Posted January 06, 2021
The question is where you draw the line ? For example you have a games like Modern Warfare where the SP campaign is often around 2 or 3 hours, not to mention that we have here games like Unreal Tournament which don't even have a SP campaign just some bot for the multi.
And despite some peoples think I consider that Gog has always being in the "pragmatic" rather than on the "integrist" side, as showed on the "lax" stance on multiplayer they had since he beginning.
toxicTom: Well, tough call. Ideally the MP part would require no client - problem solved, but sadly that's not fashionable anymore...
It's not really a question of being fashionable but simply a question of not being wanted anymore. Some say that it was some sort of hidden DRM conspiracy, but in reality it is simply that most peoples wanted multiplayer to be "plug-and-play", select a friend from you friend list and play with him/her without worrying about how to connect, which port to open, which IP to use, etc... it is the same thing with auto-update. If you remember before Galaxy there was nearly daily threads about how DRM-free was worse than Steam because the lack of auto-update, lack of easy multi-player, etc... toxicTom: I guess one problem is that in more and more games the borders between online and offline get blurry, like Dying Light, Dark Souls, No Man's Sky... and the online parts will always require a client because that's just how it is. And GOG has to make a decision on how to handle games like that.
Stripping them of their online components just for the sake of "100% DRM-free" feels silly, because nobody gains anything, and the people interested in MP stuff lose out and buy Over There instead. Not releasing them at all means there's no DRM-free version available at all. Releasing them as they are angers the DRM-free fanatics. And convincing the devs to not make games like that? Good luck with that.
Exactly, that's why it is often important to be pragmatic IMHO, something that some peoples have a lot of trouble with. Would it be better if the game was self contained and didn't had some stupid arbitrary "rewards" requiring some online connection, yes definitely! But on the other side when you have a game that can be played offline from beginning to end, is it really worth to not sell the game or remove it because of some silly cosmetics bonuses that have no / very limited impact on the game play ? Personally I think no, and Gog seems to thing the same. Stripping them of their online components just for the sake of "100% DRM-free" feels silly, because nobody gains anything, and the people interested in MP stuff lose out and buy Over There instead. Not releasing them at all means there's no DRM-free version available at all. Releasing them as they are angers the DRM-free fanatics. And convincing the devs to not make games like that? Good luck with that.
And despite some peoples think I consider that Gog has always being in the "pragmatic" rather than on the "integrist" side, as showed on the "lax" stance on multiplayer they had since he beginning.