GOG ever has. They're the main reason I can enjoy most of my GOG games on Linux without having to fight with extraneous tinkering. I'll happily support anyone who will help people get out from under Microsoft's thumb. I won't live forever, and DRM isn't great. But if I had to choose between GOG kind of sort of supporting DRM free while ignoring the best opensource OS out there, and VALVe supporting Linux while not discouraging DRM, I'd take the latter. Thankfully, I can support both. Really, I'd like to support a true DRM-free store that gets games I want to play. But GOG is the closest thing I have to that.

That CDPR died with GWENT release, be glad they didn't put full DRM or denuvo in Cyberpunk 2077.

As for the so called "Rewards" it's just a matter of time before this evolves into a full blown Creation Club like, in-game online store with thousands of items being sold for actual money!

You say that like those two sentences are contradictory but I don't think pre-orders and cosmetic extras are ruining gaming because I don't want them; I think that because they tend to be parts of the game that are deliberately and unnecessarily restricted. Also, your second sentence is true whether or not you consider those parts of the game to be "precious"; it's still DRM.

That's what I meant. I apologize for not making it clear earlier. There's also the Genesis comic at the beginning of 3 if you start a new Shepard from scratch instead of importing one. The comic will recap what happened and ask you about the outcome of certain events.

Pre-release builds/demos given out to press and so-called influencers actually had Denuvo slapped on it, if I recall correctly.

Can you really blame people "enjoying it while it lasts" then?
I've pre-ordered Phantom Liberty as well, not because of the fancy car that comes with it and certainly not the Galaxy-only rewards - both of which I couldn't care less about AS LONG AS it only involves insubstantial items not at all relevant to a full and satisfying experience - but because I still want to support GOG and by association CDPRED for releasing AAA games, DRM-free (for the most part at least), on day 1 and on GOG.

There simply isn't an alternative to that. At least not without throwing aside some of your principles and making major compromises in regards to DRM-free, offline installers, not having to rely on a client or launcher, etc, which I don't want to do either.
GOG and CDPRED may not be and do things the same (way) they were (doing) 10 years ago, but at least they've not yet fully succumbed and sunken to the levels of deception and scumbaggery the likes of Valve, EA, Ubisoft, Activision-Blizzard, Take Two, etc, are operating on.

Running a company 100% ethical may simply not be possible anymore given how the video game industry landscape and particularly the business side of things has (d)evolved. And very likely will keep (d)evolving with, as Yigdboz already has pointed out, people in key positions and sympathetic to the DRM-free cause + invested in doing business and marketing as ethical as possible retiring and being replaced with people who are NOT as sympathetic to the DRM-free cause + invested in doing business and marketing as ethical as possible. Simply because they don't know any better and take the way things are done now as the accepted way of doing things going forward.

May be a bit too doom-mongery but then again I too can't help but understand and relate to people (as I'm also one of them), who just want to enjoy things while they're still not as bad (as they could be) and not step over the line or go too far and beyond what's acceptable, like in the case of the Prothean crew member in Mass Effect 3 or what Ubisoft has been doing to the last couple Assassin's Creeds I believe, by cutting out entire missions from the base game and selling them separately.

I do see the dangers of being complacent and not pro-active about it - by simply not pre-ordering or even not purchasing Phantom Liberty at all as long as the silly car and the rewards are not made available as offline installers as well - but as I have in the past never used and never will use any of these extra special items and it's just about that, i.e. a bunch of negligible items, the fact of an AAA game (or expansion in this case) releasing at least 99,99% DRM-free, on day 1 and on GOG takes preference.
You can still voice your discontent and concern over the path - and the slippery slope to both sides of it - CDPRED have chosen to walk on from here on out through other means.

Because again, what's the alternative?
Throwing in the towel and turn your back on the hobby altogether?